August 15, 2007

Dear Friends and Family,

Hot summer greetings from the desert!

Compared to the regional events of last summer (including the war with Lebanon), this summer has been relatively calm. We’re thankful for this, as it gives us greater freedom of movement and the opportunity to interact as a network without so many restraints.

With all of our programs progressing well, we have been visiting each to see them in action, and reflect on how they address growing issues of hunger and isolation in the region. In our February newsletter, we mentioned some of these projects that were proposed. These have since been approved for funding. One project involves research into 12 industrial zones that are being built along the Palestinian side of the green (1967 border) line.

Like all other facets of the occupation, the industrial zones are a very complex issue involving not only government bodies, but also large companies and other private investors (some of whom are Palestinian) who wish to become a part of the economic action that will follow. Some call it a “viable solution” to the growing economic disaster fostered by the wall of separation, which is nearing completion; others see it as a means of exploitation of Palestinian workers, land, and the environment.

As our researchers have begun visiting various villages and holding focus meetings, countless disheartening stories have emerged, some of which we wanted to share with you today.

A Palestinian man lives in a tent beside his sheep pen. He lost his home and his grazing lands when the separation wall was built.

Qalqilya is an area that has been nearly completely encircled by the wall, cutting off all its inhabitants not only from Israelis, but also from their fellow Palestinians, their fields, and their livelihoods. One farmer told of standing by helplessly as the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) demolished his dairy farm and milking parlor, leaving his family and their 111 cows homeless. Another said the wall’s construction separated his residence from his chicken farm. The IDF then denied him the necessary permit to access his farm, which caused all of the chickens to die. A third now lives in a tent along side his sheep, having lost both his home and his grazing lands.

In Azzoun, a community center was razed by Israeli Defense Forces that was built with USAID assistance. The mayor of Azzoun was arrested when he protested the action.

In the nearby village of Azzoun is the destruction of all that the city’s municipal mayor sought so hard to avoid. He was relentless in holding on to his vision of creating a community that would not succumb to the lawlessness and chaos that often accompanies the despair of occupation. Working with USAID, he provided his people with a community activities center where citizens could gather (especially the unemployed youth), rather than milling around the town’s streets. Like so many other structures, it too became a casualty of Israeli demolitions. The mayor tried to physically protect the building and had to be dragged away by IDF soldiers. His dream for a better future for Azzoun is now a monument of rubble to the collective punishment of occupation.

Tulkarem, already an industrial zone, is fraught with controversy. In the 1980s, Israel’s Gishuri Agricultural Chemical factory was moved from the Israeli side of the green line onto West Bank lands along with three other factories after Israeli citizen outcry became so great that a lawsuit was launched. The toxic waste from the factories created health risks (discovered when children in a nearby school showed signs of poisoning) and had a devastating impact on the environment.

Once the factory was moved onto Palestinian lands, chemical waste was dumped into Palestinian olive orchards, killing the trees and surrounding vegetation. The prevailing winds blow toxic waste toward next-door Tulkarem every day of the year but four. The Palestinian community filed a lawsuit of its own. The first to court was the Israeli community’s suit. After appeals, the courts decided that the factory would be closed only on those four days that the wind blew back toward Israel. The Palestinian community has never had its day in court.

Every visit we make to a community threatened by the industrial zones we learn more stories of discrimination, marginalization, and disenfranchisement. Adding to the calamity is the collaboration of certain members of the Palestinian private sector who compromise themselves, becoming middlemen to Israeli enterprise for their own economic pursuits, including buying lands that have been previously confiscated from their fellow countrymen. One of our researchers, Eliza Margarita Bates (pursuing her master’s degree through Columbia University), aptly described such a diabolically brilliant scheme as justified by unscrupulous participants because it is seen as “the road to peace through free-market enterprise.”

Our network hopes that this research will provide facts to support a change in public policy. The network also hopes to raise awareness through a TV program designed to dissuade investors and others from participating in the industrial zones.

But the negative aspects of the occupation to both Palestinians and Israelis are obvious, even to the casual observer. Please pray with us that the voices of those uncovering destructive and dehumanizing initiatives will be heard, so that justice and peace may be found.

Grace and Peace,

Terry and Michele

The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 170