Near modern Jerusalem, Palestinians stuck in past

Fadia al-Wahsh, shown on September 23, 2016, is the leader of a village women's committee that is trying to get electricity for their community in Jubbet Adh Dhib, West Bank.
Fadia al-Wahsh, shown on September 23, 2016, is the leader of a village women's committee that is trying to get electricity for their community in Jubbet Adh Dhib, West Bank.

JUBBET ADH DHIB, West Bank -- Just a 20-minute drive from bustling modern Jerusalem, on the side of a mountain whose name means "Paradise," Jubbet adh Dhib is like a step back in time.

Without refrigeration, food goes bad. Elderly Palestinians fall down in the dark.

Children can't study at night.

With no Wi-Fi and limited television, villagers feel cut off from the world.

"Our children don't have a good childhood," said Fadia al-Wahsh, the leader of a new local women's committee that is determined to get the village on the grid.

"They see kids everywhere with iPads and Internet" in more prosperous Palestinian communities, she said. "My son says, 'Why do you make me live here?'"

A few hundred yards from Jubbet adh Dhib are the bright lights of Sde Bar, a small Israeli settlement and a neighborhood of the larger settlement of Nokdim, where Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman lives.

But the villagers have no access to the schools, cafes, art galleries, garbage collection, tennis courts and public pools at these or other settlements just minutes away.

The village is one of 241 Palestinian communities in the Israeli-controlled West Bank -- a zone known as Area C -- that lack services because "Israel practically bans Palestinian construction" while helping Jewish settlements grow, according to the Israeli human-rights group B'Tselem.

International donors began installing solar streetlights in Jubbet adh Dhib in 2009, but Israeli authorities ordered them dismantled, saying permits had not been issued.

But there is a long history of nonpermitted construction in Jewish settlements, such as Sde Bar, which was built as an outpost in 1998 and not authorized by Israel until 2005 as part of the 1982 settlement of Nokdim, according to the nongovernmental Israeli group Settlement Watch.

The inequities facing impoverished Palestinian villages such as this one are receiving renewed scrutiny as the Obama administration steps up criticism of the settlement enterprise on the grounds that it perpetuates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Earlier this month, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said a recent settlement-construction proposal would be "another step toward cementing a one-state reality of perpetual occupation that is fundamentally inconsistent with Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state."

Jamal Dajani, a spokesman for the Palestinian prime minister's office, said the disparities are part of a "systematic land grab" by the Israelis.

A spokesman for Israeli military authorities in the West Bank said there are plans for electricity service that "will include a cluster of houses" in Jubbet adh Dhib but that Israeli authorities must first finalize a housing plan for the area.

Israeli soldiers have demolished Palestinian homes and European-funded schools, latrines and solar installations for Palestinians in Area C, where ideology-driven Israeli settlers oppose new "facts on the ground" they view as supporting aims of a future Palestinian state.

In 2014, Israel granted only one Area C building permit for Palestinians -- out of 242 applications -- and approved 37 of the 1,640 Palestinian permit requests for the area between 2009 and 2012, according to B'Tselem. Area C makes up 60 percent of the West Bank.

"Israeli occupation authorities have an obligation to provide these services," B'Tselem spokesman Sarit Michaeli said. "But the Israelis don't provide, and if the Palestinians provide for themselves, the Israelis knock it down."

Jubbet adh Dhib first requested electricity in 1988, villagers said.

Solar energy heats the village's water and charges cellphones, and a few televisions run on two village generators when diesel is available.

The committee members push their cause with utility officials, politicians and international donors.

"They keep talking about electricity, electricity, electricity," said former Palestinian minister Mustafa Barghouti, who said he was at a loss advising the women on how to break the Israeli permit deadlock.

"Their whole life is a misery," he said.

"Their whole life is a battle to get normal things that most people take for granted."

A Section on 10/23/2016

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