Eyewitness: A walk at Cremisan

image: Toine van Teeffelen

Mary and I decide to make more walks in the environment out of our new apartment in Beit Jala. We take the taxi to Cremisan with its old monastery on the hilltops to the west of Beit Jala, nowadays the only quiet and forested area in the environment. While we look deep down in a valley, with the Israeli settlements high on the other side, the taxi driver remarks that he would not want to live there despite the natural beauty. The Palestinian inhabitants of two houses in the valley need to wait for soldiers to open the gate in front of their home.

An annual card is needed to enter Cremisan. While walking the paths we see quite a number of people, walking, sitting, jogging - here in Palestine a rather uncommon view. Even a car with bikes on top passes by. Mary sighs while watching the landscape. The view is beautiful but you also know that Palestinians are closed up and cannot travel to those seemingly distant places, also not after corona time hopefully ends. Mary doesn't stop making pictures of the looz (almond tree) now in full blossom.

On the way back we suddenly see a fence protected by rolled barbed wire. Behind it is a new, yet unused road which stops just fifty meters from the road to Cremisan where we walk. Is this a Palestinian road, I think. No, of course not - after making a mental picture of the spatial planning here I understand that this is an Israeli road which leads to road 60, the road used by settlers driving to the south of the West Bank. I remember that during a ceremonial protest against the building of the Wall years ago - a Mass was conducted just in front of the building operations - I saw by coincidence a glimpse of that new small road. Those who want to reach Cremisan in the future will have to make use of it. The monastery will become part of greater 'Jerusalem'.

Maybe we can still use the annual entry card for Cremisan this year, I think, but later on the political landscape is likely to change to the worse, pending on what Israel's authorities and judges decide. No walking or jogging anymore?

Since I came to live here, from the 1990s on, I always had the feeling that Israel is not just preparing roads and settlements but also international public opinion, especially at critical situations such as here at Cremisan. After an initial wave of indignation and protest against land confiscation, settlement, checkpoint or wall building, the international reaction fades away and the plans are finally implemented. Is Cremisan a lost case? Maybe that Biden can do something, says Mary. I think that continuous cultural protests besides the places of apartheid make sense, in combination with social media use.

On the way back we see many new apartment buildings arising, some of them ugly skeletons. The old glory of Beit Jala is slowly disappearing. Still one sees the old houses some of which bear the image of St George on their lintels. Quite a few cars carry yellow Israeli plates. These are people moving from Jerusalem to the Bethlehem district, likely unable to pay the high Jerusalem rents.

During the last years several school classes in Doha town to the south of Beit Jala have been investigating how due to the immigration from Jerusalem and the shrunken development space in the Bethlehem district the services in Doha have come under high pressure. One class managed to get a promise of the Doha mayor that apartment buildings would not become higher than four floors. Will the measure be implemented? Still I need to read the latest book of Raja Shehadeh, "Going Home" - a journey in time and space about how Ramallah's appearance has changed under occupation. I am sure there are lots of parallels with the Bethlehem case, though differences too, due to Ramallah's quasi-capital status.

On the way back home we see a restaurant clearly closed forever, while pet shops seem to open up in these corona times. A flower shop is still open. Are clients looking for a bit of consolation?

Toine Van Teeffelen is Education Advisor at the Arab Education Institute, a Pax Christi Partner in Bethlehem.

LINK

Arab Education Institute, Bethlehem - https://aeicenter.org/