Ma’ale Adumim … closer than you may think!
by Michaël Séguin, The United Church of Canada
Fifteen minutes from West Jerusalem – the Jewish and Californian-looking part of the “indivisible city” –, there is a suburb named Ma’ale Adumim. This city is lovely and so colourful with scores of apartment blocks, beautiful roads, parks and trees. In brief, Ma’ale Adumim looks like an oasis of beauty in the middle of the desert (and in fact, this suburb is in the middle of the desert!). People living there are like you and me: they work from 8 to 5, love to shop in the many malls of the city, to swim in one of the four pools or to read in the “Library of Peace”. To make sure that life is not to hard for these 35,000 citizens, this oasis is connected to Jerusalem by a very efficient highway zigzagging through the desert hills, the Bedouin camps and the security wall specially painted in beige to blend in with the landscape. On the way, a few minutes from the city, you can even wave to the soldiers at the checkpoint. Don’t worry: they won’t stop you! They are only there to assure your safety against potential terrorism.
I was deeply touched by the beauty of this place. Indeed, if I did not have the time to think deeply about it, I would spontaneously move there! There is only a small detail that does not match this lovely picture. As Angela Godfrey from the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD)[1] told us in an alternative tour of East-Jerusalem, Ma’ale Adumim is the second largest Israeli settlement in Occupied Territories – and the first that obtained the status of a city in 1992. Obviously, it is difficult to talk about settlements without talking about land grabbing, population displacement, and defense of the annexed territories
Concerning land grabbing, the general picture is quite simple: located at 4,5 km from the Green line (the 1967 border), Ma’ale Adumim is completely within the Occupied Palestinian Territories and on lands that once belonged to the residents of Abu Dis, El Izriyeh, El Issawiyeh, El Tour and Anata. These places themselves now suffer from drastically reduced possibilities of growth.
On the issue of population displacement, the Jahalin Bedouin community is a prime example. Kicked out of the Negev in 1948, these refugees withdraw back to the territory of the future Ma’ale Adumim. Then, from 1976 until now, the notices of expulsion, the house demolitions and the military incursions become part of the daily life in the Bedouin camps. Between 1997 and 1999, 120 families were expelled – despite legal prosecutions in the Israeli courts – for the sake of the settlement expansion. Israel decided then to relocate them at 500 meters from the Abu Dis dump (where around 700 to 800 trucks a day dump the garbage of both Greater Jerusalem and Ma'ale Adumim), not exactly the most ideal place you can imagine to graze your sheep…[2]
Ma’ale Adumim represent today the last breath of the already clinically died 'two state solution'. In fact, if the settlement occupies today 7 km2, the municipal plan foresees an expansion of up to 55 km2. In other words, the settlement will stretch out from the Dead Sea to Jerusalem, cutting in two the West Bank; in addition, the northern expansion of Ma’ale Adumim will rob the remaining lands available for the growth of East-Jerusalem[3].
Obviously, it is difficult to believe that the wonderful Ma’ale Adumim can be sullied by such blood and suffering. Even more difficult is to believe that, in the shadow of this shinning city, there are so many brothers and sisters condemned to disappear, almost being denied the right to exist. In fact, if one stops a few minutes to think about it, s/he must admit that there are many Ma’ale Adumims in our world. For example, even if they are 400 years old, the Americas abound in deported “Bedouin-brothers”. Unknowingly, you live probably on the land of someone else, on a conquered and colonized land. Personally, I only have to think about Montreal: the city of the one hundred church bells is build on a territory where Mohawks – amongst others – were living, leaving for this nation only the small strip of land that is actually Kahnawake. Instead of compensating them, they have been enclosed!
Is Ma’ale Adumim so far from you? To answer this question is to dive deeply into the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without even leaving your home… Ahlan wa sahlan fi Filestin ![4]
Author’s biography
From July to October 27, Michaël is currently member of the 23rd Jerusalem team of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and in Israël. As a student in Religious Studies at Université de Montréal – he is writing his master thesis about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict –, Michaël is impassioned by theology, inter-cultural and inter-faith dialogue. As a member of United Church of Canada, his presence in this « Holy land » of Jews, Christians, Muslims and Ba’hais is a way for him to live out his discipleship according to Jesus of Nazareth’s example and to seek justice and resist evil. Also, as an international witness of the horror of the Israeli occupation, he seeks to understand the issues of the conflict and how his country (especially Québec, his province) and its institutions are supporting this situation, fostering the same kind of oppression at home with Native peoples, immigrants and any marginalized communities.
[1] To know more about ICAHD, visite the www.icahd.org.
[2] For more information about this controversial issue (of course, the Israeli authorities and the inhabitants of Ma’ale Adumin have totally different views about this current situation, rather considering the Bedouins as squatters and cradle for terrorist cells), see the studies of the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem, “The Jahalin vs. Ma'ale Adumim: Case History”, 21th of February 2007, http://www.arij.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=273&Itemid=26&lang=en, and the letter to the General Secretary of the U.N. from the Agricultural Development Association (PARC), Al Haq, Applied Research Institute - Jerusalem (ARIJ), Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, Defence for Children International/Palestine Section (DCI), Ensan Center for Democracy and Human Rights, The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), and the Jerusalem Legal Aid Center (JLAC), “Urgent appeal on the situation of the Jahalin Bedouin living in the occupied Palestinian territory and threatened by forced displacement”, 6th of July 2007, www.dci-pal.org/english/display.cfm.
[3] Philippe Rekacewicz and Dominique Vidal, “A l’ombre du mur : Comment Israël confisque Jérusalem-Est”, Le monde diplomatique, February 2007, http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2007/02/REKACEWICZ/14411.
[4] Welcome to Palestine!
