The Ghetto of Um Ar-Reehan
“Our suffering increases day after day, we have lost contact with the outside world. The surrounding Israeli settlements, that the invaders have built, are suffocating the village from all sides. Since the wall was built, non-residents were prohibited from entering the village unless they obtain an entry permit from occupation authorities,” said Bilal Al-kilani.
What Al-Kilani, head of Um Ar-Reehan village council, summarizes the increasing suffering of the inhabitants due to the separation wall that was built several years ago. The wall has isolated the village from the rest of the West Bank causing hardship to its people and threatening their presence as they find it more and more difficult to continue living in the village.
Um Ar-Reehan is one of Jenin’s northwestern villages that set on a number of hills. It is inhabited by 400 people only. The occupiers were able to isolate the village after the Wall swallowed up 5544 of its 6736 dunums (dunum = 1000 square meters).
Al-Kilani believes that the Israeli occupier confiscated and isolated the village because of its strategic location, surrounded by the Shakid, Raihan, and Hananit settlements. The village is surrounded by the largest forest in the West Bank. The village has also large areas of land compared to its small population.
Speaking of the everyday torment that Um Ar-Reehan inhabitants face, Al-Kilani said: “The Occupation Army opens the village gates from seven o’clock in the morning, and closes it again, at six-thirty in the evening. This has increased the suffering of the people who go to work outside the village”.
However, Al-Kilani said that the agricultural sector has suffered most because of the confiscation of large areas of arable land for the construction of the wall as well as the large numbers of boars released by the occupiers in the area which stops many villagers cultivating their fields for fear that the boars will damage their crops.
“The occupier is controlling our livelihood through destroying our agriculture, which is our main source of income. Furthermore, and due to implementation of the isolation policy, the inhabitants are prohibited from working within the green line or reaching the West Bank to work.” added Al-Kilani.
As for the effects of the isolation on the health, educational and social services, Kilani explained that “The continued siege imposed on the village has prevented people from visiting their relatives in other villages. A few months after the Intifada started, the occupation army setup checkpoints at the village’s eastern and southern entrances. Thus the village was cut off from the nearby villages of Tora, to the west, and Ya’bad, which provide the village with its health and educational needs. Also, the blocking of the routes, leading to the nearby Zionist settlements, adds to the everyday suffering of its people.”
Al-Kilani added: “Palestinians from other parts of the West Banks are not allowed to enter the village, except for a very limited number of teachers from Ya’bad teaching at Um Ar-Reehan and teachers from Um Ar-Reehan working at Ya’bad, who acquired an entry permit from the occupation forces, after lengthy tiresome process.”
No health services, even for critical conditions, exist in the village. Kilani explained how the Occupiers only allow Ambulances into the village via Jenin’s Coordination Office. He went on to say: “Most of the time Ambulances are forced to wait for a long time at the checkpoint before they are permitted to leave to the hospital in Jenin or the health center in Ya’bad.”
“Till 2000 health services were provided in the village. Now, and unless the ‘Medecins Sans Frontieres’ reach the village, parents have to travel each month, to Ya’bad, to vaccinate their children.”
Implementing land confiscation policies, the occupation’s “Civil Administration” prohibited the inhabitant of Um Ar-Reehan from building new houses. And despite the overcrowded classes in the only primary school available in the village, the occupation’s “Civil Administration” did not allow us to expand the school. Secondary Students are forced to seek education at the nearby village of Ya’bad. Sometimes they wait for long hours at the checkpoints, and then have to walk a long distance before finding a cab that can take them to school. All this daily suffering is increasing the torment of the students too.
The village also has no electricity and the council has asked for the village to be linked to the national network. Yet the biggest concern of the inhabitants, as Al-Kailani explains is the loss of the village’s identity as there are no maps identifying the village’s boarders.
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Mohammed Mar’i's last posts in a row:
Burg: Defining Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end
Majority of Israeli pilots prefer private sector
Israeli Editor: We Pushed Defeatist Agenda in 2000
25% of Israeli Illegal Settlements is on Palestinian-owned Land
Jerusalemites to declare independence
Israel Demolished 18,000 Palestinian Homes since 1967
The Ghetto of Um Ar-Reehan
Let me know when the agenda becomes obvious to you, OK? (And no, I’m not going to be intimidated from speaking out against a propagandist agenda with labels whose intentions are to keep me quiet like, typically whiny Jew.)
