Searching For Eliyahu Gorey



By



Rob Eshelman



East Jerusalem comes alive early. The six a.m. sun hits the high, stonewalls of the Old City and castes a long shadow before the Damascus Gate. Radios from taxi cabs and passing police vehicles squawk commands to the cab drivers, already chain-smoking, and the 18-year old soldiers behind the wheels of their jeeps. A cab driver yells, “Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv” over and over, while the smell of falafel balls frying in hot oil and Turkish coffees waft through the crisp morning air.



Despite being in Palestine, some things remain the same for me – the need for a morning caffeine fix and a look at the day’s headlines. For the second consecutive day, the English language addition of Haaretz is focused on a missing Israeli cab driver, Eliyahu Gorey, suspected of being apprehended by Palestinian militants. It smacks of the same stupid sensational journalism rampant in the US: Lacy Peterson, or that child star from Colorado who we were commanded to care about.



The ride to Ramallah is bumpy and I arrive at the Qalandia checkpoint outside of the city within 30 minutes. Checkpoints – the object which so clearly illustrates the realities of Israeli occupation. From above, Qalandia would take the shape of a dumbbell. At each end of the checkpoint, massive amounts of activity. Cabs, trucks carrying goods, people trying to get to work or to see their families. In the middle, a long narrow stream of people passing nearly single fill under the gaze of young Israeli soldiers with automatic weapons.


BR>By ten a.m. I’m at the offices of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions with Mohammed Aruri and nine other staff members of the organization. Mohammed has been jailed seven times since the 1970’s. Rarely charged with any specific offence, his stays in jail are just administrative detention for being a threat to the established order. He’s gentle in nature and says, “You are welcome” nearly twenty times within the first five minutes of my arrival.



Mohammed is committed to the struggle of the Palestinian worker and to put an end to Israeli occupation. Coffee and cigarettes are laid on the table and my lesson about the struggle of Palestinian workers and the current Intifada begins.



For the120,000 Palestinian laborers who worked in Israel prior to the Al-Aqsa Intifada, living under occupation got precipitously worse when they all lost their jobs thanks to Israeli imposed boarder closures and intense restrictions on Palestinian travel to Israel. According to Mohammed, sixty percent of Palestinians are now unemployed and seventy percent are living below the poverty line. Two million Palestinians are living on less than two dollars per day.



In this light one sees the 162 security checkpoints throughout the occupied territories and the restricted access to Israel as the economic equivalent of carpet-bombing. The end result is a near collapse of the Palestinian economy. The West Bank, known for its olive oil and citrus fruits, and Gaza, where European markets bought flour, have virtually shut down because goods cannot pass out of the territories or are held up at checkpoints for so long that they perish. Furthermore, the closures have made it impossible for raw materials to be shipped into Palestine and this hurts consumers and the territories industrial sector. So in additional to the unemployed labors now blocked from their old jobs in Israel, more and more workers within Palestine are losing their jobs.



“Everything is under Israeli control. Even the air we breathe.” Husein Faqahaa, Director of Educational programs at the PGFTU says as he grasps his neck as if choking. Husein was born in the small village of Sinjil, which lies between Nablus and Ramallah. It takes him three hours to get home because of the three checkpoints he needs to cross. Sinjil is less than 20 kilometers from Ramallah.



In Ramallah, the Silvana Sweets Company, a well-known pastry producer, was forced to close when goods could no longer be exported easily from the Palestinian Territories and when demand for their products within Palestine dropped as a result of the economic situation. 250 workers were laid off.



Outside investment in Palestine has also taken a dive. Prior to the Intifada, Ramallah was experiencing a construction boom. Palestinians living abroad were investing money in the construction, tourism, and agricultural industries. This investment has stopped from fear of indefinite Israeli occupation.



Mohammad says, “This is an economic war against the Palestinian people not against Hamas or Islamic Jihad.” Mohammed views the struggle for Palestinian workers’ rights and the effort to end Israeli occupation as inseparable. “We need comprehensive peace, from the bottom to the top.”



For Mohammed and the PGFTU this means elections in the workplace to determine the leadership of workers associations, elections for representatives to the Palestinian Legislative Council, and for the leader of the Palestinian Authority. Only then, he believes, can Palestinians build a movement to end Israeli occupation, counter the rise of the Islamic parties and oust the outdated, corrupt institution that is Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.



After 30 minutes of discussion about conditions for Palestinian workers and the realities of the Palestinian economy, Mohammed leads me into the intake room where staff from the PGFTU works with unemployed workers to fill out claims for their benefits.


