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The Palestine Archipelago When you enter the territory of Palestine, or rather the complex entity that is the Palestinian Authority, you be come helpless on various levels. Not because the Israeli army occupies and controls, in both military and eco nomic terms, a major part of the Palestinian territories, and not because the separation barrier is an insult to the dream of a world free of discrimination and human rights abuses. A contemporary form of colonialism has been perfecting its cunning ways here, and it is ex tremely depressing to realise that, against our will, we are all part of a huge machine of tacit acceptance for the situation in which the Palestinians find themselves. I first visited Ramallah in 1992. That was before the founding of the Palestinian Authority, before the erection of the Israeli wall by poorly paid Palestinian workers, and before the Oslo Accords, the 1993 agreement that was to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but in fact only added fuel to the fire.1 Ramallah, then a small town set in a picturesque location on the hills of the West Bank of Jordan, was accessed from Jerusalem by way of a six-door Mercedes taxi – a cross between a luxury vehicle and a bus. The taxis waited in line in front of the Damascus Gate, where groups of pilgrims from all over the world enter the narrow streets of Old Town. The trip didn‘t take long; after all, it is only sixteen kilometres as the crow flies. Today, covering the distance takes an hour at best, and a whole day at worst. The road, once straight, has been blocked; the new one winds and zigzags its way. You need to negotiate the infamous Qalandiya checkpoint, a major border crossing point established by Israel, which serves to control the Palestinians‘ mobility and their access to Jerusalem, considered by both states as their capital. It also serves to discourage foreign 1 The mutual recognition of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, agreed in 1993 in Oslo, meant as a cornerstone of the Middle Eastern peace process. It forms the legal basis of the existence of the Palestinian Authority and at the same time of the territories‘ division into three zones: Area A, including the Gaza Strip and larger cities in the West Bank, Area B – Arab settlements under Israeli military control, and Area C – Israeli settlements and areas administered exclusively by Israel.
