A little while ago I spent the weekend taking tours of Hebron and the surrounding hills given by Breaking the Silence, a group of ex Israeli soldiers speaking out against human rights abuses that occur in Israel's occupation of the Palestinian Territories. It was one of the most depressing experiences of my life, just witnessing first hand what human beings are capable of justifying doing to one another, situations of blatant apartheid and ethnic discrimination that people either ignore or dismiss...
The first day we spent walking around the city center of Hebron, a city of 166,000, the largest in the West Bank next to East Jerusalem. At the center of the city is Ibrahimi Mosque / The Tomb of the Patriarchs, where Abraham and his sons are supposedly buried. Hebron had always had a small Jewish community until 1929, when, in one of the worst cases of violence that preceded the creation of Israel, an Arab mob attacked the Jews of the city, killing 67 (hundreds of Jews escaped the mob by being sheltered by their Arab neighbors as well). After the riot all the Jews of Hebron, some of whose families had lived there peacefully for generations, fled the city. During the war of 1948 in which Israel was created, Hebron, along with the rest of the West Bank, became part of Jordan. In the 1967 war, Israel captured, among other territories, the West Bank, which it has continued to occupy to this day. Shortly after that war, a group of Israelis rented out a hotel room in Hebron, and then refused to leave, claiming that they were reclaiming the Jewish presence in Hebron. The Israeli government made a deal with them to leave and granted them a large plot of land adjacent to Hebron which became the settlement of Kiryat Arba instead, but a few years later the the settlers occupied a house where Jews used to live prior to 1929 and an old hospital, and established a settlement right in the center of Hebron. The settlers and the Israeli government claim they have a right to reclaim land in Hebron that had belonged to Jews, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of the settlers are not related to the victims of the 1929 massacre in any way except for happening to share the same religion, and despite the fact that the millions of Palestinian refugees and descendants of refugees that lost their lands in what is now Israel are always denied the right to move back to their homes or be compensated for them in any way.
The settler presence in Hebron has grown steadily since then to about 800 in the center of Hebron today, and there has been friction and mutual acts of violence between the settlers and the Arabs of the city since the settlement's inception, intensifying during the last two decades. In 1994, Baruch Goldstein walked into the main mosque of Hebron with an automatic rifle and killed 29 people and injured over 100. The response of the Israeli army to that massacre was to shut down part of the main street of Hebron, along which the settlements are located, shut down all the Palestinian shops in that area, and impose a curfew on Palestinian residents in order to protect the settlers from reprisal attacks (no restrictions were placed on the settlers). They developed a policy that stated that Arabs and Jews should be separated from each other in order to ensure security. When the Al-Aqsa intifada erupted in 2000, the Israeli army expanded this separation policy to the entire city center. Take a guess which group had to bare the consequences of this policy.
It was during the intifada that our guide Ilan had served in the Israeli army in Hebron. He said he came from a right wing family, and went into the army supporting what they were doing in the West Bank and Hebron, but that his service there changed his mind. He took us on a walk through the center of town, which before 200 was not only the commercial center for Hebron, but for all of the southern west bank. Today, except for settlements here and there, the place looks like an abandoned ghost town. In order to keep what at the time was 500 Jewish settlers safe in the center of town, the Israeli army evicted approximately 13,000 Palestinians from their homes in the city center, closed down hundreds of shops, shut down main market places, closed all the main roads to Palestinians and installed checkpoints everywhere else, and imposed frequent curfews on the Palestinian residents that remained. Ilan had been in charge of one of the teams of soldiers in charge of kicking people out of their homes. He said sometimes you would give them an eviction notice giving them a couple days, sometimes you would give them a notice giving them a couple hours. Sometimes he said he would knock on a door and tell whoever answered that he and his soldiers would be around the corner having coffee and cigarettes, and would be back in 20 minutes, and that they had that long to move out of the house that they had lived in their entire life, that they were born in and that their children were born in, and that they would not be allowed to return. Forcibly evicting people was a pain though, and often times had to be done repeatedly and involved violence, so he said they soon figured out a more efficient way of doing things. While we walked through the main street he pointed out how all the doors we were passing were welded shut. He said the army would formally evict the people living on the ground floor and weld all the entrances shut, and ban use