From Olive Oil To Sniper Fire

Beit Jala, an ancient jumble of Palestinian homes on a hill opposite Bethlehem, used to be a quiet place. When my wife and I lived there in 1993 and 1994, Israeli forces dominated the town from an outpost on top of the hill. Direct confrontations between local Palestinians and soldiers, however, were rare. On two occasions we saw masked Palestinian teenagers, in the narrow alley beneath our bedroom, spray-painting anti-Israel graffiti on the stone walls of the houses. And on one dark night we were startled from bed by the sharp bang of gun butts against our door. Israeli soldiers were rousting young men from their beds to wash the graffiti-covered walls. By the standards of Israel's occupation, it was a small humiliation; compared with many other people in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, the people of Beit Jala slept well in those days.

Now Beit Jala is a front line in a low-intensity conflict edging toward guerrilla war. The predominantly Christian town once known for its olive oil and a popular grilled-chicken restaurant now is famous for the tracer rounds that light up the darkness in nightly news footage. For weeks Palestinian snipers have used Beit Jala as a base to shoot at the nearby Jewish neighborhood of Gilo, and the Israeli Army has responded with rocket, missile and machine-gun fire. The people of Beit Jala have become bystanders to their own ruin, caught between the often harsh and corrupt Palestinian leadership and the insidious domination of Israel.

Anger and confusion have become as much a part of the landscape as stone and dust. People here will tell you that seven years of peace talks have brought them nothing. Israel has expropriated much of Beit Jala's land since it captured the West Bank in 1967, and the town continues to be squeezed; Gilo, the target of recent sniper fire, sits largely on land expropriated from Beit Jalan owners. In recent years Israel has built a major road across Beit Jala's agricultural area for the convenience of Jewish settlers. At a Jewish settlement called Har Gilo, located at the top of the Beit Jala hill, bulldozers this year broke ground for new apartments.

What is left of Beit Jala is divided into three areas: zone A, which includes most of the houses, is under Palestinian Authority control. Then a B zone is "shared" by Israeli and Palestinian forces, and a C zone is under complete Israeli control. Elementary-level students at the Hope School must pass an Israeli checkpoint as they walk from zone A to B to C to get from home to class. "Here at Hope School we teach our kids that violence solves nothing," says Roxanne O'Brien, an American administrator who has lived in Beit Jala for several years. "But a lot of people see no other way; they've lost hope. And for those who think there is another way, it's very difficult now."

Israel points out that its forces fire on Beit Jala only after Palestinian snipers shoot on Gilo. (Yasir Arafat last Friday called for a halt in attacks from areas under his control, and Beit Jala enjoyed its first quiet night in some time.) But the Christians of Beit Jala don't dare to complain to the snipers, who apparently come from out of town. There's a grim joke making the rounds: "It's dangerous to open your mouth these days except at the dentist, and even then it hurts." In the best of times, some Palestinian Muslims regard their Christian brethren as suspect patriots, in part because of their ties to the West. "If you yell at the snipers, they'll say you're a traitor," says one prominent resident. "If you're a man, maybe they'll shoot you." So Beit Jala endures the fire of Israel instead.