Judah Slavkovsky witnesses conflict along Israeli-Palestinian 'wall'

A recent online news report from Jerusalem indicated that as the Palestinian intifada enters its fifth year, Israel seems more determined than ever to expand its settlements into the West Bank.

Judah Slavkovsky, a Sisters resident, spent most of the last year experiencing the conflict on the West Bank first-hand.

Majoring in biology at the University of Portland, with a strong interest in international political affairs, Slavkovsky wanted to know more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He said, "I wanted to go to learn something on the ground, to learn something rooted in the situation and rooted in the lives of the people who were living it."

Arriving in the West Bank he hired on with the human rights group International Solidarity. He spent most of his time in agricultural villages that are affected by the physical wall separating Israel and the West Bank.

He described the West Bank situation:

"I think it is presented to us as something of a tribal conflict," he said. "Being over there I came to believe it is fundamentally a conflict over resources -- land probably foremost, but also water."

Most of the people he talked to were farmers who lived in agricultural villages. Many of them were losing their land due to the route of the wall. He indicated that the route frequently diverges from the International Boundary. In the extreme, the wall loops inward 23 kilometers to bring the settlement of Ariel inside the boundary.

He was impressed at how similar the Palestinian farmers were to the folks he knows here in Sisters.

He said, "They really want the same thing. Agriculture villages tend to be a moderate, very salt of the earth slice of Palestinian society. They just want to be able to go out and work their land. They want to have a market for their crops. They want to have some sort of future, educational or otherwise, for their kids."

Slavkovsky spent time in a small village called Jayyous, which had just seen the wall come around the village, taking about 85 percent of its agricultural land on the "Israeli" side. Two gates in the wall allowed access at three haphazard opening times when Israeli soldiers would drive up, unlock the gate, check permits and let people through to their farms. The process was repeated in the evenings to let the farmers back in.

According to Slavkovsky, "That interaction was very much a hot point. At times farmers would return to find the gates locked. There were times when the gates had been damaged during the day, usually by vandals and the returning farmers were greeted by very angry Israeli soldiers.

"It was an area where human rights were in the balance and often not respected."

As a member of a group stationed at one of the gates Slavkovsky said, "When we saw potential or outright violations of human rights, we contacted other human rights groups in Israel and East Jerusalem to provide a link to the outside world with news as to what the individual groups of soldiers were doing."

He also noted that soldiers were occasionally fired upon by militants and responded with restraint.

He described the physical wall in two forms -- a "fence" and a "wall." The fence consists of 15-foot high chain link fencing with electronic sensors along the wall to advise "somebody, somewhere" that the fence is being violated. Outward from the wall, on both sides, are patrol roads, then deep trenches, and finally a mass of coiled razor wire.

The "wall" is 15 to 20 feet tall and made out of concrete. In many of the more populated areas this type of wall goes right through neighborhoods. Final plans call for a 50-meter buffer zone on each side. To build the wall with that buffer zone, people's shops and houses are being knocked down.

During breaks Slavkovsky traveled to some of the historic biblical sights -- Galilee, Jerusalem, Bethlehem. He indicated that much of the tourism to the Holy Land has evaporated as a result of the conflict. Some of the holy sights swarming with people five years ago are now completely empty.

The high stress level caused him to cut short his plans after nine months in the West Bank. Not exactly cutting his stress level, he traveled to Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia. There he worked in a home for the dying run by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity. Most of the dying were AIDS patients.

Slavkovsky observed, "When the countryside gives out, in terms of its agriculture, the people move into the cities. The cities become graveyards of the dispossessed and the very, very poor."

When asked about AIDS, he replied, "In Ethiopia, if you have AIDS you are on a bobsled course that only goes down. There are no retro-viral medications in Ethiopia."

Slavkovsky concluded, "We really live in a remarkable era, where somebody from the U.S. can go out and travel and live in those places that make news. When we think of Israel/Palestine we think of suicide bombings and mayhem. In reality, there are all these things happening on the ground, then when something explosive happens, it spikes up. And often our news is just the tops of those spikes.

"But it's all happening within this context and today you can go and live and learn and view the context personally."

Slavkovsky's time in the West Bank and in Ethiopia impressed on him how central the role of policy making is in terms of situations on the ground.

He is looking toward a possible Masters Degree in Public Policy -- and undoubtedly more travel.