By Amira Hass in Jerusalem, 29 September 1999

The afternoon sun had just begun to paint the walls of Jerusalem's Old City gold. Crowds of people entered and left through Jaffa Gate. If not for the flocks of police, one might have believed that peace and equality reign in this corner of the globe. Jews, Christians and Muslims milled about, chattering loudly and munching on sandwiches of sesame bread.

True, the members of each religious-national group stuck to themselves, but their proximity to one another could lead an observer to come up with a few festive declarations on the theme of coexistence.

A few men wearing kippas, who were huddling on the observation platform just outside Jaffa Gate, didn't attract any special attention, not even when a few secular types mixed with them. But suddenly the group was joined by some Muslim women, whose hair was scrupulously covered, and some other Muslim women wearing peasant dresses. They exchanged words in Arabic with the children and the men who were with them.

Then, as one person, the group - Israelis and Palestinians - held up posters and framed photographs. The photographs, taken by Mahfouz Abu Turk, a Palestinian photographer, showed dozens of houses of Palestinians that had been demolished in East Jerusalem.

The group that stood in the plaza opposite the sukka built by the office of Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert had just returned from the village of Walaja, in southwest Jerusalem. They had spent the entire day breaking the law: the Israelis - members of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, among them activists from the religious organization Netivot Shalom and from a rabbis' group committed to "upholding the law" -  helped rebuild the home of the Halifa family, which was razed on the order of the Interior Ministry on August 11 (the day of the solar eclipse).

Residents of Walaja came to the demonstration without obtaining permits to enter Jerusalem. When police officers tried to arrest two of them, the entire group, Palestinians and Israelis, stood firm and declared that "we are all under arrest, all of us to the police station." Under the pressure of the crowd, the two young offenders were released.

The villagers' decision to take the risk and come to the demonstration without permits was deliberate and calculated: they wanted to draw attention to the absurd situation in which they exist.

Part of the village was annexed to Jerusalem in 1967, but most of its land remained in the West Bank. All the residents continued to hold orange ID cards, and so were unaware of their confused status. Only when bulldozers of the Jerusalem Municipality arrived in 1987 and demolished the first house that was built without a permit did the scale of the confusion begin to come clear.

Today 500 people live in the area that was annexed to Israel and 1,700 live in Areas B and C [designated areas of the West Bank] - the same families, the same village, but under three separate and distinct forms of government. Since 1987, 12 homes have been demolished in the village's Jerusalem section, by order of the municipality and the Interior Ministry, out of a total of 70 homes, of which 51 were built without permits and whose owners are now in the midst of a pre-demolition judicial process.

Their little corner of the globe, although part of Jerusalem, has not been granted a master plan. But even if there were a master plan, a poster for the Walaja action committee explains, "We would not be able to build homes on our land, because as residents of the West Bank we have no right to submit such a request within the territory of Israel."

"We look north at the zoo that was built below us, and at Malha and Givat Masua [two new Jewish neighborhoods] which are drawing ever closer to us, at the tremendous groundwork and road-building that is taking place day after day before our eyes, and our hearts are fearful. Are our homes being demolished for the sake of the region's development plans? We want to extricate ourselves from the legal thicket and solve the problem according to human logic and natural justice, and not in the courts."

Many groups of Israeli-Palestinian dialogue and professional cooperation exist under the Oslo umbrella, many peace centers are overflowing with huge donations from philanthropists and European states, and people who live just 50 or even 20 kilometers apart go abroad to meet at dollar-rich conferences.

All is done for the sacrosanct principle of drawing people closer together, while creating the illusion that a state of symmetry exists between two former enemies who are equal in strength.

The Committee Against House Demolitions, with meager donations and the stubborn work of dozens of activists, has generated a broad and popular circle of acquaintances that far exceeds what the official organizations have accomplished in this regard. Yes, they are a minority within a minority.

Their nonviolent revolt does not harm them as much as it does the Palestinian families. But with their readiness to "break the law" in Jerusalem and the West Bank, they have learned far better than all the dialogue groups how asymmetric the situation between the two nations is, and that it is still premature to talk about "peace" when the principles of inequality and discrimination continue to dominate the Israeli mentality.

Copyright © 1999 Ha'aretz. All Rights Reserved. Posted with permission on the web site of Rabbis for Human Rights at http://rhr.israel.net/pencraft/one_village_three_governments.shtml.

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