How can you not see the hypocrisy? You were rightfully angry at Yoni because he painted Jews/Israelis in a superior light off the back of Arabs, but Mohammed Mar’i gets a free pass to paint Jews/Israelis in a negative light off the back of Arabs? Hello? Is anybody home here? You can’t have it both ways.
Yeah, I know, Mohammed Mar’i is angry. Fine, I get it. So are lots of people. Welcome to the world where anger rules and moderation is based upon how you criticize others according to some people. So much for social change …
Hey, I have an idea. How about you at least ask this poster to change his nom de plume from Mohammed Mar’i to “Mohammed Memri” if you’re gonna let him have the privelege to pick, choose, and line up agenda-driven stories that have the single-minded intention to paint his rivals in a negative light … on your supposedly equality-driven site. Deal?
PV- Before you jump on our throats, check your facts. Did we kick Yoni out because of his posts? No. He isn’t even Israeli and we removed him due to security threats. Did you read the posts we made concerning his removal? Give me one good reason why we should keep him if he personally threatened me and others here countless times. Why are you making it seem as if we kicked him out of bias? It’s so misleading.
Make an effort to politely refute the arguments you dislike instead of calling it propoganda. It’s lazy. There are many posts here that I find painfully one sided and it pisses me off, but I allow it because these are existing issues that deserve to be addressed properly.
Considering everyone’s biases, there is no way this site can be fully balanced. Our jobs as editors is to give everyone a voice here and we do, regardless of their opinions. Ideally, your job as the reader is to debate, not complain. When Yoni posted bullshit, we expressed our views. And while we were immature about it, we also had the power to silence him and many others whom we disagree with. But we never abuse these powers because we strongly believe in our rights and values. If we practice censorship, we become our own enemies.
You can complain and poke fun at him all you want, Mohammed has a voice that we can’t and won’t silence. Disagreeing with him is certainly not a good enough reason to do that. I encourage you to challenge these articles and to teach us your views. What do you think about them? Why do they irritate you? What facts prove them wrong?
Trust me, I’m a hot-headed whiner. I’ll complain like a baby as a reaction to anything I don’t like and request its removal. For years that only fed my ignorance and I made this site to help me and those like me realize that other opinions and facts exist and must be listened to and respected. It will piss you off but no one said dialogue is fun and easy. It’s hard but that’s what makes it so constructive. Listen to Mohammed. This is his life and his world he is describing. If you don’t feel accurately represented use your voice. We are here to listen.
No, but you did hold a vote whether to kick him out because of the nature of his posts, n’est-ce-pas? And you certainly railed against how, over the course of time, his posts were formulating a pattern that suggested Israelis are better than Arabs. I’m trying to get you to understand that the same behavior that initially irritated you about Yoni is now being perpetuated by Mohammed Mar’i.
You were absolutely right to kick Yoni out. You didn’t deserve the treatment he gave you by any stretch of the imagination. I hope you get the issue resolved to your satisfaction. You’re tough and respect you for that and much more which is why I have chosen to try and work out this issue with you rather than just pack up my marbles and take a hike.
I don’t have a problem refuting/discussing/debating various posts or issues however hard hitting. But you want me to struggle against an obvious agenda, and that is a whole different type of advocacy, my friend. I don’t see how you don’t get this when it’s so obvious. It’s not just about each post as a brush stroke. It’s about the larger picture these strokes very methodically paint over time.
Let me ask you, Esra’a, would you really allow a Lebanese person to come here and post nothing but how bad Palestinians are in his country; or a Kurd to post nothing but the ill effects of Arabization; or a Copt to post nothing but his sense of oppression at the hands of a Muslim majority? I don’t think you would or should. Look, I don’t care what someone posts, until it becomes “nothing but” because that’s when it becomes problematic and propagandist; and that is exactly what is going on here. Look at his posts for June and tell me what do you see?
