I have long wanted to visit the West Bank and Gaza, both places that are important for the future of Israel and the entire region. If I could travel there, I felt, I would be able to better understand the Palestinian experience and hopefully be an interpreter of that experience for my Jewish friends—though not necessarily to explain it! This past April  I was able to connect with Hamed Qawasmeh, the head of Hebron International Resource Network (HIRN), an organization whose primary goal is to provide support to Palestinian communities in the shadow of Israeli settlements.

Getting to Hebron

Getting to Arab Hebron (Al-Khalil, friend, in Arabic) requires taking a private share taxi from the Damascus gate. My journey took about 40 minutes. The journey was uneventful but did raise my adrenaline level at times. At one point we went through a checkpoint; a soldier looked in and waved us through. With my long beard and brown skin and a cap on my head, I was probably indistinguishable from a Muslim. I wondered if the soldier would have stopped the car if she knew I was Jewish, maybe to warn me about going into area A locations in the West Bank, controlled by the Palestinian Authority. I think I now have a better understanding of the experience of Arabs going through these checkpoints—presumed to be a terrorist until proven otherwise!

After a while we took a turn-off from the highway (marked by a large red sign in English and Hebrew warning that it was illegal for Israeli citizens to enter) and came to Hebron, where I got off at Ibn Rushd circle. Ibn Rushd, an Islamic theologian, argued for the permissibility of philosophical inquiry in religion, and reasoned that scriptural texts should be interpreted allegorically if they appeared to conflict with reason and logic—just like the Rambam. They were also contemporaries and hailed from the same city; Ibn Rushd was born in Cordoba in Andalus in 1126 and the Rambam around 1135. We even know that the Rambam read Ibn Rushd, for he wrote to one of his students, Joseph ben Judah, in 1191 that he had received some of Ibn Rushd’s books.

The West Bank Economy

Hamed, along with Sarah, a young French intern, was waiting for me and greeted me warmly. We went to a café and chatted for a while before getting into Hamed’s car to drive down south to Umm al-Kheir, a Bedouin village near the Israeli settlement of Carmel, long a flashpoint between settlers and Arabs. Hamed spoke passionately to me about how Palestinians are captive within their own land. He told me about how difficult it was for Palestinian businesses to grow because the Israelis control all exports to other countries and imports into the West Bank. He spoke about the industries around Hebron—the leather industry, the plastics industry, the local quarries and particularly the dairy industry. Milk producers in the region are generally small, independent operators who sell their milk to dairies, which then package the milk and other dairy products for retail sale. 

A small area like the West Bank cannot simply grow by producing for local consumption; the best solution is to import things from abroad that can be produced cheaply there and export things that can be produced cheaply domestically. Over time, though, imports have grown, while exports have failed to keep pace. Tech consumer goods are imported from Israel and other consumer goods from China, even shoes, which used to be a speciality of the Hebron area. Donor aid is used to pay for these imports because revenue from exports is insufficient; the current deficit presently amounts to 10% of GDP! The agriculture, industry and services sectors are all barely growing. This is clearly unsustainable; it is crucial that export industries be built up. Israel is the most obvious destination for West Bank exports; however, according to Hamed, there are many restrictions on exports. For example, it is very difficult to meet Israeli standards for food exports; as a result, Hebron’s dairy products are primarily consumed locally. West Bank quarries do, however, export sizeable quantities of stones to Israel. Still, Hamed feels that Israel hinders Palestinian access to export markets in Israel or elsewhere. Considering all this, it is surprising that the Hebron area has a lot of millionaires! This is apparently the result of individual Arabs having cozy arrangements with the Israeli army. Hamed was not very happy with these West Bank industrialists, not only because of their complicity with the Israeli army, but also because of their exploitation of the local workers, whom they pay very low wages. According to the World Bank, the unemployment rate in the West Bank in 2017 was as high as 18%, despite a participation rate as low as 50%. 

