BETHLEHEM LETTER:A human rights worker describes domestic misery in the lead-up to the pope's visit, writes JOE O'BRIEN.
WITHIN A few hundred metres of where Pope Benedict XV1 will address crowds here next Wednesday on his visit to Palestine, at Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem live two very different Palestinian families, both touched profoundly in different ways by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Christy Anastas’s family lived on one of the busiest and richest streets in Bethlehem, Hebron Road. They owned a thriving hardware shop and her mechanic father bought and sold cars. They have lived for almost 40 years in a house her grandfather built.
Christy (19) tells their story: “In 2002-03, the IDF occupied our house for 40 days. They used the roof in particular. One night, I remember waking up with a gun above my head. They went through the house, threw us out and occupied it.
“During this time, I remember many nights when there was non-stop shooting. I also remember running away from approaching tanks and shooting soldiers. These things leave something in you.”
Within two days in 2005, the Anastas home was encircled on three sides by the nine-metre concrete wall that cuts through Bethlehem and scars the beautiful landscape. Businesses isolated by the wall began to close and the Anastas shop followed.
Looking out the windows of the house now, all you can see is a concrete wall. “It is like you are in a jail,” Christy says. “There have been many threats to demolish our house but, as yet, we have not received a demolition order. They want the land our house is on to include it in the area they have restricted for the holy site of Rachel’s tomb.”
Christy studies law in university and eventually wants to study international law, but sees no real future in Palestine. “My brothers and sisters want to leave too . . . We are not comfortable, we are not feeling happy. Sometimes I ask why was I born in this country. I am only 19 once. But by time you grow stronger.”
If one follows the path of the wall past the Anastas home, one will see a variety of slogans and graffiti in different languages including “saoirse” and “siochain”. Shops with their shutters long-closed stare blankly at the wall in front of them.
Within five minutes, you arrive at the Aida camp. The camp is no longer one of tents but of floor built upon floor – as sons or daughters marry and more generations are born in the camp. Aida has been here since 1950. But as you pass the murals of the villages that people have fled, it is clear Aida is not home.
We meet the nine-strong al-Dibes family – on October 25th, 2001, there were 10 of them, before Basama lost her husband.
“The IDF had occupied the camp for 20 days,” she says. “There was shooting, helicopters and tanks from 7pm to 5am. All 10 of us were in the one room, it was too dangerous to go out or even upstairs.
“At 5am, it became quiet and we eventually began to feel safe and went upstairs to get breakfast. My husband Salameh (38) was talking to our eldest son (16) about his studies for final year in school and said that even though it was very hard to study under these conditions he should try to do so. I was breastfeeding at the time.
“We then noticed that our daughter had opened the front door and strayed out onto the street. We were not too concerned but, just to be safe, my husband leaned out the window and called for her to come in. He slumped to the ground and the sound of the shot followed after he started to fall.
“I put my daughter on the ground and went to lift him. The bullet had entered and left his head. There was blood and food all over the floor. I started to cry and then some neighbours came. My one-year-old daughter whom I was feeding was on the floor playing with the blood. Her feet were covered in blood.”
They followed the car that took him to hospital but arrived only to be told he was dead.
The official Palestinian explanation for Salameh’s death is “died during shelling by occupation troops”. There has been no specific Israeli explanation for his death.
The family has felt it was never even a possibility to pursue justice through Israeli courts.
“Since then, life has been very hard,” Basama says. “The whole family of nine lives on 900 shekels per month. In the evening I feed my children first – if they leave something I eat it, if not then I do not eat.
“There is no future for men here in the camp. My daughter is very clever, she wants to be something and go to university but her prospects are not good as university is too expensive.”
Asked if the pope’s visit means anything to her, she says “I hope it can help. But what can he do?”
Joe O’Brien is in Palestine as a human rights observer with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) which “seeks to support local and international efforts to end the Israeli occupation and bring a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a just peace”.