AL-WALAJA, EAST JERUSALEM, June 8 — A group of PL’ers visited the village of al-Walaja guided by a village council member. The village is near the Har Giloh neighborhood and the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), and is home to 2,600 workers in Palestine. There is a separation wall between the village and its fields. There is a separate entry gate for Israeli settlers to al-Walaja and Beit Jallah. These settlers from Susya occasionally come to attack the village – to close the water line, poison the vegetation or burn trees. Across the apartheid-style “separation” wall, there is a new Israeli settlement called “Givat Yael”; this is the Zionist dream of “Greater Jerusalem” — stealing land all over the place.
Until the wall was built in April 2010, al-Walaja was open to Jerusalem. It is still relatively easy to get to al-Walaja from the Knesset, but when the wall is completed, access will be permitted only through an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) checkpoint.
There is also a bridge connecting Giloh to the Israeli settlements, which can only be used by Jews. Last year, this was brought to court because it was built on private Palestinian land. Its racist exclusion of Palestinian vehicles could not be justified by “security” excuses. The main reason it exists is to freeze Palestinian land development and push Palestinians away from their homes by making their lives intolerable.
One third of al-Walaja’s houses were demolished or heavily fined due to alleged “construction permit violations!” Half of the village is within Jerusalem’s municipal jurisdiction, while the other half is controlled by the IDF’s “Civil” Administration. The residents of al-Walaja have Palestinian IDs and thus no civil rights under Israeli law, despite the fact that they could prove that they lived on their lands since before the 1948 war. Al-walaja needs two schools, but in practice there is only one. The infrastructure is also terrible.
The only solution is the dictatorship of the proletariat worldwide. In a communist state, workers will receive according to need and work together to build a better future for everyone. The capitalist racist Israeli regime is colonial by definition: it enforces the exploitation and division of the working class, both Jews and Arabs. Therefore, it must be replaced by communist workers’ state.