Fri, 10 May 2024 20:47:26 -0700WeeblyWed, 05 Mar 2014 16:24:10 GMThttp://scottbobb.com/blog/israeli-palestinian-farmers-face-different-crises Hannan Pasternak is a worried man.

Pasternak coordinates the Netiv Hagedud cooperative of some 60 Jewish families who farm plots of about eight hectares each on this settlement in the Jordan River Valley, just north of Jericho. He helped found Netiv Hagedud 40 years ago on then-desert land loaned by the state of Israel.  His son, now married, also farms here.

The 200 settlers grow peppers, dates, eggplants and grapes, mostly for export to the European Union.

Until recently.

Boycott fears

The settlement lies in the West Bank, which the European Union views as Palestinian territory.  As a result, the EU will not issue the documents needed to market the settlement's produce in its 28 member-states.

"We are losing money," he said. "And we are afraid for our future."

Although EU officials deny it, this is part of a growing boycott of products from Israeli enterprises in the Palestinian territories. Pasternak said he hasn't sold a single crate of produce in Western Europe since November.

The settlement now sells its peppers in Russia.  But revenue from its new clients is some 50 percent lower, which is below the cost of production.

More than two dozen Jewish settlements farm in the Jordan Valley, providing livelihoods to more than 8,000 settlers.  Israeli authorities say their export revenues declined last year by 15 percent, or $30 million.

Israel's Manufacturing Association said exports from the Palestinian territories total less than one percent of all Israel's EU trade, $36 billion last year.

Its president, Zvi Oren, said EU cutbacks are not helpful to the region.

"If somebody wants real peace between us and the neighbors," he said. "They should use the economy to promote good relations. They should encourage projects. They should give incentives to joint-projects between Israelis and Palestinians."

Six thousand Palestinians work on Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley. They say the pay is up to three times that on Palestinian farms and there receive more benefits than if they worked for Palestinian entities.

"There is no alternative," one worker told VOA. "We are forced to work in the settlements. When you have a family of five, how can you stay home and sleep?"

But one of the Palestinian founders of the boycott movement, Omar Barghouti, said some Palestinians will have to suffer in the short-term in order to obtain justice in the long-term.

But farmer Pasternak said Israelis and Palestinians will suffer.

"If we collapse, so will they," he said of the Palestinians. "The decision is up to the politicians. If there is any agreement, real peace, we will not be an obstacle to it."

Palestinian water woes

There are different worries on nearby Palestinian farms.

They fear large-scale crop failures this growing season because of poor rains and continuing Israeli restrictions on water supplies and land.

A few kilometers down the road from Netiv Hagedud, 60-year-old Hussein Attiyat walked through the rows of young corn on his farm near al-Ouja.

The earth sifting through his fingers is dry, almost powdery. A few of the green shoots have grown through their protective plastic sheeting. But they are only a few centimeters high.

"Under current conditions, there will be no crop," Attiyat said. "If we had had water since we planted, the corn would be a meter high by now. The ears are due to sprout in ten days but they will wither and die." 

Poor rains are partly responsible. But Attiyat says the Israeli government, which controls this part of the West Bank, will not let him bring water from the nearby Jordan River and will not let him drill a well to save his crop.

He installed drip-irrigation hoses in the plant beds, the same as those pioneered by Israeli farmers. But they are cracking and useless because the town's water supply (for farming) has dried up.

Yet, he says, pointing to a settlement under a nearby grove of trees, the Israeli farms have water and their crops are growing.

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Fahri Nujoum, the mayor of al-Ouja, is also a farmer. He pointed to a town project where catchments and ditches were carved into the desert rock to bring water from a natural spring in the hills eight kilometers away.

"The spring dried up two months ago," he said. Pointing to a pumping station humming nearby, he added: "But the pumping station supplying Israeli farms is still working."

According to the Palestinian Agriculture Ministry, there are 1,000 Palestinian farms in the Valley employing 12,000 workers. They produce crops for local consumption as well as for export to Arab countries, Europe and Asia.