The main export destinations in 2016-17 were Israel (accounting for 83% of exports according to the United Nations COMTRADE database), Jordan, Belarus, Kuwait, the U.S. and Turkey. Data on Palestinian trade and economy is difficult to come by, but one website lists a variety of exports in 2016-17: tropical fruit, olive oil, scrap iron and building stone, in addition to manufactured generic medicines and repackaged finished dosages (from Bethlehem, Ramallah and Hebron) and plastics. There has also been increased diversification of exports to Israel (processed food, metal, plastics and chemical products). In spite of all this, it is still unprocessed materials, such as quarried stone and fruits, that are the most important components of exports. Another continuingly important item of trade is labor, accounting for 120,000 workers in 2016; over time, though, security issues have led to a substitution of Asian labor for Palestinian labor. If the long-term health of the Palestinian economy is to be secured, though, its private sector needs to shift from selling unfinished products and goods for sub-contractors in Israel to delivering final products for international markets.

Umm al-Kheir

Umm al-Kheir, on Route 317, is a very sparsely populated area. Actually, there are two different locations going by the same name: a small layout, considered legal by the Israeli authorities and where construction activity is theoretically permitted, but for which there is little space; and a second “illegal” village area about a furlong away, which is more ramshackle, but densely populated. Most of the newer economic activity is in the second area, which abuts the Jewish settlement of Carmel. Residential Carmel runs on a roughly northeast-southwest axis; in addition, the settlement has a chicken farm and some agricultural structures on its northeastern end, running roughly perpendicular to the settlement proper. From the hill where we were standing, Hamed pointed out a line of trees, about a furlong away from the settlement, parallel to the agricultural structures, but on the other side of the residential settlement area. These, apparently, were planted on Tu B’Shevat 2011 (https://www.haaretz.com/1.5208751). These three parts of Carmel together form a figure like the Hebrew letter kaf, i.e., three walls on three sides with one side unenclosed; within this quasi-enclosure is where the main village of Umm al-Kheir is located. According to Hamed, the area adjacent to the line of trees was later on claimed by the settlement, thus making the movement of shepherds and sheep from the inhabited area of Umm al-Kheir to the pastures more difficult. The quasi-encirclment of the Palestinian village can be seen on an online map (https://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=31.425~35.196111&style=h&lvl=12&sp=Point.31.425_35.196111_Umm%20al-Khair%2C%20Hebron); it must be noted, however, that the newer settlement is not shown on most maps at all, but can be made out, right next to Carmel, on a zoomed version of the map. 

According to Hamed, the Carmel settlement has steadily encroached upon the village lands, which preceded it.  Furthermore, all construction in that area requires a permit, which is rarely given; hence there is a constant cycle of construction, often funded by European sources of money, and destruction by the Israeli authorities. The Bedouins living here arrived around the time of the establishment of the State of Israel, when they were expelled from the Arad rift area to what was then Jordan, settling on land that they purchased from the residents of the nearby town of Yata. The Jewish settlement of Carmel was established in 1981 and has been growing ever since, with a population of 422 in 2017 (Wikipedia). Nicholas Kristof, in a June 30, 2010, New York Times article, describes Carmel as “a lovely green oasis that looks like an American suburb. It has lush gardens, kids riding bikes and air-conditioned homes.” In contrast, David Shulman, a well-known scholar of Indian history and literature and also an activist, describes Umm al-Kheir as “a ramshackle collection of tents and huts and simple stone houses and sheep-pens and corrugated shacks that borders, tragically, on the settlement of Carmel.”

As the three of us stood there, an Arab elder with a weather-beaten face, dressed in a long, dusty tunic and a keffiyeh, walked up to us and started chatting with Hamed. After my return to Jerusalem, I thought back upon the four of us on that hillock in Umm al-Kheir: the young Frenchwoman; the mukhtar, clearly a toshav ha’aretz, an inhabitant of the land; Hamed, an Arab, but nevertheless dressed in Western clothing; and myself, a Jew from India. Of all four of us, I would face the least political difficulty in settling anywhere in that area, in spite of being the most alien. It is depressing that after all these years there does not seem to be any obvious solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Still, on that day, with the hot sun blazing down upon us, I felt more positive. There is clearly a lot of entrepreneurship and talent in the West Bank and a lot of synergies with Israel. If only the political hurdles could be overcome, there is no reason there could not be an efflorescence of wealth and culture to the benefit of all, Jew and Arab. 

By Meylekh Viswanath