jad@whutt.att.com (John A Dinardo) (06/17/91)
The following excerpts are from the June 12, 1991 edition of
the UNDERCURRENTS program, broadcast daily over Pacifica Radio
Network * affiliate WBAI-FM 99.5 in New York City, which I
transcribed from a tape recording:
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
LAURA FLANDERS:
We now have a report on the situation in the occupied territories,
where Phyllis Bennis is at present. She spoke to me yesterday about
what she sees as a very new and rather terrifying sense of
encirclement -- and, in fact, encirclement -- that is threatening
the Palestinians in the occupied territories, and also in Jerusalem.
PHYLLIS BENNIS:
The overall thing that is so visible in my eyes, after not being
here for over a year, is the sense of encirclement and encroachment
that the Palestinians are facing. There are new settlements going
up everywhere. Israel is in the midst of a major building boom,
with new houses going up for Soviet Jews -- with new housing going
up all over the West Bank. We saw one of the new settlements that
was put up on the eve of James Baker's visit, the settlement that
got a lot of attention in the U.S. but it did not get taken down,
it did not stop, and, in fact, it has been expanded and settled in.
It is now more than just a few isolated trailers, as it was in the
beginning.
There's a sense of the settlements really encroaching on Palestinian
land and Palestinian lives. One of the sharpest examples is
Shofhad [sp?] refugee camp, which is a fairly small refugee camp,
right outside of Jerusalem, which is now almost in the center of
Jerusalem because the actual borders of the city have been expanded
to meet the needs of additional Israeli settlements. And Shofhad
Camp, although it maintains its own identity, is now virtually
encircled. It's ringed with settlements. And there's only one
little part of the circle now that has not yet been filled in with
a new Israeli settlement.
Deheisha Camp, which is a somewhat larger camp near Bethlehem on
the West Bank -- one of the camps with VERY very bad conditions,
a camp that's been there since 1948 when people were evacuated
and expelled from their land inside what is now Israel (inside
the Green Line) -- Deheisha Camp, because it fronts on a major
road between Jerusalem and Hebron, had been a site of stone-throwing
for a long time in the early part of the Intifada. And, as a result,
the Israeli military authorities put up an 18-foot-high wire mesh
fence along the entire length of the camp to keep the kids from
throwing stones. In this last year, they have added to that a 6-foot
-high strip of corrugated metal that makes it impossible to see out
from the camp. As well, they have installed in the one existing
entrance to the camp a one-person-at-a-time revolving metal door
very similar to the kind of revolving doors in New York subway
stations that you can't crawl over or out of, and that make sure
that only one person at a time can go through, to make sure that
the camp can be shut off for curfews in an instant. The one other
entrance, along the side of the camp where cars can drive in, can
be shut off as well, and the camp can be made completely isolated.
They've built two new checkpoints for soldiers right outside the
camp. And there's this sense of encirclement -- a sense of being
cut off from the outside, and being squeezed.
(to be continued)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
transcribed by John DiNardo
* Other Pacifica Radio Network stations are:
KPFA-FM 94.1/KPFB-FM 89.3 Berkeley, California
KPFK-FM 90.7 Los Angeles, California
KPFT-FM 90.1 Houston, Texas
KPFW-FM 89.3 Washington, D.C.