Can you explain to me why you dislike Memri’s tactics but think I should tolerate what Mohammed Mar’i is doing? What’s the difference, and why are your complaints against Memri any more valid than mine in this case?
Yes and that was after dozens of complaints. Did you email us? No. Did anyone else do so? No. Why should we bother then? Despite the majority not wanting him we kept him with us and you know it.
I don’t see you debating these things. How do you want me to react to your hatred of his articles? Delete them? No way. I know it makes it easier for you but that’s not how we work. We allowed Yoni to post every single bullshit article for weeks before the security concerns which appeared to be entirely valid. Why not give Mohammed this priveledge? Because he’s not Israeli? Please…
By the way your comarison is extremely poor… MEMRI isn’t an author here. Yoni used it as a source and we allowed it. My thoughts of MEMRI is a personal opinion of mine which I never used against anybody here. Yet you want me to put your personal opinion ahead of Mohammed’s rights as an author with us. Sorry but no.
If we practice censorship, we become our own enemies.
Let’s not get carried away, Esra’a. I never asked for censorship or for him to be silenced. This is what I wrote on the Burg thread:
What exactly do you disagree with?
I don’t hate his articles. I’m offended by how they are being used in a propagandist sense — the same way Yoni did when he decided to tell only one story on this board, which is that Arabs suck. Mohammed Mar’i is behaving the same basic way Yoni did when you got irritated.
This is a really sad and shameful mitigation on your part. You know damned well that you have a general moral outrage over how Memri conducts itself and yet you let the same behavior occur on your own website. That’s the issue.
I don’t want you to put my opinion over Mohammed’s rights as an author. I want you to ask Mohammed to adhere to the same standards as all the other posters on here and to mix up his anti-Israeli smack with some other stuff so we’re not being banged over the head with a propagandist usage of the press. Heck, Jina is one of the most vocal critics of Israel but that’s not all he says. Therefore, do I complain about it? No. I don’t care about hard issues. I care that there is someone on here who has a very clear raison d’etre to create a sense of “us versus them” in which the “them” are a bunch of demons whose humanity is tough to see.
Complain and talk shit, yes. Be a gadfly with the purpose of demonizing your rival, no. How much more clear can I be? That’s not censorship. It’s rejecting bias. Without realizing it, you are choosing Mohammed’s right to say whatever he wants over your own right to create whatever you want … like a place where us vs. them isn’t given a free pass any more. Dayum.
PV-
If you dislike an author, there are 80+ others here to pick from. If you dislike everyone on it; there is a “join us” option if you’re within the region or know enough to be able to represent it. If you don’t want that, there is a comment feature, a forums feature, and even a contact feature – this is all for who? You, the reader. We are giving you the chance to reach us and tell us exactly what bothers you about Mohammed’s posts other than they are hurtful or inaccurate. And now that we know, what do you want us to do about it? We can’t delete the articles and silence a voice merely because you disagree with it.
Like I said – this is his life as he sees it, his world, his reality, and you can’t judge that if he is writing from his own personal experience. Just open up a dialog here and see where it takes you. Why yell propaganda and why request action from this site when he’s writing here while minding his own business? If you dislike it – there are other Israelis who will make up for it. That’s why we created the site. You get all sides represented, or at least, that is what we are aiming for, and if we haven’t fully achieved it yet… trust me we are getting there. We’re doing our best.
Also, a lot of the time, people try to push us to be pro this and pro that. Pro-Israeli, pro-Islam, pro-Iran, we can’t. We have Jews, atheists, Christians, Baha’is, really we need to respect their presence. So they request this and that author to be removed and if we don’t, they get angry and leave. Tough luck to them, but if we see an obvious imbalance we address it quickly. We are trying to recruit more Kurds and Turks for example because they have not much of a voice here. And we know the troubles and controversy this might lead to but we do it anyways… because this is what we built the site for. Diversity. If we keep removing people simply because they’re different or they seem “propaganidst” we won’t be able to function the way we should be. And trust me when I tell you that we are doing our best to keep this place fair for all. Everyone deserves a voice and we wish to give them one while maintaining our friendship and strong sense of community … it’s very possible and this site’s here to prove it.