A Leauki's Writings

The problem of meddling in another country's politics by people ignorant of the situation is best described here:

 

The last thing that Abu Mohammed al-Najjar wants is for Israel to succumb to US and European pressure and halt construction in the West Bank settlements.
A Palestinian worker at a...

As far as the 58-year-old laborer is concerned, freezing the construction would be a disaster not only for him and his family, but for thousands of other Palestinians working in various settlements in the West Bank.

Of course, this does not mean that they support Israel's policy of construction in the settlements. But for them, it's simply a matter of being able to support their families.

"I don't care what the leaders say and do," al-Najjar told The Jerusalem Post at one of the new construction sites in Ma'aleh Adumim. "I need to feed my seven children, and that's all I care about for now."

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Today, Palestinian Authority officials estimate, more than 12,000 Palestinians are employed by both Jewish and Arab contractors building new homes in the settlements.

In some cases, Palestinians have found jobs in settlements that are located near their villages and towns.

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He and most of the laborers interviewed by the Post over the past week said they had never come under pressure from fellow Palestinians to stay away from work in the settlements.

"If they want us to leave our work, they should offer us an alternative," Abu Sharikheh said. "We don't come to work in the settlements for ideological reasons or because we support the settlement movement. We come here because our Palestinian and Arab governments haven't done anything to provide us with better jobs."

Back in Ma'aleh Adumim, most of the Palestinian laborers said they had no problem revealing their identities.

"We're not doing anything wrong," explained Ibrahim Abu Tair, a 42-year-old father of eight from the village of Um Tuba, southwest of Jerusalem. "We're not collaborators and we're not terrorists. We just want to work."

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"Look how many foreign workers there are inside Israel today," complained Jawdat Uwaisat, 44, of the village of Sawahreh in the Bethlehem area. "There are about 150,000 workers from different countries who have taken our places of work inside Israel. They are even bringing workers from Thailand and Turkey."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1245924932645&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

 

The totally artificial apartheid system the international community employ to distinguish between Arab "villages" and Jewish "settlements" is simply the wrong way to look at this.

"These settlements are growing every day at a very fast pace," he said. "One day you see empty land, the next day you see new buildings. They are really fast in planning and building. But who knows? Maybe these settlements will one day become homes for Palestinian refugees."

The world sees "Arab" houses and "Jewish" houses, and finds them very different. The local Arabs see "houses".

 


Comments
on Jun 26, 2009

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