Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 1998, Pages 14, 118

From the Hebrew Press

The Sewage of Ma’ale Edumim: An Article Written by Gideon Levy in the Feb. 22, 1998 Ha’aretz

Translated by Dr. Edna Homa Hunt

Translator’s foreword: Unrestrained by any external body, power or laws and uninhibited also by public opinion, domestically or abroad, Israeli authorities are free to undertake actions against non-Jewish residents which imitate the actions previously inflicted on Jews by their historic persecutors and oppressors. Clearly, Israelis assume that no international force will step forward to prevent, much less to question, the “pogroms” visited upon the poorest, the weakest, the most defenseless among the country’s population: the Jahalin bedouin.

No one heard an outcry of outrage. From no quarter, foreign or domestic, was there an attempt to reverse, or even stop, this grossly immoral offense against fundamental humanity. Had a group of Jewish families—anywhere—been the target of atrocities such as those visited upon the 200 or so members of the Jahalin, the media wires around the world would have sizzled with activity—and untold “organizations” would have swung into frenetic action. But in Israel, whatever is done to non-Jews is beyond anyone’s concern, above criticism, unassailable.

These were my spontaneous reactions to an article sent to me by Dr. Israel Shahak from the Feb. 22, 1998 Ha’aretz, even though the author, Gideon Levy, described what he saw with some empathy. I was unable to undertake the translation of this report without first setting down my own very strong feelings.

The Sewage of Ma’ale Edumim

By Gideon Levy

The sight was difficult. On the small hills by the side of the Ma’ale Edumim-Jericho road, there were visible through the darkness groups of people sitting in circles around small camp fires to warm their bodies from the cold of the night. When I arrived there on a weekend evening, the children began organizing themselves for their night’s sleep. Sheets of plastic spread over the rocks served as their beds. The sky was the ceiling, and two barrels were attempts at protection from the wind. This is how approximately 200 members of the Jahalin tribe have passed their nights recently.

Last Monday the Civil Administration mercilessly destroyed their tents and their shacks. On Tuesday, UNRWA supplied them with tents, but these too were confiscated. Since Wednesday they have lived and slept under the skies.

Members of the tribe say they will not move from the land on which they have lived since the 1950s, when Israel drove them out of the Negev. But Israel now has a gigantic plan for Jewish settlement stretching from the Dead Sea to Jerusalem, something like Greater Tel Aviv, and to carry out that plan it must remove all of the bedouin from the entire area. Thus I saw, some weeks ago, not far from here, the children of the Da’alin attending “school” in the open. The Civil Administration had torn down their school building.

Just about any or all measures are acceptable here. At the end of the week an awful stench permeated the desert air. “Miraculously,” to the very place in which the Jahalin had been dumped, there suddenly flowed the sewage of Ma’ale Edumim (a very large nearby Jewish settlement), flooding large areas and emitting disgusting odors. In order to reach the bedouin campfires we had to tip-toe through the leaching field. The bedouin testify that they saw people from the Civil Administration deliberately disconnect one of the sewage pipes so that the effluent would foul the air—another acceptable means to drive them away.

The Civil Administration officials claimed that the sewage accidently flowed out into the open as a result of the eviction operation. And why was the “accident” not repaired during the several days that followed? Peter Lerner, spokesman for the Civil Administration, said, after an entire day of inquiries: “We are repairing the pipe for environmental-quality reasons, but anyway the Jahalin are not supposed to be there, by decision of the High Court.”

Thus, no more than a quarter-of-an-hour from Jerusalem, sit tens of people—men, women, children and the old—without anything, breathing putrid air! Their few belongings and food were loaded by foreign workers onto trucks and thrown out at the Jerusalem city dump! According to the attorney of the Jahalin, Shlomo Lacker, the inspectors of the Civil Administration refused to allow the bedouin to collect any of their meager belongings from the dump before they were covered by mounds of dirt and garbage.

There, on the hill at the entrance of the garbage dump, Israel wants to push out these people of the desert, people who never did Israel any harm. Indeed, they are the ones who quarreled with the Palestinians because of the bedouin’s refusal to participate in the intifada. They, who once before had been driven away by Israel, now have fallen victim to Israel’s obsessive drive for expansion. And they simply fail to understand what is the sin for which they are treated this way by the state.

In truth, what explanation can be offered the Jahalin? On the hills behind glitter the houses of Ma’ale Edumim, a gigantic settlement that was founded almost 30 years ago, after the Jahalin arrived here. But now the settlement is not satisfied with the enormous area it already controls, and seeks to dominate the entire desert! It is difficult to assume that a single settler does not sleep well because of concern for the 200 souls, including many children, who sleep out in the open without shelter a few steps away from his heated house.

The elders of the Jahalin sat around one of the campfires and rolled cigarettes the night I came. A few among them are shepherds, but most are day laborers, building and cleaning in the neighboring settlements. Two nights earlier five of them were held for erecting tents and released two days later. Has Israel ever detained a single settler for squatting illegally on land? How many settlers’ caravans were trashed in the way the miserable tents of the bedouin were?

The faces of the people were abysmally downcast, exuding despair and total helplessness. They know all too well that in this war the victors have long since been determined, as have the losers. Occasionally, a jeep of the border police passes by, scattering shafts of lights, and sometimes vile curses. “Israel will never feel ashamed,” exclaimed one of the Jahalin men as he tightened his robes around him opposite the dying fire. On the previous night another of the men, father to 13 children, was detained for daring to stretch some cloth between two barrels to protect his children from the cold. His wife and children are now camped on the opposite hill.

Today advocate Lacker will present an injunction against the forced removal. Perusal of the list of plaintiffs intensifies the feelings of empathy. Most of them were born on this land. Plaintiff no. 29 is a widow of 86 who has lived here almost as long as the state has existed. There are four more old widows like her.

But the ages of the plaintiffs, their familial situation and the formal legal arguments are not the main thing. What matters a thousand-fold more is the moral portrait that peeks through this brutal Israeli operation. Everything must bend before its limitless, tireless, expansionist appetite, and the hell with all other people of this land. Unlike the song “together with pride, together in hope,” in this story there is neither pride nor hope.

Translator’s Afterword: And so the people who suffered their holocaust, build museums and monuments to their suffering, and insist on teaching about it—even to their new allies, the Turks, perpetrators of the Armenian holocaust—engage in a continuous chain of holocaust-like episodes with the ultimate goal of “cleansing” the land—borders unspecified—of other human beings in their path. The rest of the world stands by silently, seemingly indifferent, but more likely intimidated.