Visit to Beit Sahour, IsraeliOccupied West Bank June July 2003 Photographs by Glenn Bowman

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Visit to Beit Sahour, Israeli-Occupied West
BankJune July 2003Photographs by Glenn
Bowman
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• The following photographs, taken for the most
  part during a June-July 2003 field trip to the
  Israeli Occupied Territories by the
  anthropologist Glenn Bowman, are meant to
  illustrate some of the antinomies of Palestinian
  life under Israeli occupation. They focus on the
  town of Beit Sahour, a mixed Muslim Christian
  town of approximately 12,000 persons a mile to
  the east of Bethlehem. Beit Sahour in the past
  was a well-off community with a well-educated
  population which produced textiles and olive wood
  and mother of pearl artisanal goods, but it was
  signally punished in the first Intifada for its
  strong resistance to Israeli occupation and has,
  since then, suffered with the rest of the peoples
  of Gaza and the West Bank under Israel's closure
  of the Territories and, most recently, its
  accelerated processes of land expropriation both
  for building settlements and erecting the
  "Separation Wall".

• The first half of the slide show strives to show
  the human face of the Palestinians this, I feel,
  is a view which the Israeli and Western presses
  succeed in obscuring through their respective
  representations of Palestinians as either
  virulent terrorists or abject victims. I focus --
  here -- on the wedding of two Palestinian
  Christians. These pictures do not seek to provide
  an ethnography of a Palestinian wedding but to
  show Palestinians' rich traditions as well as
  their joie de vivre. The wedding ceremonials of
  the Christian families differ only nominally from
  those of their Muslim neighbours, with the
  primary differences being in the sites of the
  nuptuals and the presence of alcohol. The
  second half of the slide show counterposes the
  exuberance of that life with illustrations of the
  tools by means of which the state of Israel is
  trying to choke it off. The focus here is on
  enclosure and containment, and viewers would
  benefit from reading, in conjunction with the
  photographs, an article of mine entitled "About a
  Wall" published in Social Analysis. Other papers
  on Beit Sahour, Jerusalem and Palestine are
  available at http//www.kent.ac.uk/anthropology/st
  aff/glenn.html.

