Most peaceful Pallie town
Deborah
Matthew Gutman
Aug. 1, 2002
While most Palestinian towns are wracked with violence, Jericho is the
relative exception. Matthew Gutman went to the hottest town on earth
find out why
Languishing inside his non air-conditioned minivan taxi, a stained wet
towel draped around his head, Nassim waits for fares outside the
Jericho checkpoint. Like his dozen or so colleagues, his torpor gives
the impression of a lizard petrified by the blazing sun. With the
temperature soaring above 46 C, at this, the lowest place on earth, he
and his fellow taxi drivers seem asleep, though most are awake.
"We are simply saving energy," he says, white teeth flashing happily,
as he beckons a potential customer crossing into the only remaining
patch of Area A in the West Bank.
Jericho is unique for its "onlys."
The idiosyncrasies of geography, history (it is the world's oldest
town) and climate (most residents only leave the shelter of their
homes well past dark) are well known. But it also possesses the only
Palestinian departure point abroad from the West Bank, has the only
remaining Israeli-Palestinian District Coordination Office, is the
only Palestinian city in which the Palestinian Authority remains the
ruling power, and it is free of violence.
According to Shimshon Arbel, head of planning at the Coordinator of
Government Activities in the Territories, Israel "sees Jericho as a
pilot program, a model for other cities. Since the violence there has
been relatively light, though by no means nonexistent, we've eased
restrictions." Included in this are entrance permits for east
Jerusalem Palestinians, a freer hand in "back-to-back" transfer of
goods from Palestinian trucks to Israeli trucks, and a concerted
effort to keep the Allenby crossing open at all times.
Arbel adds that Jericho has historically acted differently. "It has a
small-town feel and most of its citizens are pastoral, depending
mostly on agriculture. But more importantly, aside from the battering
heat, its people have, since 1967, been open to the outside world,
largely working in the tourism and restaurant industries."
Consequently, they had much more contact with Israelis and foreigners
than other Palestinian population centers, and most have a smattering
of English and/or Hebrew.
Absently playing with his box of Gauloise ultra-light cigarettes,
Jericho's PA political director Saeb Nazif tries to explain Jericho's
conspicuous quiet.
"First, it is the policy of the PA to keep the city functioning as
normally as possible, and we try not to give Israel a reason to close
it," he says, noting the city's strategic advantage as the single West
Bank outlet to Jordan and from there to the world.
The people of Jericho seem to move "slower" than others, Nazif says.
Slower indeed.
Greater Jericho has a population comparable to Jenin, but has produced
not a single suicide bomber during the conflict.
This India-trained civil engineer believes that "This serves Israel as
a focal point in its talks; they want to show that when we don't use
violent means, things can be worked out." But there is and was
violence, notes Nazif, who accuses Israel of playing down violence in
order to prove a point. He counted off 11 Jericho Palestinians killed
during the 22 months of violence.
However, considering that close to 1,700 Palestinians have been killed
in the conflict, Jericho's 11 fatalities, all combatants, seems to
confirm an IDF officer's musings that the last serious action seen in
Jericho was when Joshua brought the city's walls tumbling down.
There is one solid reason for this: Hamas membership is so small that
"You can fit the entire Jericho chapter into one minivan," says Nazif.
"And there is no Islamic Jihad here; well, perhaps one member."
"This fact is key," says Arbel. In Jenin, Hamas and Islamic Jihad
"basically run the show" almost always from the Jenin refugee camp,"
notes the former military governor of Jenin and Nablus. These
rejectionist movements unsettle the waters and stir up most of the
violence.
They also create a "terror inflation," wherein to save face,
PA-sponsored groups, such as Tanzim, "chip in," by involving
themselves in terror.
Having been in power in the area since Israel ceded Jericho and its
environs to the PA in the historic Gaza-Jericho Agreement in 1994, the
PA is firmly ensconced in the city, despite Israeli incursions and
increasing hardships, says Mayor Abdel Karim Sidr.