The head of the Palestinian Farmers Union, Daoud Hamoudeh, said the Israeli government imposes many restrictions on Palestinian farmers, but the most damaging is on water.

"Since 1967, the Israeli authorities have not given the Palestinians even one permit to dig a new well in the West Bank," he said. "And they don't allow the farmers to develop or rehabilitate any existing wells."

Under the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Palestinian Authority oversees parts of the Jordan Valley, like the town of al-Ouja. But most of the land is under the control of Israeli security forces.

Critics say the Palestinians lose a great deal of their water through waste and faulty pipes. Palestinians say there is enough water for all the West Bank but most of it is going to Israeli settlers.

Many Palestinians believe that the Israeli government is trying to force them off their land. The government denies this.

Regardless, statistics show that Palestinian agricultural production in the Jordan Valley has been declining for some 20 years. ]]>Wed, 18 Dec 2013 12:12:41 GMThttp://scottbobb.com/blog/leaving-qunu QUNU, SOUTH AFRICA, December 16, 2013 —Stepping carefully down the still-muddy tracks of Qunu, past the small houses painted pink and green, past the cows grazing in the yards, the chickens pecking on porches and the clothes drying on barbed wire fences, I finally have a chance to reflect on the recent days and the last rites accorded to this world statesman, favorite son and extraordinary man.
 
The clouds hang heavy in the sky, almost touching the hills they have greened around the Mandela family compound. The house is large but not opulent.
 
The tent-cathedral and surrounding marquees that were used for the funeral are beginning to come down.
 
The national highway a few hundred meters from the house is open to traffic again. Motorists stop to snap pictures. It seems as if people can’t let go. They need one more photograph, one more souvenir, to hang in the museum of their life memories.

Dignitaries and family

The authorities did an amazing job of erecting hospitality tents and organizing accommodation, logistics and security for the hordes of visiting dignitaries: more than 100 current and former heads-of-state and celebrities from Bono to Oprah all of whom seemed to have a life-changing story to tell about one of their encounters with Nelson Mandela.
 
There were murmurs about how protocol for the luminaries and the state funerary excluded villagers and clan-members of Qunu from the ceremonies and failed to follow their traditions and their rites. Most residents were obliged to watch the funeral on television from another hill across the valley. But they came dressed in mourning clothes and dabbed their eyes just as if they were a few meters from the coffin.
 
Many of Madiba’s extended family were also excluded from the farewells. Only the closest members were invited.
 
Yet, the family was most generous in allowing the government, the country, the world to participate so intrusively in what many would have preferred to be a private time with the patriarch who was invisible to them for 27 prime years of his life.
 
One could argue that they were used to it, having had to share for so long their favorite uncle, grandfather and great-grandfather with countless millions around the world who reacted as if it was their father, grandfather or great-grandfather who had passed.
 
The ceremony, too, seemed dominated by state formalities: the military pallbearers, the drab olive caisson that carried the casket, the barrage of speeches by the famous and not-so famous.
 
Yet, the people had their moments. Sixty thousand attended the memorial service in Johannesburg. One hundred thousand viewed the body lying in state in Pretoria. Tens of thousands lined the streets for the funeral processions in Pretoria and Eastern Cape. And millions watched television broadcasts live on just about every major network in the world.

Residents of Qunu
 
So, as I kick a clump of sod down a street in Qunu, I think of the residents I have met and the more personal stories they told me.
 
One lady received a scholarship through the patriarch. She now heads the Nelson Mandela Museum in Qunu.
 
Another lady met him as a teenager when he was released from prison in 1990. She remembers his humility and serenity as she works in customer relations at a local supermarket.
 
Yet another recalls attending the Christmas parties Mandela hosted at the compound. He said for many, the gifts they unwrapped there were the only Christmas presents they received that season.
 
Another recalls that when Mandela was freed there was no electricity in Qunu. Now it is available to all but the poorest of the poor.
 