of the roads leading to the house. The residents of the top floors would be trapped inside with no way out but to jump to and from the roofs of buildings, which is difficult for the very young and very old. This combined with the curfews, restrictions on movement, and settler violence towards them was usually enough to coerce most of the residents of a building to leave without as much work on the part of the army. He showed us what used to be the busiest markets in the southern West Bank that were now deserted, and blocked off with concrete blocks and barbed wire. He said that he had been stationed at a checkpoint at the entrance to the meat market, and that he and his fellow soldiers always hated the smell. When the army decided to shut down the whole market and wall off the entrance, he and his friends threw a big party in celebration, and it was only later that he realized that he was celebrating taking away the source of livelihood for thousands of people. Most of the shops in the area were also given eviction notices, and had their doors welded shut before the owners had time to move the food inside that was for sale. Ilan said one of the things he remembered most vividly was the wave of rats that infested the city during the period he was there, that just fed for months on the food trapped in those abandoned shops. Meanwhile, much of the time the residents of the area were trapped in their houses under curfew, unable to shop for food, go to school or work, seek medical attention, give birth, or just step outside for a breath of fresh air. At one point there was a curfew for 180 days straight, with only a few hours break every week that people would use to scramble to get food and water for the next week. In the first three years of the intifada, Palestinians in the city center were subject to curfews that lasted from a few hours to the entire day on over 500 days. Anybody that is caught on the street during curfew can be arrested, shot at, or have their keys confiscated and tires slashed if they are in a car. The main roads through the center of town were also closed to Palestinians. This cuts the city in two, and to get from one side to another you now have to go all the way around the city, passing through numerous checkpoints. Any Palestinians that wanted to go to and from their homes in the city center has to pass through a checkpoint and be searched each time as well.
The settlers, who have not once been subject to curfew or had their movement impaired in the city center, cause their own set of problems. Ilan said that after evicting Palestinians from a home or shop, it was not uncommon to return that night to find settlers occupying the place, sitting around playing cards. Seeing as how the Palestinians had been evicted ostensibly to create a "buffer zone" around the area of Jewish settlement, the fact that the settlers are expanding into the newly vacated "buffer zone" is more than a bit problematic. Ilan said that if he or his fellow soldiers asked the settlers to leave, they would be spit at and cursed at. Which brings up another major problem, the fact that, according to Ilan, and every Palestinian I have met, soldiers are not authorized to impose the law on settlers. The army's purpose is to act as combatants, and their mission is to protect the settlers from the Palestinians, not uphold the law. As Israeli civilians, settlers are not subject to military law the way a Palestinian is, they get the benefit of Israeli civil law, which must be administered by a policeman. The nearest police station is in the adjacent settlement of Kiryat Arba, and the policemen are settlers themselves. The most the army can do is detain a settler until the police arrive, although according to Ilan this is rarely done. This creates a situation where while the city center is teaming with soldiers to protect the settlers from the settlers, there often times is no one around to protect the Palestinians from the settlers, and when there is enforcement is extremely lax, even according to internal Israeli government reports. Ilan said it was routine to see settlers vandalizing Palestinian property, physically assualting Palestinians, and looting Palestinian shops, but that there was nothing he could do. Almost every window on a Palestinian house that I saw either had a wire mesh cage around it, or had broken glass from rocks thrown by settlers. Above the market places that are now pretty much completely deserted, there are wire mesh roofs to protect Palestinians from settlers hurling stones at them from the rooms they had occupied above the markets. And while it may not be policy, there are documented instances of Israeli soldiers and policemen humiliating and abusing, and on at least one occasion even killing, detained Palestinians.
In what universe can this be seen as a remotely just solution? There were 500 Jews in the area, and to keep them safe the Israeli army evicted 13,000 Palestinians from their homes, trampled the human rights of those that remained, and disrupted the hundreds of thousands that depended on the area as a commercial center. If it is true that the two populations needed to be separated for their own safety, why was it preferable to move 13,000 civilians instead of 500? Because they are Arabs, because their well being is far secondary to that of Jewish settlers. If there is another explanation someone please point it out to me, because I can't see it.