The quiet is not due to the deterrence ability of the hardly imposing
PA Jericho police force. At the city's main police station opposite
the municipality on Jericho's main square on Abdel Gamal Nasser
Street, a group of officers casually lean against the wall, slowly
sipping black coffee and chatting. While one officer has a cell phone
popping out of his pocket with the word "Lover" monogrammed in English
on the screen, few save for the station captain and his deputy are
actually armed.
Jericho and Gaza - Jericho's polar opposite in terms of stability -
were the first areas entrusted to the PA in May 1994. At the time,
less than a year after the historic signing of the Oslo Accords and
months prior to the declaration of peace with Jordan, the transfer of
authority was considered a boon to peace.
Often referred to as the cradle of civilization, Jericho was the
cradle of the nascent Palestinian state-to-be, and heralded the birth
of a historic reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.
In some cases, fruitful contact between Israelis and Jericho residents
continues. Nazif says that Palestinian workers continue to work in the
nearby settlement Vered Yeriho, and enjoy good working and even
personal relations with their employers. In addition, the city's
Israeli equestrian-club teacher, whom Nazif refused to name citing
"possible danger," travels down from Jerusalem once a week to teach
her classes. And an Israeli factory owner who still maintains friends
in the city recently donated about $7,500 to the building of a new
mosque in the city.
DESPITE these contacts, Jericho remains the quiet, sleepy, even
provincial town Israeli forces left that May, but its post-Oslo luster
is gone. The Oasis casino is smashed and deserted. The red cable cars
that once whisked tourists to the Monastery of the Temptation - said
to be the place where Jesus fought the devil - now dangle listlessly
on their wires. They contrast starkly with the dusty-brown biblical
Judean Hills and camels loping in the background.
The luxury casino - which once employed 2,000 workers - may be
damaged, and some PA buildings destroyed, but unlike in the other
major Palestinian cities, tank treads, road blocks, and tangled steel
and concrete masses do not dominate the cityscape.
In fact, the town's tranquillity is so undisturbed that one of the
world's major news stories - the assassination of terrorist leader
Salah Shehadeh, which also killed several children - plays second
fiddle to a local item: Jordan is barring entrance to Palestinians,
even those with Jordanian passports. This is causing a huge backlog of
humanity at the Allenby crossing.
Hundreds of Palestinians, some in need of vital operations or waiting
for permission to visit their families in Amman, are cursing Jordanian
officials, not Israelis, for their lack of cooperation.
Jericho's residents, Nazif adds, are inundated with relatives in need
of shelter. Because up to 500 people have been waiting up to three
weeks for permission to cross to Jordan, hotels have opened their
doors, dusted off their guest books, and filled their pools, in giddy
preparation for this unexpected boon.
"This is actually the most full our hotels have been since the start
of the intifada," says Mayor Sidr.
To the dismay of locals, many Palestinians pouring into the city, who
clambered over unmarked trails and bounced through back roads to avoid
Israeli checkpoints, are suffering terrible conditions at the
crossing. The sanitation is poor, the food at the cafeteria
prohibitively expensive, and the visitors are forced to sleep on the
terminal's floors.
Jericho has one X-factor, and that is a balding, portly lawyer who
rose through the Palestinian ranks in the late 1990s to become the
most recognizable Palestinian voice in the Western media: Saeb Erekat.
While Palestinian experts note that he has little chance of rising to
power, he is a trusted negotiator. He's close to the US and has also
maintained his Israeli contacts.
Some say Erekat's politics have sunk deep into the behavior of the
people of this ancient valley. While meeting this week with Jesse
Jackson's American delegation, Erekat said that "sooner or later these
people [Israelis] must make up their minds. We can be no match for
them in terms of guns, fighting capability and the ability to
manipulate the press." It is for this reason that negotiations with
the man he calls "my friend Shimon[Peres]" ranks as one of his highest
priorities.
Even in the slow-moving, oven-baked heat of this city, where nothing
moves during the midday hours, danger lurks for potential
"collaborators." Says Erekat: "Anybody who says the truth is
targeted."
