A City By Any Other Name

At first glance, driving through Gilo is like driving through any other small city. Tall apartment buildings rise on both sides of the street with dashes of greenery mixed in between. The schools and playgrounds are full of children, and people are out watering their plants, chatting with neighbors, and walking dogs. Gilo appears clean, friendly, and unmistakably modern; its many red-tiled roofs and white stone houses are picturesque and in many cases more attractive than those in neighboring cities.

But two things are unique about this city, which is practically a southern neighborhood of Jerusalem. The first is a 6-foot wall riddled with bullet holes which surrounds several portions of the city’s outskirts. The second is that Gilo is considered by the United Nations (UN), the vast majority of Palestinians, and human rights advocates across the globe to be stolen land. It, they say, is a “settlement.”

Hearing that word conjures up images of small shacks full of squatters and zealots fomenting violence and strife. Yet as I learned when I visited Gilo and several other West Bank settlements this summer, the reality could not be farther from what most people expect. To understand Gilo, Ma’aleh Adumim, and the several other large settlements in the West Bank is to see the shades of gray in what too many see as a black and white situation.

Gilo was built on barren land almost immediately following the 1967 Six Day War after Jordan retreated from Jerusalem and the West Bank. Several West Bank settlements including Gilo, Ma’aleh Adumim, and Givat Ze’ev, were built as a belt to insulate Jerusalem proper from further attack. When Israel gained control over the land that had been “no man’s land” since the Jordanian conquest, Israelis wasted no time in developing it. Beginning as a modest village, Gilo grew into the city it is today.

From the city center, one can still see the UN tower which was used to mark the border between Jordan and Israel until the war. Hearing the history of the land Gilo is built on, I struggled to understand why the world cries for farmers and builders to be thrown out of the only homes they have known on land that was previously uninhabited and desolate and which Palestinians have not controlled in recent memory.

Just as hard to understand is why the settlers who founded the city and its current inhabitants are thought of as obstinate zealots. Like the rest of Israel, Gilo was built by ordinary farmers and workers who would move to an area with their families and a few tools. They worked hard to build Gilo from nothing into the thriving city it is today.

Nevertheless, Palestinian advocates say that Gilo violates the dignity of Palestine and must be evacuated or destroyed. This is why the wall was built. Palestinians would sit in the valley below and fire bullets into the windows of residents of the city. Israel built the small concrete barrier to stop bullets from killing children playing in their yards or mothers cooking dinner for the family. And yet the Israelis are criticized as the ones grabbing land and embittering the lives of the Palestinians.

In addition to being cities where ordinary people live, settlements such as Gilo serve as defensive buffers that help secure Israel’s heartland. Gaza, which was home to 21 Israeli settlements before a forced evacuation last year, is a striking example. When Israel had settlements, rockets would fall and attacks would be launched into these settlements, but the rockets could not reach the more populous areas. Now that the settlements have been removed, rockets are falling in larger numbers on larger cities such as Askelon, Sderot, and Netiv Ha’asara. Israel isn’t about to push back into Gaza, where the settlements were predominantly smaller outposts. But Gaza’s experience shows that such settlements are strategically important. It would be foolish for a nation constantly under attack to relinquish the cushioning and protection they provide.

That’s not to say that Israel shouldn’t give up land for peace. Some settlements in the West Bank should be handed over. Those which fit the stereotype of a few houses in the center of a Palestinian area should be compromised. But the many often-misunderstood-settlements like Gilo and the rest of the Jerusalem belt must be taken into account. While Palestinians need land, Israelis cannot be expected to just leave and abandon the benefits of their hard labor over the last two generations. Just as it is unthinkable here that the United States should give back Texas or Arizona to Mexico, it is nearly unthinkable that Israel should give areas like Gilo, which were nothing but desert under Jordanian control, over to a Palestinian state.

A solution to the continuing violence and unrest must be found, but it must be one which respects both sides and is made with regards to the present, not simply the past. The settlements are more than just shacks filled with zealots; they are thriving cities with their own characters and lives, and important strategic emplacements for the defense of Israel. While some may have to be compromised, the majority of these cities should remain as homes for Israel citizens simply seeking to live in peace.

Shai D. Bronshtein ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Lowell House.