________________________
The next day I took a tour out to the villages in the South Hebron Hills, and while the setting was very different, the story was more of the same. The first town we visited was Bir al 'Idd, one of many communities of people that live in the caves in the southern West Bank, in or near a large area declared by Israel to be a military training area and firing range. A few years ago, claiming that the cave dwellers were a security risk to the nearby armed settlements, and that they had no right to be in or near the military zone, the army forcibly evicted the cave dwelling communities, and destroyed their caves and wells. Rabbis for Human Rights hired a lawyer and took the case to the Israeli supreme court, which ruled that the people of the area could move back, but that the status quo had to be maintained: no new buildings, or even repairing buildings and wells the army had destroyed. When we got to the village we saw international and Israeli volunteers helping rebuild homes for these people anyway, including Rabbi Arik Ascherman, if any of you know who that is. We heard from the villagers and the activists that even though they were allowed back, there was still constant harassment, intimidation, and violence from settlers. The army had built a low concrete barrier through their land, which while easy for a human to climb over effectively cuts off shepherds and their flocks from much of their land. They are not allowed to use the one paved road of the region, which they themselves built decades ago, because it is now reserved for settlers. Instead they have to take a roundabout route which needs a 4x4 vehicle in the dry season and is often inaccessible after it rains. Instead of taking half an hour to get to the nearest town, it now takes over 3 hours, which is a major problem for children that used to go to school there or villagers that used to go there to sell their goods. Settler violence is endemic. I listened to one man tell me how the settlers came and scared his flock of sheep into jumping off a cliff and killing themselves. A few days before some villagers and internationals accompanying them were beaten and robbed by settlers on the detour road. As elsewhere in the West Bank, law enforcement on the settlers is almost non-existent. While there are army bases and patrol cars everywhere, as I described before it is not their job to enforce law on the settlers. The nearest police station with jurisdiction over the settlers is in the Kiryat Arba settlement half an hour away, and it has two patrol cars responsible for the entire southern West Bank.
Next we went to the town of Susya. The family I met, and apparently many of the residents of the village, used to live on the other side of the border and fled from their lands in fear during the 1948 creation of Israel, and, after not being allowed to return, settled in the area that we were visiting. After Israel captured the West Bank in 1967, a team of Israeli archaeologists found an ancient synagogue right near the town, and Israel created a national park in the area. And since by Israeli law no one is allowed to live in a national park, the villagers homes were demolished, that part of their land was confiscated, and they moved into the southern half of their property (today there is now a settlement outpost, which are illegal even under Israeli law, right near the synagogue where the town used to be). Later, many of the town residents were relocated a third time when much of the rest of their land was declared as a buffer zone for the settlement bordering them from the other side, and their homes and wells were destroyed and more of their land confiscated yet again. After this time, the villagers that had to relocate decided to spread out as much as possible so as to not have a central location that could be confiscated from them. There is only one problem. They were never given permits to build their new houses after the army demolished their old ones. And since building without a permit is illegal, what can they army do but come back and demolish their new homes? The cost of applying for the permit is the entire family's combined monthly income, and it is well known that permits are rarely given to Palestinians. The Israeli human rights group Ta'ayyush has repeatedly put together the money to submit a permit for the villagers of Susya, and so far have been denied three times. Meanwhile every time the villagers try to build a place to live or dig a new well to replace a damaged one, the army comes in and demolishes it. All of this is going on within sight of Israeli settlement outposts, illegal even under Israeli law and all built without permits. Far from demolishing these outposts, the state built a paved road connecting the outpost to the main settlement, connected them to the electricity and water grid, and posts soldiers around it to keep it safe. And this is despite the fact that the villagers of Susya have a legally recognized title to their land, and, in this case, at least one of the outposts does not (its on a national park). As with many other places I have visited, the villagers are constantly subject to settler violence. One of the old men I talked to described how one time in the middle of the night his family awoke to the smell of fire, and ran outside to see that settlers had lit their home, which is a combination of rock walls and tarp coverings, on fire while the entire extended family, including children, had been sleeping inside, and were lighting other homes on fire as well. Fortunately they managed to chase the settlers away and put out the fires before anyone got hurt. All of this went on while an army vehicle was sitting and watching just a few hundred meters away, according to the old man.
