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The Years After the Dream: Bethlehem's View of Oslo

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The Years After the Dream: Bethlehem's View of Oslo Occasional Publication October 2013 The years after the dream: Bethlehem’s view of Oslo By Akram Atallah Alayasa Executive summary Twenty years after the Oslo Accords, Palestinians are disillusioned with their promise. Oslo was meant to set the blueprint for two secure sovereign neighbouring states. Unfortunately, the vagueness of the agree- ment led to a dependent and derivative Palestinian shadow state and a predatory Israeli neighbour. This history casts doubt on the current negotiations and the initiative of U.S. secretary of state John Kerry. This is most evident in the state of Palestinian cities, especially Bethlehem. Bethlehem, like other Palestinian cities, is surrounded on all sides by settlements, walls and checkpoints. This has limited the city’s ability to expand and has separated it from Jerusalem. On the other hand, Bethlehem is special. Because of its historical and religious significance, the small city has managed to survive and even prosper, despite all odds. Tourism has provided it with revenues that allow for at least some economic development. But like the rest of Palestine, tourism is still hostage to political stability. Thus, as Bethlehem’s business people bravely invest in the town, their economic futures are still tied to the volatile Palestinian/Israeli reality. While Oslo has changed much in Palestine, it has yet to improve things to a similar degree. On a typical day at Bethlehem’s busiest intersection, four In many ways, Oslo reaffirmed Palestinian identity and Israeli armoured personnel carriers brought traffic to a national constants. The Declaration of Principles carried halt. Normally, this happens when Israeli army personnel with it an Israeli and international recognition of the or Israeli settlers clash with protesters near the check- Palestinians’ rights and, more importantly, their very points separating the district from Jerusalem to the north existence. With Oslo, the Palestinians began building their or the town of Al-Khader to the south. However, no such own state structure, the Palestinian Authority. Through the clashes were reported that day. This was but one in a long imperfect Accords, Palestinians were able to establish a and endless series of violations of the Palestinian Author- new reference point in history that united the majority of ity’s control of the city, an organisation established in 1995 the people around a road map for the dream of statehood. in accordance with the 1993 Oslo Accords. Twenty years However, the application of the Accords fell short of their ago, in this very place, dozens of Palestinian youths threw high aspirations. Although the broad strokes of a future rocks at Israeli Defence Forces troops – or Israeli occupa- were put on paper, no real plan to achieve that future was tion forces, as they were called by Palestinians – in what laid out. The result, as history has revealed, is that the they thought was a farewell to the occupation. Some also Accords were used to formalise the Palestinian position threw olive branches to celebrate the long-awaited peace. and legalise an occupation that made the proposed However, the demonstrators were not throwing their last two-state solution more unattainable by the day. stones that day, nor did peace reward the olive branches. The Accords may have changed much of the dynamics of After countless failures since the mid-1990s, the the Palestinian people’s daily lives in the last 20 years, but Palestinian and Israeli leaderships are currently busy with they are yet to improve anything. yet another round of negotiations. The Israeli military gives them little weight, and the Palestinian public pays them even less attention. Most Palestinians do not believe in NOREF Occasional Publication – October 2013 a positive outcome. One of Oslo’s unfortunate legacies is before Oslo we suffered from the silent infringement that no future agreement can be reached without the fear of settlements on our land. Today, the wall has only of yet another failure. given this suffering a louder and more jarring voice. Before Oslo we used to think that we will get a state Neither of the two sides on the ground can differentiate and defined borders. Now we live in small island cities between a liberated town and the occupation. Incidents like surrounded on all sides by walls and checkpoints. the one mentioned at the outset of this paper only weaken the Palestinian Authority’s legitimacy in the eyes of The one thing these statements have in common is the Palestinians, Israelis and the world at large. As former rosy, if in many ways utterly false, memory of the pre-Oslo Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad said: “the West Bank. Yet it was a time when uncertainty smelled of constant small invasions of Area A will only undermine the promise of a