Schools, clinics and community centers, small but neat, dot the countryside. The highway links the remote town to Durban, Cape Town and beyond.
 
Many speak of the unfinished business of South Africa, the chasm between rich and poor, the avarice of the ruling class, the poor governance of elected leaders.
 
Yet, standing on a hillside in Qunu while the clouds sink lower to the ground, one cannot help but remark what has been accomplished in the mere two decades since the country moved from repression and despair to the freedom and opportunity-though still incomplete-of today.
 
One last thought as I prepare to leave. Mr. Mandela, even in death, had the grace to take his time, to linger, so that the people could become accustomed to life without him, so that a government could prepare the massive formalities that would be needed to carry off one of the great funerals of the time.
 
So the long goodbye has come to an end. Though his memory will linger among the living, Nelson Mandela now belongs to history, to those who came before and those who are yet to come.

]]>Sat, 20 Apr 2013 18:43:28 GMThttp://scottbobb.com/blog/iraq-invasion-ten-years-onVOA Correspondent Scott Bobb returned to Baghdad recently to report on the 10th anniversary of the war that toppled President Saddam Hussein’s regime. He has been reporting on Iraq since the 1990s, and in this report he gives his impressions on how the Iraqi capital has changed in recent years.

By SCOTT BOBB
 
BAGHDAD -- Flying into Baghdad at dawn after a seven-year absence reveals many changes, at least at first light.
 
Gone is the surveillance balloon that hung over the airport like a giant eye.
 
The pilot executes a smooth landing. In the years after the Iraq War he would have brought the plane to ground in an adrenalin-pumping corkscrew pattern.
 
With the aircraft's wings banked sharply toward the ground, he would have circled over the airfield bringing the plane down 3,000 meters in less than three minutes while passengers' ears popped from the rising air pressure.
 
That was to evade missiles fired by insurgents from the fields around the airport. The procedure is no longer necessary.
 
The airport appears about the same, mostly deserted. Taxis and most private cars still are not allowed to approach the building. A bus shuttles passengers to a dusty parking lot some five kilometers away.
 
The six-lane highway into town, once the deadliest road in Iraq, is clean and clear of debris. Instead of the carcasses of burnt-out cars, sprinklers water the lush grass alongside the road.
 
Recollections of Saddam’s Iraq
 
I first visited Iraq some 14 years ago when the country was still under the grip of Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party. An ordered society seemed to flourish on the surface despite years of sanctions and a no-fly zone that had crippled the economy and virtually eliminated the middle class.

U.S. soldiers walk past two gigantic status of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, March 20, 2009.

It had taken me two years to obtain a visa, which I did by joining a journalists' tour from Cairo. VOA had been blacklisted for years, I presumed, because of its broadcasts to Iraq in Arabic and English.
 
We had raced overnight across the desert from Amman, Jordan, to reach the Iraqi border post at dawn where our passports were stamped and our radios, cell phones and other communication devices were confiscated until we left the country.
 
After a few more hours' drive through the Mesopotamian desert my group checked into the Rasheed Hotel. The threshold of the hotel was inlaid with a mosaic of former U.S. President George Bush the father. When entering the hotel, it was difficult to avoid stepping on the face of the architect of the 1991 war that ended Saddam's occupation of Kuwait.
 
At the reception desk I was taken aback when the attendant asked for me by name. Was he a fan or someone designated to keep an eye on me? I never found out.
 
Riding then in the upscale Mansour district, scions of the political elite chatted from their sleek cars idling in the middle of the street while traffic backed up around them.
 
Neighborhood markets sold at discount prices the silver plates and candelabras pawned by middle class families that could no longer make ends meet.
 
Iraq post-Saddam
 
Driving through Baghdad today brought back memories of the Iraq War organized by George Bush-the-son.
 
I covered the war in early 2003 from Qatar where the U.S. military's forward command was headquartered. Several hundred reporters would gather at the end of the day in the media hanger on a Qatari military base outside Doha.
 
