Transcript of More 4 News broadcast
Kylie Morris: While Israel celebrates its sixtieth anniversary with fireworks the mood in Palestinian communities is a very different one. They call what happened in 1948, “Nakba” – or the catastrophe - and as they prepare for their commemorations next week Girish Juneja has been to the West Bank to the point of sharpest separation between the two divided communities.
Girish Juneja: In a way it’s all about this: the wall, the barrier, the fence. Patrolled 24/7 by the Israelis, it snakes around and into the West Bank, an area the Palestinians are meant to control.
LACK OF CONTEXT BY EXCLUSION OF RELEVANT INFORMATION AND FACTS:
This report addresses at length negative consequences of the barrier for Palestinians in the West Bank, without at any point clarifying Israel’s reasons for the erection of the barrier. The journalist fails to mention terrorism in general and suicide bombings in particular, despite the fact that Israel cites these as the basis for the policy.
Raphael Bouaziz (Har Homa resident): It starts round here and goes down to there somewhere. Then up to the tomb of Rachel. It goes more and more and more – I don’t know to where – it goes round the mountain but it is all round, all round and behind the Arab population that lives there. Does it help? Yes, but I don’t think it’s the solution.
Girish Juneja: Rachel’s tomb, an integral part of Bethlehem in the West Bank, tourist buses come to and fro every day. (Kneeling down at the barrier) This is as close as I can get to Rachel’s tomb because I’m on the Palestinian side of the wall. This part of the wall was erected specifically so that Jewish pilgrims to the tomb could get to it without travelling through Palestinian parts of the West Bank but there are hundreds of miles of this barrier fence and it sums up exactly why Israelis on that side are celebrating the sixtieth anniversary, but Palestinians on this side of it are lamenting it. While Israelis spend the day barbequing, Palestinians, they’re in an altogether different mood.
They march through Bethlehem with a two tonne wooden key, a potent symbol of their claim to return to their homes in what is now Israel. But even homes here in the West Bank are compromised. This house was built by the Anastas family in 1963. For forty years it stood on a busy road. Then one day the Israeli government built this wall.
Claire Anastas: I used to have this business, these shops. I used to sell [unclear] gifts and souvenirs for the pilgrims because it was the holy road and all, mostly the pilgrims used to walk from here to [unclear]. It surrounded us from four sides from this apartments and we are living this side with my four children and we have all, from all the windows the location all walls. So no sun, it’s so bad psychologically, our children have high trauma from their hopeless situation and they don’t have any hope. They describe this wall that it is buried alive in a tomb. Even when they build it in one day, they build it. The children went to school and they turn back and they find this, locked and surrounded their building.
Girish Juneja: The Three Shepherds restaurant at least has a view but it, too, is dominated by the wall and the Har Homa settlement. Here, Basel Khalal is equally heated. Halal says because of the wall he hasn’t visited Jerusalem in years, and that’s just a few kilometres away. He says the true aim of the settlements like Har Homa is to drive the remaining Arabs away.
Basel Khalal (waiter): My house is there. I was been this mountains [sic} was full of trees, full of [unclear].
Girish Juneja: When you were a child it was full of trees?
Basel Khalal (waiter): Yeah. Yeah. Not because people are living in it but why? They cut all of the trees, they surrounded from everywhere and all the world said that you are terrorists and you are kill and you and you and you and you and Israel, they are peaceful. And they close everything [unclear]. You don’t have water, you don’t have [unclear], you don’t have anything to live with.
Girish Juneja: It’s a claim that’s taken personally by students at Bethlehem University who are studying for an uncertain future.
Iyad Hamdan (student): Here the job opportunities are very low so we think of leaving our country and going, for example, to America to look for jobs and to have a better future.
Samer Halayka (student): I don’t think we are going to leave our land and because it’s the Israeli agenda to make the transfer…
Dina Hilal (student): We’re not leave it for them, we’re not leave it for them but sometimes I, yeah, I think about leaving. It’s difficult to live here, it’s difficult to work to approve ourselves. But I still, I go back and say, I’m not leaving it for them.
Girish Juneja: There are political talks and the Americans are keen for a deal before George Bush leaves office. But senior figures in the Palestinian Authority say that necessary compromise isn’t something they can freely give – they’ve already given it.
Fouad Khalil (Palestinian Authority): We are taking just twenty-two per cent of historical Palestine. This is not fair but we accepted it. Twenty-two per cent it’s good for the Palestinians. And now they are following us for this twenty-two per cent. They already take forty per cent from this twenty-two per cent from this wall. And by the settlements and now they are talking about two state solution - I don’t know where we will have our state – behind the wall? I don’t think the Palestinians will accept it.
Girish Juneja: Same valley but from another Israeli settlement. This one looks over Basel’s restaurant, Claire Anastasi’s house and the whole of Bethlehem and it has its own wall. But the scenes depicted on it couldn’t be more different to those painted on the wall at the Palestinian side. Here, pastoral scenes, open countryside, a pure land, one, seemingly, free of Arabs.
Raphael Bouaziz (Har Homa resident): We aren’t the ones who should always give and get nothing in return. Maybe it’s their turn to give. They should give us security but not in return for territory. We deserve security; it’s our basic, legitimate right. If they aren’t prepared to accept this they should look for another country. If they want to stay here they should give us security.
Girish Juneja: To its inhabitants Har Homa is a beautiful home but under international law it, and the two-hundred or so other settlements, are illegal. But while peace processes and road maps come and go, facts on the ground continue to expand. Girish Juneja, More 4 News, the West Bank.
Kylie Morris: So while Israelis continue to celebrate and Palestinians lament, the divisions between these two communities couldn’t be any starker. George Bush, the U.S. president, is on his way to the region to try and drive home a peace deal while he’s still in office but if the differing moods between these two people are any indication, that’s unlikely to happen.
IMBALANCE OF VIEWS:
The journalist hears from six Palestinians, including a Palestinian government official, in the course of the report, but only one Israeli. No Israeli official is included to put across the government’s point of view.