LAUREN FRAYER, HOST:
During the Gaza war, there’s also been violence in the other Palestinian territory, the occupied West Bank. In addition to killings and arrests, which Israel says are for its own security, Israel has also been redistricting land there. It’s the same land Palestinians want for a future state. I’m just back from the West Bank, where I saw big changes on the ground. We begin at a Palestinian elementary school with walls painted pink.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Singing in non-English language).
FRAYER: Children sing the Palestinian national anthem at morning assembly in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Singing in non-English language).
FRAYER: The students are here, but the teachers are late, delayed at this Israeli military checkpoint…
SAHAR MANSOUR: Hello.
UNIDENTIFIED MILITARY PERSONNEL: Hello.
MANSOUR: (Non-English language spoken). Good morning.
FRAYER: …Where the rules keep changing.
MANSOUR: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: “First, we needed ID cards. Now we need permits,” says teacher Sahar Mansour (ph). My producer Nuha Musleh and I rode to school with her and another teacher, Dina Raddad (ph)…
So this is where you live, this hill over here, and this is where you work.
…To see what their commute is like…
It’s beautiful land here. Ancient terracing, some olive trees. And you can see Jerusalem…
DINA RADDAD: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: …In the distance.
…And how it’s changed since the Gaza war.
RADDAD: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: Raddad says it’s been taking an hour and a half to get through this one checkpoint. Sometimes when she’s leaving work in the evening, the Israeli soldiers just shut the gate, she says, and she’s been stranded, unable to get home.
I mean, it’s probably 500 yards. Nothing.
RADDAD: Yes, yes.
FRAYER: Could walk there in five minutes.
This fall, Israel declared the town where these teachers work, called Beit Iksa, part of a seam zone, a closed military zone on the seam or border between Jerusalem and the West Bank. In a statement to NPR, the military confirmed that any movement in or out of this zone requires a permit. It’s to safeguard the citizens of Israel, it says.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: For Palestinians, it’s gridlock.
HUSSEIN HABBABEH: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: “Construction workers, teachers. There’s a water tanker here all waiting to pass,” says Hussein Habbabeh (ph), the deputy mayor. He’s out at this checkpoint every morning.
H HABBABEH: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: So it’s a digital permit you have on your mobile.
H HABBABEH: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: Troubleshooting permits and negotiating with soldiers. He fears these new rules…
H HABBABEH: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
H HABBABEH: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: …Are the start of annexation. The Israelis, he says…
H HABBABEH: (Through interpreter) They want the land, and they don’t want the people.”
FRAYER: NPR asked the Israeli military if the deputy mayor is right. It did not respond. In October, far-right Israeli lawmakers won a preliminary vote in parliament to annex the West Bank. Take it over completely. Make it part of Israel. Vice President JD Vance called the vote a very stupid political stunt. The Israeli government says annexation is not official policy. But many Palestinians believe it actually began decades ago with the first Israeli checkpoints, restrictions and settlements, and that it’s being finalized now in this cluster of villages in a very strategic location.
So we’re driving through these sort of crescent moon of nine villages around Jerusalem. There are goats and olive groves, and Dina says there’s a…
RADDAD: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: Here’s a water project. These big pipes here. But you think these are not for…
RADDAD: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: …The villagers.
The pipes are for a new Israeli settlement, says teacher Dina Raddad. The United Nations has called on Israel to stop adding settlements but says the pace of building has nevertheless accelerated.
The next hill is ringed with all these modern buildings, different architectural style, and that’s how you can tell it’s an Israeli settlement.
(SOUNDBITE OF VEHICLE DRIVING BY)
FRAYER: …Just right in front of us here. Dina, when you were a child, could you look straight across into Jerusalem there?
RADDAD: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: “This was the old gateway to Jerusalem,” she says. And it still is for Israeli settlers. About half a million of them live in the West Bank. The seam zone unites them with Jerusalem, while Palestinians from the West Bank – more than 3 million people – are no longer allowed to visit the city that they want as their capital.
(SOUNDBITE OF VEHICLE DRIVING BY)
FRAYER: This is Road 60, one of the main highways that runs the length of the West Bank, and on either side of the road, Israeli construction vehicles – bulldozers – are clearing huge swaths of terraced farmland.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
IMAD BASHA: 1994.
FRAYER: ’94.
BASHA: In 1994, they took the (non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: That terraced land was in Imad Basha’s (ph) family for centuries. In 1994, Israel confiscated some of it to build this highway. And Basha says he was OK with that. The new road would be good for property values, he thought. But over time, he realized that this highway has no exits to Palestinian towns…
BASHA: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: …Only to Israeli settlements. And now, Israel has seized more of his land to create what the military calls a buffer zone alongside the highway.
BASHA: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: Standing in what’s left of his grandparents’ olive grove, Basha, a grandfather now himself, breaks down crying. Little by little, he’s been deprived, he says, of his land, his ability to move around and of his dignity.
During the two-year Gaza war, official Palestinian figures show Israel seized about as much West Bank land – tens of thousands of acres – as it did in the 10 years preceding.
(LAUGHTER)
FRAYER: Back in that elementary school in the seam zone, the principal, Arwa Thaher (ph), is dashing between classrooms, juggling lessons.
ARWA THAHER: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: “How can I run a school without teachers?” She asks. She lives locally, and so does the English teacher Fatima Habbabeh (ph), a relative of the deputy mayor we heard from earlier. But Habbabeh’s daughter commutes to medical school through that checkpoint, and delays are hurting her grades, her mother says.
FATIMA HABBABEH: And my children they said to me, we want to leave this village. You know, just because we can’t waste time. They came yesterday tired, exhausted.
FRAYER: So she’s thinking of moving out of the seam zone to a different part of the West Bank.
F HABBABEH: This village, I love it. I grew up here.
FRAYER: And where would you go?
F HABBABEH: To Ramallah to live freely. We are humans.
FRAYER: This year, Israeli troops displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians from refugee camps in the West Bank. But for every person forcibly displaced, there may be someone like Fatima Habbabeh who’s thinking of leaving voluntarily as life gets more difficult.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: Before we say goodbye, she takes me up to the roof of the school.
Wow.
F HABBABEH: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: So these are the skyscrapers of Jerusalem right in front of us. And then what are these buildings?
F HABBABEH: Settlements all around us.
FRAYER: We look out at a landscape that’s changed so much while all eyes were on Gaza. Fatima says she wants to freeze time right here.
F HABBABEH: Honestly, this is my dream to just sit and look at the views. This is my dream. I can’t now look at the future. I just look at…
FRAYER: She can’t bear to look at the future, she says. She just looks at tomorrow. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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