As the TV anchors in the audience finished their live-shots, a senior U.S. commander would appear on the battleship-grey set and brief us on the day's accomplishments.
 
We assembled in the middle of the night on March 19th to watch the beginning of the war and the wave of nighttime bombings called “Shock and Awe.”
 
The relatively new practice of “embedding” reporters with the troops quickly shifted the focus of media coverage to the frontlines. My job soon included checking out tips from my colleagues advancing in the desert.

Saddam Hussein's statue is taken down in Baghdad's Firdos Square April 9, 2003 after U.S. and allied troops enter the Iraqi capital.

After Saddam's statue was toppled on Firdos Square and Baghdad was deemed “freed,” we moved the bureau from Doha to a hotel in Karada, a middle-class Baghdad neighborhood lying across the Tigris River from the fortified Green Zone.
 
I was sent in August to report on the efforts to raise a new democracy from the cinders of war. When I arrived, the foreign troops were still heroes and there was a fresh, almost giddy ambiance of freedom.
 
I arrived one day after a cement truck crashed into the United Nations compound and exploded under the main office building. The attack killed U.N. representative Sergio Vieira de Mello and at least 16 others.
 
He died slowly under the collapsed ceiling of his office talking to rescue workers while they tried feverishly to reach him. Some believe his death ended any chance of a peaceful transition to democratic rule in Iraq. In any case, it signaled much more violence to come. More than 100,000 people including 4,400 U.S. soldiers eventually would die.
 
I returned to Iraq several more times: After Saddam's capture, during his trial and eventual execution, and as the country prepared for its first multiparty elections.
 
I watched as the power vacuum left by his demise sucked in a vortex of anti-occupation resistance and sectarian-based fighting that eventually escalated into a low-grade civil war.
 
Iraq today
 
Today, the main streets in Baghdad seem cleaner and in better repair. A mechanized street cleaner sweeps the dust along the road.
 
Sidewalks are being re-paved. Buildings are being repaired. New cars imported from Korea and Iran snarl the traffic circles.
 
But conversations with Iraqis from all walks of life unveil deep worries and a general unhappiness with conditions a decade later.
 
The biggest concern is security.
 
An unemployed construction worker, Mahdi al-Moussawi, says the pace of the bombings and ambushes has gone down since the peak of the sectarian conflict five or six years ago.  “In general the security situation has improved a little bit, but there are still security problems,” he said. Bombings continue to kill and injure hundreds of people a month and they touch everybody.
 
A lifelong resident thanks God after his college-aged daughter is only slightly wounded in a car bomb attack that kills more than a dozen people on the 10th anniversary of the start of the war.  His son was wounded in a car bombing nine months before.
 
The windows of an office of a women's rights activist have yet to be replaced two months after a bomb exploded on the street below. She explains the target was not her group but a VIP driving down the street.

A police officer inspects the aftermath of a car bomb attack at a used car dealer's parking lot in Habibiya, Baghdad, Iraq, April 16, 2013.

Sectarian tensions affect much of life and have eliminated the mixed-ethnic nature of many neighborhoods. Residents blame these mostly on politicians pursuing their partisan agendas.
 
The majority Shi'ite group, which now dominates political life, lives in fear of terrorist attacks by its rivals. These range from former Saddam supporters to radical Islamist “jihadis.” Kidnappings, whether for political or financial gain, are common.
 
Minority Sunnis, who controlled politics under Saddam Hussein, feel marginalized and discriminated against by the government.
 
Kurds, who were harshly repressed under the Saddam regime, continue to build their autonomous region in the north and spar with the central government over oil revenues from their region.  Other minorities, such as Christians, Assyrians and Turkmen, live in fear.  Many seek to leave.
 
Civil war fears
 
Many Iraqis say they fear another civil war.
 
Analyst Taha Jallo says, “Iraq will never be one country again. The Shia will go their way and make their country and so will the Sunni and the Kurds.”
 