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View eastward from Bethlehem over Beit Sahour
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Another view of the town from its southern
border note the mosque and the Orthodox Church
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Palestinian flag flying over the town's municipal
office with the Catholic Church in the background
(photo. 1994)
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Beit Sahouris celebrating Arafat's entry into
Gaza in July 1994
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a Palestinian wedding in the Orthodox Church,
Beit Sahour in June 2003
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First night of festivities preceding the wedding
the bride with her uncle
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Grandfather of the groom dancing with the bride
bride's father in the background
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afternoon of the second day of festivities the
women of the groom's family preparing henna to
present to the bride
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Henna transferred to decorative tray on which it
will be carried to the bride's family home
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Bride in traditional dress on a throne in her
home, awaiting arrival of the female delegation
of the groom's family
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Bride's family and the family's guests singing
her praises
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Women of the groom's family approaching the
bride's house with henna and gifts
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Henna and gifts paraded in front of the bride
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Guest during celebrations calling America to tell
family in exile about the process of the wedding
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Day of the wedding the groom's grandfather
greeting the father of the bride
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Bride leaving her family home to go to the church
in a rented BMW
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Procession through and around the streets of Beit
Sahour carrying the bride to the church
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The bride being accompanied into the church by
her brothers, her mother and her father
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Wedding ceremonials
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Celebration of the completion of the nuptuals
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Bride and groom being driven through town to the
groom's family's house into which the couple will
move
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Road block cutting off Beit Sahour's (and
Bethlehem's) access not only to Jericho in the
East and Ramallah in the North but also to
surrounding parts of Beit Sahour and nearby
villages the road has simply been bulldozed up
into a impassable mound.
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Guard tower and wall surrounding Rachel's Tomb,
previously a shrine shared by Muslims and Jews
but now an outpost for Israeli settlers within
Bethlehem beyond it is the main road from
Bethlehem to Jerusalem and the North, but by 'the
Wall.
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Main road from Bethlehem south to Hebron, cut
again by bulldozers to the right, behind the
hill, is an inaccessible Israeli motorway, Route
60, which provides a rapid link -- only for
settlers, soldiers and Israeli civilians --
between Jerusalem, Gush Etzion, Kiryat Arba and
further settlements to the south.
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Bethlehem businesses destroyed by walling in the
background, looming over Beit Jala, is the
settlement of Gilo in the middle field another
guard tower associated with Rachel's Tomb.
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Palestinian fields to the north east of Beit
Sahour being ploughed up to prepare for the
building of a spur of 'the Wall' which will
connect with 'Za'tara Bypass Road' (a settler
road leading from Jerusalem to Tekoa) and seal
Beit Sahour.
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The Har Homa settlement built between Bethlehem
and Jerusalem on the lands of Beit Sahouris and
other Palestinian villages and meant for the
settlement of 30,000 Argentinian Jewish
immigrants.
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Another view of Har Homa with the Greek Orthodox
Housing Association buildings in the mid
foreground these, which were build on local
initiative to provide housing for Beit Sahouris'
children and their families, have been condemned
by the Israeli State because they are 'too close'
to yet another spur of the wall which was
intentionally built between them and the town.
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The Wall'  pushing up against Beit Sahour houses
(cutting them off from their fields and
properties) and separating them from Har Homa (in
the background).
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A view along 'the Wall' looking south towards
Beit Sahour the route of the wall here makes a
2.5 kilometre 'detour' so as to circumscribe and
cut off some of Beit Sahour's most fertile olive
plantations.
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The topography of 'the Wall' with its barbed wire
fences, ditches, secondary fences, electronic
sensors, 'tracking strips' and military road in
the back its continuation as it climbs the other
side of the valley (Bethlehem in the background).
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Palestinian house surrounded by the wall
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Son of that house's family standing behind the
house with their olive trees inaccessible below.
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That house's 'driveway' the stone wall on the
left was built by the householder to prevent the
wall bulwarks from falling onto the house the
barbed wire in the background was provided by the
state.
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Another nearby house in the process of
construction the owner has invested 27,000 in
the building, as well as six years of work, but
he has in the previous week been notified that he
will not be allowed to occupy it because it is
within one hundred meters of 'the Wall'. The
house is built on his property, he has building
permission from Beit Sahour (the town within
whose jurisdiction the property lies), and he
will receive no compensation for its
confiscation.
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He and his family are desperately trying to
'finish' the house so they can move in, believing
they will have a legal right to remain if they
can claim to have already occupied the house
before receiving notification of its condemnation.
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Preparations for a new stretch of wall, on the
northern edge of Bethlehem and leading West into
Beit Jala. On the 2nd of March 2004 cranes began
to install eight metre high concrete partitions
along the length of this ditch so as to effect
the complete cutting off of Bethlehem from
Jerusalem (see http//www.poica.org/casestudies/Be
thlehem204-03-04/index.htm ).
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Route 60 (see above) burrowing under Gilo from
Jerusalem on its way to Kiryat Arba, Gush Etzion
and the Hebron settlements note 'the Wall'
tucking itself in under it and completing the
sealing of the Bethlehem townships in the
North-West. On the left the road tunnels under
the Palestinian town of Beit Jala so as to afford
-- and effect --  an 'Arab-free' trip for those
able to access it.
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Beit Jalan house overlooking Route 60 caught up
in the 'skirmishes' between Israeli troops in the
Gilo settlement and Fatah loyalists which took
place in the early days of the 'Second Intifada.
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The owners, members of a Christian family which
had recently emigrated (as so many have), watched
on television from America as their house was
destroyed.
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Bethlehem police headquarters of the Palestinian
National Authority destroyed by Israeli aircraft
in the opening days of the Second Intifada.
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Fantasies of empowerment.
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Realities of disempowerment poster of a young
Christian girl from Bethlehem killed when her
family's car was machine gunned by soldiers while
driving near to Rachel's Tomb.
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Another kind of wall posters, largely martyrs,
in Beit Sahour.