Palestinian Man Talks Of Hardships Created By Wall

Most every Palestinian in the West Bank says the biggest obstacles to a better economic life are the hundreds of military roadblocks and barriers that separate the West Bank from Israel. Israel's wall and fence project has dramatically reduced suicide bombings and other attacks inside the country. But the barrier, which will stretch some 450 miles when completed, also has had a severely negative effect on the lives of ordinary Palestinians. NPR's Eric Westervelt and David Gilkey traveled the length of the barrier to explore how it has affected the lives of people on both sides.

Visitors to the "little town of Bethlehem" now have to pass through a checkpoint in Israel's barrier, under construction since 2002 in response to Palestinian suicide bombings.

Along the Palestinian side of the wall, spray painted graffiti reads "welcome to prison" and "ghetto." Many Bethlehem residents say the wall has devastated their city.

One man, Adnan Jahdoh, says his life has changed dramatically. On one particular day, he sits on a wooden stool in his apartment in the Aida refugee camp smoking cigarettes intently — like it's his job. It's early afternoon on a Tuesday and he's still in his pajamas. Short and stout with close-cropped hair, he's pulled his blue and white stripped pajama bottoms up so high over his paunch he looks vaguely elfin.

He slips on a blue bathrobe while a small color TV buzzes next to the couch, its cushions sagging. At 55, Jahdoh says he's too young to just sit around home smoking – brooding — and watching Arabic soap operas. But that's exactly what he does most days.

"Sometimes I stay inside my house for two weeks cooped up," he says. "Where shall I go? I don't really leave except for cigarettes. I don't work anymore. There's no where to go," he says.

His wife Sabah cooks lunch in their small kitchen. Pictures of his father, grandfather and other family members adorn the apartment's faded white and yellow walls. The pictures bring back bittersweet memories. Since Israel put up the big wall between Bethlehem and nearby Jerusalem, Jahdoh says, he lost his job at a car showroom in Jerusalem and also lost access to the farmland his family has worked since the early 1960s. He used to grow figs, dates and olives at the farm — on the other side of the wall on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

"After the wall was built my bothers managed to get a permit to farm their land but I was not able to," Jahdoh says. "I've applied several times, but I'm denied. First time, second time, third time, they've rejected it always!"

Jahdoh's not sure why; the Israelis, he says, don't give a reason. The only time he is allowed into Jerusalem, just five miles away, is during the holy month of Ramadan to pray at the Dome of the Rock, Islam's third holiest site.

"My wife Sabah often gets rejected for permits as well," he says. "The Israelis said she's too young, under 55. They only want old people. Maybe they prefer us to be dead before arriving in Jerusalem!"

Jahdoh has nine children, two sons and seven daughters. All but his youngest, 14-year-old Rula, now live outside the house. They help support him, as best they can, but he says he relies on the United Nations' relief agency UNRWA. He gets about 100 shekels, or $20 a month, from the UN along with some oil and flour and other basic food items.

Jahdoh's family fled the village of Malha in West Jerusalem during the 1948 war when Israel was established. His grandfather was a muhktar, a village elder, in Malha and helped build the school there. Today, there's a mall near what used to be his home village. Adnan hasn't been there in years.

"I believe my land will always be mine regardless of what is built on it, who confiscates it, and what they do to it," he says. "The land is still there and it will always be mine. Just like 1948 Palestine — whatever they do with historic Palestine, it will always be ours."

The wall here doesn't just cut the city off from Jerusalem, it also winds through parts of the town to separate Rachel's Tomb, a Jewish holy site, from the rest of the Bethlehem.

"We live today in an open prison. Why shouldn't I be allowed to go freely to Jerusalem, to pray, to stroll through Damascus gate, to buy sweets and come home to my family refreshed?" he asks.

Because of suicide bombings, is the Israeli reply. The massive wall at the entrance to Jesus' birthplace was built after suicide attackers killed several hundred Israelis during the second Intifada. In early 2004, two bombings a few weeks apart in nearby Jerusalem killed 19 Israelis. The Palestinian attackers, one a policeman, were both from Bethlehem.

"The goal of terror is not to kill people the goal of terror is to frighten the other side," says Danny Tirza, a retired army colonel. Tirza was former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's point person on the West Bank barrier. He designed its route.

"In 2002, I was afraid to send my daughter to school on a public bus," he says. "There was 17 public buses that were blown inside Jerusalem by terror attacks. People were afraid to sit in a cafe, to go to a movie, go wherever inside Jerusalem. Today the West Bank is closed — you can come from the West Bank to Israel only by checkpost. And the terror is left behind."

Back in Bethlehem's Aida refugee camp, Jahdoh says he sees things only getting worse — and views the wall here as the prime mover behind his own downward drift. He looks at life here before the barrier with an air of nostalgia and sadness.

"I want the good old days to come back," he says. "I want people to visit me and me to visit them. I want ... to live with dignity. This is not a life."