Independence Day in the Seam Zone

SOME Israelis came into the seam zone to help Palestinian farmer Abu Azzam with his loquat harvest last week – they couldn’t stand being in Tel Aviv when celebrations took place for Independence Day.

The seam zone is the area between the Green Line – internationally recognised border between Israel and the Palestinian West Bank – and the Separation Barrier which Israel is building to keep out suicide bombers. (For reasons not fully explained, it doesn’t run along the Green Line and will leave thousands of Palestinians – whom Israel regards as potential terrorists – on the Israeli side of the barrier.)

Whatever the reason and the route of the fence, we’re eager to meet these activists and see why they are turning their backs on the national knees-up.

Sometimes we’re allowed into the zone with our European passports and sometimes not. Today we’re lucky. We set to work, picking the apricot-coloured fruit, and the Israelis join us a bit later.

Breakfast is at 11am and wow, do we hear some forthright views. 

“Today everyone is celebrating but everything is rotten underneath,” says Adomi, 37, a documentary filmmaker from Tel Aviv.

“You look at a beautifully wrapped present with a rotten fruit inside – it’s been rotten for 60 years.”

I get my notebook out.

“I felt awkward staying in Tel Aviv this particular Independence Day really,” he continued.

“I feel much more comfortable here and want to help in the loquat grove.”

He thinks 61-year-old Israel is only 60 per cent democratic, with the Palestinians inside Israel, who make up a fifth of the population, deprived of their full rights.

“You can count the mixed Arab-Jewish schools on one hand,” he said.

“There’s no way that the two narratives can combine when you have the children separated like that.”

Others take up the theme, saying it’s only Jews who have democracy in Israel.

Jamila disagrees with even that. A Syrian Jew, she came to Israel aged 27 in 1985 because she was a second-class citizen there, “like Palestinians in Israel,” she said.

“Israel is a democracy only for white Jews – not for black Jews like me.”

Teacher Nirit Novick, 34, goes further, saying it’s only for rich white Jews but Adomi is less cynical.

He believes that although Israel is not a proper democracy now, it will be one day.

“Ending the occupation would be a good start,” he said.

Nirit’s colleague and husband Roy, 37, tells us that up to now he has done his annual service in the army as a non-combatant.

“But now I think it’s enough after Gaza,” he said.

“I’m planning to say no.”

After another four hours picking and packing it’s time for another feast cooked by Abu Azzam’s wife Siham in their nearby shed.

There is some good-natured joshing. Somebody reminds Abu Azzam of a poem an Israeli wrote accusing him of being a terrorist – “he makes you eat so much you explode”, he said.

When we’re all done the Israelis go back to their normal lives and we go back to the north gate – the soldiers have changed shift but they let us through anyway.

I feel like I won’t be able to eat for days and the ends of my fingers have swollen but I won’t forget Independence Day in the seam zone.