Author: Galya Globerman
This ‘blogpost’ is part of a series of responses to The Urban Clinic’s monthly field trips. The tours are aimed at providing Clinic members, friends, and peers an opportunity to network informally and share projects and interests in the hopes of fostering professional and collegiate partnerships. Undoubtedly, they also provide us with a framework to sense the diverse landscapes, communities, and untold stories of the places we call home.
For its second field trip of the year, Tharaa invited the Urban Clinic to meet at a small Palestinian town in the West Bank. Al-Auja is a somewhat sleepy town, which looks more like a rest stop along a loud highway than a village. In all honesty, I’ve passed by it during previous trips, but never truly noticed the town. I didn’t realize that was the community we were going to visit. My interest piqued and I was ready to explore, meet up with friends and peers and get to know their families. We were introduced to Amer, our host and guide for the day whose family runs a farm like many other families in the town.
Credit: Alla Barhoum
Amer’s family’s home has a beautiful stone facade, elevated and breezy porch, and cooling home interior… it feels out of place. Surrounding the house are remnants of past orchards and grapevines which in all certainty provided shade and greenery in some bygone era. The empty pool collects dust - surely it was abandoned long ago. The flies swarm to any hints of moisture. Nature is reclaiming its desert. When did this drought begin and upend life? How did it come to be?
It’s not all lost. We sat down at the uncovered patio to chat, eat, and contemplate life in Al-Auja. The open fire pit, sitdown area, and garden filled with citrus trees offered respite from the speeding highway, desert sun, and littered streets. Tharaa’s mom fed us a delicious meal she prepared over the firepit. Families who had just met mingled while children ran around and played. Just as the sun began to set and the desert began to cool, the sweet, warm, crispy-creamy homemade knafeh was ready. Looking back at this family reunion-like afternoon, it’s surprising that just that morning many of us were strangers.
Credit from left to right: Alla Barhoum, Tharaa Kirresh
Credit form left to right: Alla Barhoum, Eman Ansari
It wasn’t long before the home visit and village tour offered us a sobering reminder of both the parallel worlds in which we live and how reality changes at an astonishing pace.
Al-Auja is under the authority of the Jericho Governorate, however, more interestingly, is the fact that the town is split by Israel’s Highway 90. This results in an Area A town being halved by Israeli infrastructure and control. The western part of the town is both upstream and in direct proximity to Jericho while the eastern part is downstream and geopolitically divided from its Governorate. Although there is no visible border between the segments (highway aside), there are political boundaries that impact basic governance such as policing and development.
As the tour progressed I began to understand the complexities of life in Al-Auja. Amer addressed water scarcity issues that they have been facing for years. While in the past families could reliably depend on spring and well water for their farms for eleven months during the year, today they live in constant uncertainty about when and how much water they will have. This reputedly man-made crisis is the result of greater Israeli extraction efforts aimed to supply settlements with more water for irrigation. By allowing the construction of new settlements and increasing their share of the water supply, the Israeli government is doubly harming Palestinian communities.
To make matters more complicated, the western part of the town is upstream, therefore has more access to already scarce water than the eastern downstream part. This ostensibly reflects a hyperlocal north-south divide. While there are efforts to distribute water equitably among families based on farm size, politics and geography still dictate the harsh realities of life. Today irrigation water flows through open canals, meaning that upstream farms have access to water first. Amer’s family’s farm is downstream, and despite communal efforts to share water fairly, he admitted that sometimes water does not reach their farm. Amer was kind enough to sit with me, answer questions, and share his thoughts on the family business and the future he envisions. He seemed to suggest that water-intensive agriculture is not a long-term option and the next generation needs to diversify the family business.
Credit: Alla Barhoum
Amer explains how irrigation water is distributed from the canal behind him.
And while the trip is officially over and we’ve all already been home for a few days, I’ve yet to fully leave Al-Auja. My internal monologue meanders back to that day and asks how children cross the busy highway to go to school or see their friends? How are families preparing for more water scarcity? Are they/can they prepare? How can spatial inequality be addressed to improve water distribution? Why is the Local Council tasked with municipal responsibilities such as trash collection despite being logistically unable to do so? Yet despite these grievances, more than anything, I am excited to see what Amer does with his family’s farm. He has the brains, the know-how, and drive. I wish him luck and hope the Urban Clinic can come back and see how he has transformed his farm despite being on the wrong side of the road.
Credit: Amer