breakthrough. Now uncertainty is only that the real authority of the Palestinian Authority.” – uncertainty. The story of Bethlehem is a part of this crumbling whole, but Bethlehem, however counterintuitive it may seem, has it is also a unique case study. The city is historic and central grown because of its peculiar position after Oslo. Over the to the religious beliefs of hundreds of millions of people, not last five years Bethlehem and the neighbouring towns of to mention that it is the closest city in the West Bank to Beit Jala and Beit Sahour have become centres of Jerusalem. In short, its destiny is inseparable from the fate economic investment and development, especially in of Jerusalem, which emphasises its uniqueness. As a result, tourism. More than ten new hotels were built and dozens of over the last 20 years Israel has focused its efforts on others rebuilt or renovated. This happened despite the lack establishing a barrier, literally and figuratively, between the of any serious Palestinian-Israeli political or security two cities. The northern entrance to Bethlehem (on the road settlement. Why did the state of no peace and no war not from Jerusalem) is now blocked by a massive checkpoint slow down these developments, but instead brought a state that resembles a border crossing point between two coun- of unprecedented development, especially after the autumn tries. Moreover, Israel’s separation wall is set so close to the of 2011? centre of Bethlehem that the two cities have become in effect two different worlds. Bethlehem is surrounded with An owner of a Bethlehem hotel describes the altered walls and checkpoints on all sides. Even the cities’ natural dynamic of tourism in terms of the change in tourists points of expansion have been filled with Israeli settlements themselves: that in turn rob Palestinians of the land they so badly need. This process was only allowed to take place because of Oslo. There are two kinds of tourists who visit Bethlehem. Its side effect is a city that has grown gradually more One kind is rich and is not particularly interested in isolated and different from the rest of Palestine. the city itself. Bethlehem just happens to be in the neighbourhood of other Middle Eastern destinations Palestinians, myself included, are fond of comparing the and is affected by regional stability. On the other hand, current lifestyle to the one before the Oslo Accords. the second kind of tourists – the less wealthy ones Sentences tend to start with: “before Oslo I could drive my – visit the city because of its religious and historical car to Jerusalem”, or “I could go to the far side of my own significance. They sleep in Bethlehem, eat in Bethlehem vineyard”. A farmer in Beit Jala (a small town near and become emotionally connected to Bethlehem. Bethlehem), Abu George, said to me once: “before Oslo I could care for my olive trees without noticing the over-hill It is the latter kind of tourists that have made the economy menace of settlements. They did not move towards me. of Bethlehem grow after the lean years of the second Now, I fear that I may lose my olive trees to the ‘segrega- intifada. tion wall’ that follows me around Bethlehem.” In principle, Oslo may have confirmed the existence of the Palestinian However, even the most optimistic business people in Abu George and verified the existence of his Palestinian Bethlehem remain cynical about the current situation. Will land, but the many negotiations since 1993 have not firmly the most recent round of negotiations produce the same established his right to his land, nor have they limited short-lived peace that followed Oslo? Will this new U.S.- Israel’s ability to confiscate it when it see fit. sponsored initiative turn into another adventure that they will regret, like the years after Oslo? This remains to be A letter from the Palestinian Christians in Beit Jala to Pope seen. Francis last April read: “Israel wants to separate Bethlehem from Jerusalem and our other holy places. We Bethlehem remains a special case in the Palestinian are now left to stand alone in the face of the continuous national context. Other small cities like Jenin, Qalqilia and Israeli assault against our defenceless people. But as we Toulkarm have been smothered and turned into ghost always have, we stand up for and we stay on our beloved towns by the occupation. In contrast, larger cities like land.” An activist commenting on the letter expressed an Nablus and Khalil (Hebron) have become overcrowded. alarmingly similar concern to that of Abu George: Ramallah only survives because it is the de facto centre of 2 NOREF Occasional Publication – October 2013 Palestinian economic and political life. Bethlehem has special identity. This may be the ultimate legacy of Oslo for survived because it is different. the birthplace of Christ. Bethlehem is a city that is denied its natural growth and now exists removed from Palestine The city’s Christian population has been under siege.
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