Slipping in tone from caustic to caring, Erekat expresses deep dismay
that his 15-year-old son Ali is the subject of taunts at the Jericho
Catholic school he attends.
"Because I denounce the suicide bombings my son is the source of
taunts at school. I am constantly worried about Ali that he will try
to do something that will prove he is not a traitor: like killing
himself," Erekat tells the stunned Americans.
But even this city's single celebrity is watching the power he once
yielded being pulled slowly but steadily from his hands.
"Often I sit in my office feeling impotent: to do anything, like get a
permit to truck vegetables out of the city, to do anything, drivers
now check in at the DCO, not in Palestinian Authority offices."
According to other Palestinian sources, the decreasing Palestinian
reliance on PA services coupled with the decreasing availability of
the Israeli DCO is slowly pulling the reins of even civil authority
from the PA's hands.
WHILE city infrastructure remains intact, and food plentiful, the
three pillars of the once-thriving Jericho economy - tourism,
agriculture and trade - have been whittled away. Today, tourism is a
farce, agriculture is abandoned as exporting produce is nearly
impossible and the local market is already inundated, and trade is
vastly diminished.
Despite murmurs that he is the Palestinian weather vane who will shift
positions when the time is ripe, Erekat - officially, at least -
continues to champion PA Chairman Yasser Arafat.
"Arafat was the first Palestinian to accept the notion of the 1967
borders. He was the first to accept the idea of US and European troops
stationed on Palestinian territory. He accepted the accommodation of
80% of the settlers. He accepted the unprecedented Israeli sovereignty
over the Wailing Wall and the Jewish Quarter."
Pausing to let the mesmerized Jackson delegation digest the meaning of
his statement, Erekat then adds, "We never said no to the Clinton
parameters."
Lapsing into his polished CNN mode, Erekat continues: "Sharon is
keeping us [the Palestinian Authority] for one purpose: to blame us
every time there is a bombing."
Erekat is a fiery speaker. Though English is not his native tongue, in
this meeting at least, he easily outdoes Jackson in flowing rhetoric,
the rhythm of his speech and its flow. When he speaks while standing,
though he is by no means a light man, Erekat will perkily bob up and
down on his toes, matching his incantation.
Though convincing, Erekat has gained a reputation for exaggeration. In
the immediate aftermath of the fighting in Jenin during Operation
Defensive Shield, Erekat famously told CNN that Israel had killed
5,000 of the town's 30,000 residents. Only 52 bodies were found, more
than half of them gunmen.
Jericho's lethargy has not prevented it from being a haven for at
least several gunmen. Israeli troops entered the city as recently as
July 5 to arrest three Palestinians suspected of terrorist activity.
But even this action was relatively uneventful and sedated given
Jericho's temperatures and temperaments.
Despite the quiet and stability, Sidr, the mayor, is skeptical that
the Jericho model could work elsewhere. "We are a simple people in a
hard, flat, isolated place. The quiet here is historical, and it is
unique."
Many Israeli officials and IDF officers agree with this summation. But
some, including a reserve general who maintains contact with the
Palestinians, believes that this dynamic can be extended to other
Palestinian towns.
"Bethlehem could also have been like Jericho; it has a strong business
sector based on tourism and contact with the outside world, and people
there had traditionally been peaceful, yet there was terror," the
general says. "Kalkilya, also relatively small and provincial, could
also have served as such a model."
However, notes the general, the effects of internal Palestinian
politics on security - namely a lack of desire to order the cessation
of all hostilities - prevents other towns from following the Jericho
model.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1027506420131
Joseph Hertzlinger
>Keeping cool in hot times
>
>Matthew Gutman
>Aug. 1, 2002
>
>While most Palestinian towns are wracked with violence, Jericho is the
>relative exception. Matthew Gutman went to the hottest town on earth
>find out why
>
>Languishing inside his non air-conditioned minivan taxi, a stained wet
>towel draped around his head, Nassim waits for fares outside the
>Jericho checkpoint.
<Long_Island_reference>
What's going on in Westbury or Muttontown?
</Long_Island_reference>