The framework of a democratic government has been set up. Iraq has successfully held four multiparty elections -- two national, two local -- and is to hold a fifth this month. But voting has been postponed in two Sunni-dominated provinces because of anti-government demonstrations there.
 
But Iraqis say the civic institutions needed to support democracy are not there yet. Dissidents are harassed. Some 6,000 activists are in prison. And politicians, they say, continue to play the ethnic card.
 
Patronage in the form of jobs, government contracts and other privileges promotes under-qualified individuals to important positions. It allows corruption to run unpunished and creates a sense of entitlement to an elite few.
 
Twenty-five year-old business student Samer Adnan says, “We are suffering because there are no jobs, especially for young people who have just graduated from college. The government promises to create jobs for everyone but it's just posing.”
 
Iraqis complain that despite billions of dollars a year in government revenues from the largely restored petroleum sector, they continue to live with a debilitating lack of public services.
 
All four smokestacks of the electrical power plant at the edge of town now billow smoke, up from the one-or-two that worked before. Electricity black-outs are shorter. But the hum of private generators still provides a soundtrack to daily life.
 
Most Baghdadis say they have electrical power for only six to 12 hours a day. Clean water is scarce. Public schools and health care facilities are under-equipped and under-staffed.
 
Some residents say they would leave if they could but there is nowhere to go. Political unrest in neighboring countries and a lack of jobs everywhere make emigration risky.
 
Iraqis are angry at their political leaders. They see them as corrupt barons living behind the blast walls of the Green Zone while ordinary citizens suffer in the dangerous and under-serviced neighborhoods outside.
 
Unbridled traffic
 
Iraqis remain deeply conservative, in part due to the decades of war and isolation under Saddam, and in part due to their own social heritage. This, too, hinders progress.
 
New traffic lights have been erected at the city's main intersections. But no one pays much attention to them.

Ten years after the war, Baghdad traffic is reverting to its old chaotic patterns.

Instead, motorists prefer their more customary unwritten rules of the road. They jockey through the traffic at intersections and miraculously dovetail intact out onto the desired street.
 
Traffic policemen stand on the curb chatting and smoking. They only interfere when gridlock occurs. Most motorists seem to prefer it that way.
 
The financial sector shows a similar aversion to change. More than a decade into the 21st century, the Iraqi economy remains primarily cash-based.
 
There are only a few automatic teller machines, or ATMs, and no credit cards.
 
The head of the stock exchange laments that fund transfers between banks take up to 10 days to process unlike the rest of the world where they take a few minutes.
 
Consumers grumble that prices are high, especially gasoline which costs the equivalent of 50 U.S. cents a liter. This is 10 times the heavily subsidized price under Saddam Hussein, but it’s only a fourth of the cost in neighboring countries and one-tenth the price in Europe.
 
“We just live day by day. We do the best we can,” said Intassar Fadl, a mother of five shopping in the central market.
 
Iraqi optimism
 
Yet, Iraqis try to remain upbeat, shrugging off the daily dangers with the fatalistic expression, “It's God's will.”
 
They like to stroll the shopping streets and flood the swank new malls that have sprung up across the city.
 
Or they go to Zawra Park, in the heart of the city, to picnic on its broad lawns and watch the paddle boats glide across the lake.
 
Parents take their children to the zoo, which is slowly recovering, or to the refurbished amusement park which, they boast, now has the second largest Ferris wheel in the Middle East.
 
And they remain one of the most hospitable people around, obsessively over-feeding their guests and feigning anger when they can eat no more.
 
They like to laugh, making jokes about their living conditions and the foibles of their politicians. Asked about elections and democracy, they become irritated, saying these have produced nothing good.
 
Some say the country is changing, but it will take more time to see the results. Others say it is sliding back toward authoritarianism.
 
If they express any hope for the future, it is that their children will develop a better system when eventually they take over.
 
As a visitor prepares to leave, his friends bid farewell saying, “We don't know if we'll be here when you return.” No one commemorates the war that, depending on one's opinion, changed so much, or so little.

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