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Isolation in Jericho May 9, 2005
The heat soars as sharply as the road descends on the journey through the valleys and hills from lofty Jerusalem to the Dead Sea plains of Jericho. From time immemorial, travelers, pilgrims, and prophets have recorded the dramatic change in climate as they approach the oldest and lowest city in the world. Those used to cooler surroundings will wonder how it is possible for local people to work in such a climate, and, sadly today, work is a luxury that increasingly fewer people of Jericho have. Jericho figures in the history of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Its known history spreads back almost 12,000 years, where from earliest times its perennial spring `Ayn Al-Sultan attracted Mesolithic nomadic hunters to camp in its rich environment. By 3000 BC, Jericho was a thriving Canaanite site and has remained populated until modern times. In 1948, on the occupation of much of Mandate Palestine by the new Israeli state, thousands of Palestinian refugees fled to join the inhabitants of Jericho under Jordanian administration—although many were displaced again in the new occupation of 1967. Today about half of the population of the district are refugees. 40 km (25 mi.) east of Jerusalem and 10 km (6 mi.) northwest of the Dead Sea, Jericho with its 14,477 inhabitants became the first West Bank city to be handed over to PNA control in 1994. The city should be—as the guidebooks for the many tourists who used to flock here say—an archetypal desert oasis, with a buoyant agricultural economy supported by plentiful local springs. With ancient sites and markets full of tropical fruit, bananas, dates, vegetables, and spices, this city where the sun always shines used to be a favorite with the tourists. But under curfew and subject to regular military incursion, not only has the tourist trade died, but the once thriving agricultural market is destroyed, leaving the people of Jericho in the same economic difficulties as the rest of the West Bank. The tourist cafes are shuttered and collapsing, owners simply sitting by the dusty roadside with no one to serve.
Mr. Imad Shaylan, an experienced contractor and resident of Jericho, has just completed a German- government-funded project to build a bridge across a water channel in order to link a peripheral community to the main part of the city. Tackling the flooding problems caused by the city’s unique location at 250 meters (820 ft.) below sea level addresses a central concern for local residents. The old bridge dated from the time of the British Mandate 60 years before, demonstrating the lack of investment by the Israeli occupying civil administration.
The international donor community focuses funding on labor-intensive projects in order to create some temporary employment for local people. But it is not a simple process. “The closure and military situation created many additional problems for us,” sighed Shaylan. “Firstly, although there are many unemployed heads of households looking for work, in a traditionally agricultural town it was harder to find skilled construction workers than it would have been in other southern West Bank cities like Hebron and Bethlehem. Secondly, the closure meant that it was harder to get the appropriate materials in from outside the area.” However they got there in the end, and now a new bridge means that this winter the neighborhood can rest assured they will not be cut off from the rest of the city. However, tackling the isolation of the Jericho community from the rest of Palestine is a harder situation. Hopes of liberation with Gaza under the Oslo Accords are little more than a joke to people today. There are only two ways out of the city, guarded by checkpoints, which few are allowed to pass. One way heads to the Jordan Valley settler highway and the other to Jerusalem. Jericho residents are isolated from both from Gaza and the rest of the West Bank. See Jericho Municipality Web site. External links last accessed January 18, 2005.
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