Steven Erlnger, The New York Times, 30/08/07. For all the agonizing about nearby Hebron — how far Israel should go to resolve competing Jewish and Palestinian claims to the city — this desolate spot is a symbol of the impact of Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank and of the dire economic state of the Palestinian territories, where about a third of adults are without work. Many of the adults working the site have been unable to get jobs in Israel since 2000 and the second intifada, when Israel instituted stronger security measures to try to prevent suicide bombings.Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times
Mahmoud Ibrahim, 10, center, and other Palestinian boys survive
by selling goods salvaged at a West Bank dump, near Hebron.
The dump, formally run by the Hebron municipality, is set in the rocky, dusty hills near the village of Ad Deirat; it is used both by Palestinian cities like Hebron and Yatta and by the Israeli settlements that mark the area, from Kiryat Arba to Karmel and Maon.
On a good day, working here from 5 a.m. until dusk, the boys make about $4.75.
Muhammad al-Ammour, 42, used to work in Israel as a painter, making $35 to $50 a day. Working here with two of his children, he brings home around $12. Most of the income is from scrap metal, sold for 2.2 cents a pound.
“If we don’t work, we can’t live,” he said. “Sad to say, but our life is the garbage. Our future is the garbage.”
Asked if the Palestinian Authority helps them, he laughed. “No one from the authority comes to check on us; no one really cares,” he said. “The Palestinian nation gets aid and help from abroad, but we never see any.”
Like all the men and boys here, only a few of whom have gloves, Mr. Ammour is covered with scars, especially on his hands, arms and legs, from sharp metal and broken glass. Many wear salvaged hats against the sun and scarves to cover their mouths from the fumes and acrid smoke of the nearly nightly fires that burn the picked-over garbage. Many of the boys seem malnourished, with filmy eyes staring from filthy faces.
“Even people close to me, my relatives, mock and humiliate my family,” Mr. Ammour said. “Whoever works in the garbage is garbage himself, that’s what they think. But some of those people work as spies, collaborators and thieves, but they consider us — the honest workers — less than them.”
Mr. Ammour has eight children. But he is known as Abu Fadi, the father of Fadi, 19, his eldest son, one of triplets.
Fadi, who has the bright green eyes of his clan, is trying to go to college. He has worked here since he was little, he said, along with his father and two brothers. He started college, then quit for lack of money. Now, he is taking courses in the evening, through Al Quds Open University in Yatta, along with his brother Tamer. Everyone in this little world is proud of them.
Halima, their triplet sister, is engaged to a cousin. Their mother, Sabah, 37, said: “She will not get married soon. They need to wait and establish themselves. It will be a long time until they manage to do that.”
The Ammour home in Yatta has two rooms for the family of 10 and no windows, just holes in the walls covered with yellow fabric that does little to block the sun.
The larger room is covered in mattresses. In the smaller room, set carefully on a green, sparkly cloth, is Fadi’s prized possession: a computer, which he patched together from parts salvaged from the dump. With a small boxy screen, and wires showing through cracks in the plastic, it functions.
Fadi, scrubbed clean, set the computer to play some music; his little brother, 5, did a break dance. Then Fadi and Tamer joined in. “You see?” Fadi said, smiling large. “Good things come out of the garbage.”
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