 

Unemployed workers come to the PGFTU to receive benefits from the union’s “emergency program”. PGFTU provides three benefits to Palestinian workers and their families. The first is a cash grant of up to 500 shekels (about $150). The union itself never touches this money. They solicit donations from parties in surrounding Arab counties and submit a list of benefit recipients to the Palestinian Authority’s Finance Ministry. The Finance Ministry deposits money in local banks where beneficiaries collect their grant. About 225,000 Palestinians have received this benefit since the beginning of the Intifada.



The union also provides food packages. Over 200,000 food packages have been given out and often Palestinians can receive food donations from other international NGOs operating within Palestine. Mohammed is quick to point out the limitations of aide to Palestinians. “We don’t need food, we need justice for the Palestinian people.”



Lastly, the PGFTU provides health insurance. A recipient’s entire family is entitled to coverage. Over 300,000 Palestinians now have health insurance because of the unions program.



Workplace safety posters line the walls of the intake room. The design of the posters is similar to those airplane brochures that explain how to fasten your safety belt or how to jump onto that huge blowup slide when the plane crashes into the ocean. A TV set is on showing a cartoon of Tom and Jerry with large canons pointed at each other. They simultaneously trigger their weapons and both emerge from a cloud of smoke blackened.



Benefit seekers line up in the intake room on the opposite side of two long desks, which serve as a makeshift counter.



Imam Sameeh is tall man. He shakes my hand and agrees to talk. For many years Imam worked at a car company. Because of the economic situation in Palestine the company was forced to close. Five workers lost their jobs. For two years Imam has been unemployed. He’s receiving 500 shekels from the union.



I ask him what he will do with the money.



“I owe 3000 shekels to friends who loaned me money. I don’t know what I will do. I owe six thousand shekels to the water and electric companies. I’m afraid the company will cut the water. I’m worried how I will pay the bills.”



“My sons want to go to summer camp”, he continues. “Its free. I can’t send them though because I don’t have money to pay for their transportation.”



Finally, Imam adds, “Two weeks ago my father died. I couldn’t pay for his service. I’m very sad.”



I think back to the morning paper and reflect on what Mohammed has told me about the economic situation in Palestine and Imam’s story that is far from unique among the Palestinian unemployed. Why does one missing Israeli dominate the pages of a liberal Israeli paper like Haaretz, but a story like Imam’s and the reality of two million Palestinians living with enforced poverty and occupation appear nowhere within its pages?


Elsewhere in Ramallah I meet with Saleh Raafat, Secretary-General of the Fida Party, a secular social democratic organization established in 1990 following the Madrid peace conference. The Fida Party works to organize Palestinian laborers, women and youth, and civil society organizations. Saleh is Fida’s representative to the Executive Council of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.



I’m sitting in Saleh’s office with Mohammed. They both are reiterating the importance of both ending the Israeli occupation and of building democratic institutions within Palestine.



“We are fighting against Israeli occupation. We want an independent Palestinian state and a democratic society,” Saleh tells me. “The Islamic movement wants an Islamic system and Fatah is right wing. They don’t want to change. Between these two are the social democrats. We struggle to unite left social democratic parties and civil society organizations.”



Although I have come to interview Saleh this doesn’t last more than a few questions. Saleh is less interested in me as a messenger to people outside Palestine and more interested in my opinion on a number of topics. What is the perception of Palestinians in the United States? What is the future of George Bush or the Green Party?



The economy, and the war in Iraq are covered. We talk about the role of organized labor and Zionist access to Congress and the media. He questions me for one full hour on the situation in the United States, trying to gauge what the Fida Party’s strategy vis a vis the United States should be.



Anything I can do to help, I think to myself.



After my meeting with Saleh, Mohammed invites me to have lunch with his family. When we arrive at the house, Mohammed’s wife tells us that the Israelis have imposed a curfew. After lunch, Mohammed says it’s all right to defy the curfew and get me back to the Qalandia checkpoint and back to East Jerusalem.



Along the way we come across large trucks parked in some of the major intersections. The Israeli soldiers have stopped the Palestinian drivers and confiscated their keys. The stranded vehicles act as convenient roadblocks for the occupiers. The cabdrivers, however, are not deterred and find alternative routes over the winding, bumpy roads overlooking the city.



When I arrive back in East Jerusalem, I tell Hisham that there has been a curfew imposed in Ramallah. Hisham says the rumor is that they’re moving Arafat to Gaza. “Who’s moving Arafat? The PA,” I ask. Hisham responds, “Only rumors.”



I go to check my e-mail and take a quick look at the Haaretz website. The Israeli Occupation Forces, with cooperation from the Palestinian Authority, are searching Ramallah for the missing cabdriver and his kidnapers. Thus 90,000 Palestinians in Ramallah are confined to their homes."