19 Cheshvan
November 20, 2016
Palestinian Terror
“Rock” attacks in such places as Hizma, Makel, Bet Ayin, Abu Sneineh, Abu Dis, Deir Kadis, couple with an IED attack on soldiers in Abu Dis, and a shooting attack at a car on the Mt. Olives “highlighted” Palestinian terror attacks on Saturday.
Three Israelis were wounded and had to be hospitalized.
TODAY’S BLOG:
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Checkpoint:
My Recent Trip to Samaria (Part 3)
The route of our trip in Samaria: (spelling to map) Qalqillya-Alfe Menashe-Nabi Elyas-Kfar Kaddum-Elkana-Kafr Qassem. Note the green line in the lower left of the map stretching northward from Kafr Qassem. The area to the left of the green line is “Israel before the 1967 war”. Note that Shechem (Nablus) is just to the upper right of the picture off the map.
Note: For those of you coming to israelstreet for the first time, this is a 5-part series documenting a trip I recently took to Samaria–largely with Machsom Watch, a women’s group which monitors the checkpoints in and out of Judea and Samaria.
After our experience at the Israeli checkpoint–at which we discovered to the dismay of MachsomWatch that the Israelis soldiers were not the monsters we had been told they were, and that the Palestinians were not oppressed as we had been led to believe— we continued traveling east until we came to the Palestinian town of Nebi Elias.
In some ways, it was a typical Palestinian town. Tens of young, untended, dirty, poorly-dressed children playing happily on garbage-strewn sidewalks and alleyways; apartment buildings and homes defaced with political graffiti of all types; the smell of raw sewage in the air mixing with the call of a muezzine from the center of town mosque.
Lest you think that the obvious lack of infrastructure and filth was the result of “the occupation” as Daniela told us, Nebi Elias is primarily in Area B, meaning that it is under complete Palestinian administrative control–and has been for more than two decades. Obviously, the PLO has not spent a penny of the millions of dollars and Euros it has received for infrastructure in Nebi Elias.
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In any case, irony of ironies, Daniela led us up the hill, through a winding street (I won’t forget a young 4 or 5-year-old girl playing alone in the front seat of a Mercedes parked out in front of her house) to the office of the man who had been the infrastructure head of Nebi Elias, a man Daniela described as “my friend Hassan.”
I should add at this point that before we arrived at the office building, Daniela asked my wife and I if she could borrow 50 shekels. She said she didn’t have enough money with her to pay Hassan his fee.
At any rate, we entered the nondescript building and climbed the stairs to Hassan’s second floor office which consisted of a outer room with large pictures of Yasser Arafat and Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) along with a Palestinian flag and a work station for one of Hassan’s minions.
And an inner conference room with more large pictures of Yasser Arafat and Abu Mazen with a table and about 15 chairs in which we all took a seat. Hassan soon appeared, was introduced by Daniela, and then began his spiel in English. It was relatively short and focused again on what Hassan said was Israeli land theft. In this case, he said, Israel was stealing land because of the “Wall” and the nearby road. More than this, a new bypass road will steal even more land.
“Why do Israelis need the bypass road?” Hassan lamented, “We are a peaceful people; there have never been any terrorists or terrorism from this area.”
Your humble servant did not feel like it was the appropriate moment to publicize Hassan’s hogwash, but you, dear reader, can google search israelstreet in the column on the right on this page and see a few instances of Nebi Elias terrorism in the last year including stabbings, attempted stabbings, and “rock” attacks on Israeli motorists (which is why the bypass road is being built).
In any case, Hassan continued his rant and took us to the roof of his building from which you could see how the PLO and Israel chopped off about 15% of Nebi Elias and put it in Area C–and we could see where the new bypass road is going to be built. Ironically again, a few hours before we arrived, the Israel Supreme Court denied a final appeal by Nebi Elias to stop the road.
Following this Machsom Watch production, we headed back down the hill to the main street for a falafel lunch: two falafel sandwiches and a Coke for 12 shekels.
After that it was back on the bus and further east into Samaria past the small Jewish community of Ma’ale Shomron and the larger Jewish community of Karnei Shomron (pop. 7000). In Biblical times, the area was the border between the tribes of Ephraim and Menashe. Today most of the land around the communities is a Nature Reserve.
Nevertheless, Daniela was very intent on telling us that unlike Palestinians in the area, virtually no Israelis in these communities “work the land” (it might be hard to work the land of a Nature Reserve)–and that they are called “quality of life communities.” To be honest, judging from all the Palestinians we saw lolling around in the streets of the Palestinian settlements and towns we passed through, not very many of them work the land either.
“By the way”, in February 2002, three Israeli teenagers were blown to pieces and six more badly wounded when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated himself in a pizzeria in the Karnei Shomron Mall.
From here, Road 55 veers northeast, and we headed toward the Palestinian settlement of Kafr Qaddum and its adjoining Israeli community of Kedumim.
And this is where we will stop for today.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.