A-Ram: Occupation according to garbage collection

There we were, a Gush Shalom [Israeli peace bloc] delegation joined with 
Palestinian inhabitants in holding a vigil under rather uncomfortable 
conditions: right at the edge of a pile of garbage, some of it very ripe 
after five days of the hottest month in the year, part of it having been 
set on fire some hours before and with acrid smoke still blowing.

The slogan: "Occupation = living in the garbage".

"Haim Ba'zevel" (living in the garbage) is Hebrew slang for particularly 
nasty or depressing situations — which certainly fits the present 
situation of the reimposed harsh occupation, but which also happens to be 
literally true at A-Ram, a large Palestinian town wedged in between annexed 
East Jerusalem and re-occupied Ramallah.

After the few press photographers present took all the pics and footage 
they wanted and we moved with a sigh of relief away from the mess, it was 
possible to survey our surroundings.

The houses around — far from being a slum — were nice middle-class homes 
and the street neat and orderly except for that stinking blemish at its 
side.

In point of fact, A-Ram is not the worst off of Palestinian towns, and 
until last week it possessed an efficient system of garbage removal, 
industriously built up by Mayor Ra'ed Barghouti in the seven years of 
relative freedom which followed the Oslo agreement.

For the people of A-Ram — spared, at least for the time being, from the 
curfews imposed on most other West Bank communities — the growing piles of 
garbage on their streets are a visible sign that that relative freedom is 
no more.

Sitting down with the mayor and councillors, as well as with the two 
Members of the Palestinian Parliament representing this constituency — 
Hatem Abdel Khader and Ahmed El Baz — we heard how the mundane municipal 
business of garbage collection and sewers intersected with the escalating 
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to produce unpleasant results for the town's 
50,000 inhabitants.

Until recently, the A-Ram Municipality used to send the 80 tonnes of 
garbage daily produced in the town to damp in Al-Bireh, a few kilometres to 
the north and in normal times just a few minutes' drive away.

But the times are anything but normal, the army roadblocks multiplied and 
the minutes lengthened into many hours which the garbage trucks had to 
spend in the long lines in front ahead of the checkpoint.

Finally, when Ramallah and Al-Bireh were re-occupied and placed under 
curfew, soldiers at the checkpoint altogether denied entry to the A-Ram 
trucks.

The mayor found an emergency solution — reactivate an old garbage damp, at 
the edge of its city limits, which had been used by the Jerusalem 
municipality until three years ago.

They used it for some weeks, taking care to cover the damped garbage with 
earth and sprinkle chemicals to prevent it from becoming a breeding ground 
for insects.

Still, the army seemed very displeased with the solution found by A-Ram. So 
displeased that even while complaining that its forces were spread too thin 
by the need of combating terrorism, the army found the manpower for 
conducting two large-scale raids on A-Ram, on June 30 and July 8 
respectively, whose sole purpose was to confiscate the town's entire fleet 
of garbage-collecting trucks (which had been donated a few years ago by the 
Government of Japan) arrest municipal employees and impose high fines on 
them.

The employees were then instructed to deliver a message: "everything" would 
be set right by a simple personal visit of the mayor to the offices of the 
Israeli military government's "civil administration" at the settlement of 
Beit El; but should the mayor fail to show up, retribution would come upon 
him, starting from his name being entered on the "black list" of individual 
Palestinians who are forbidden to go through any Israeli Army roadblock...

This "modest" demand held far-reaching political implications: for a mayor 
and his council to submit to the demand and deal directly with the civil 
administration which was supposedly abolished seven years ago would be a 
formal recognition of the reimposed occupation... So for the time being the 
garbage continues piling up.

"If sickness spreads from these piles of garbage, it will not stop on our 
side", said Khatem Abdul Khader of the Palestinian Legislative Council. "We 
are very near here to the Israeli neighbourhood of Neve Ya'akov. It was 
built on our lands."

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Gush Shalom: http://www.gush-shalom.org/