__________________________
The situation in the West Bank, especially in these examples, is one where one ethnic group is systematically preferred over another by the state. In Hebron, when the army decides that Arabs and Jews need to be separated, it would rather remove 13,000 Arabs from the area and impinge on the human rights of countless others than move 500 Jews. When it is determined that a "buffer zone" needs to be established between a settlement and a Palestinian village, it is always Palestinian land confiscated to make the buffer. All over the West Bank and especially in and around Hebron, a huge military apparatus is deployed with the purpose of protecting Jewish settlers, while law enforcement to protect Arabs from Jews is lacking to say the least, even according to internal Israeli government reports. Not to mention that the law itself differs; settlers get the full protection of Israeli civil law, while Palestinians are subject to military law, with no right to a trial or a lawyer, and obscure Ottoman Turkish laws that allow the expropriation of privately held farm land that Jewish settlers are not subject to. The law is applied selectively: Palestinian homes built without a permit are demolished (and permits are almost impossible to obtain) while illegal settlement outposts built without permits get roads, electricity, water, and security provided for them by the state. Settlements are provided with modern infrastructure by the state, but even in areas where Israel has accepted responsibility in civilian matters (like the granting of building permits), little or no money is given to Palestinian towns, and on the contrary the army demolishes many Palestinian attempts at infrastructure they build at their own cost. Public infrastructure like roads are many times reserved only for the use of Jewish settlers, and the Palestinians are forced to take long detours on substandard roads. And, needless to say, settlers get full democratic voting rights in the state that controls their lives, while the Palestinians I came across on this tour do not.
Pro-Israeli-policy advocates will usually argue that the state discriminating between settlers and Palestinians is ok because the Palestinians aren't members of their state, and as such Israel is not responsible for their well being. To that, I would answer that Israel cannot have it both ways. Either Palestinians in the West Bank are not members of the Israeli nation, and are thus members of some other nation, in which case I would ask what is Israel doing planting their civilian populations on the land of another nation, with the intent of future formal annexation? That is called colonization. Or is it that Palestinians never were a "real" people to begin with, that the West Bank never "really" belonged to any nation or group of people and is therefor somehow up for grabs? In that case in areas Israel has de facto claimed for itself (by occupying it for 60 years, moving in hundreds of thousands of its civilian population, and in most areas claiming complete security and civilian control), denying equal rights to some of the inhabitants of the land that you have de facto annexed on the basis of their ethnicity is apartheid.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Traveling around Israel Israel
Recently, someone commented that I haven't really made any attempt to see or write about the Israeli side of the conflict. This is true, although I think my focusing on what is being done to Palestinians is justified by the fact that I'm writing mostly to Americans, who through the billions of their tax dollars that go to military aid to Israel are playing a large roll enabling the occupation and the continual settlement expansion that it makes possible. The fact that America is such a large financial contributor to Israel means not only do we share in the responsibility of what is being done with that money, but that we have the ability to apply significant pressure on Israel to change its policies of settlement expansion in the West Bank (i.e. colonization) should the American public begin to care enough. The U.S. does not support Palestinian terrorist groups, has much less ability to apply political pressure on them, and the American public already has an almost uniformly negative view of them. Hence I feel less driven to spend my limited time here witnessing and reporting on their wrongdoings...
However, I do think a major fault with many Palestinian activists is that they don't really understand Israelis, or what think and how they view the conflict. Hell, one year ago I was sure most Israelis really wanted to keep as much of the West Bank as possible, and to grow the settlements as much as they could. Don't get me wrong, I still think the Israeli right and those in power definitely do, but it wasn't until I spent a lot of time talking to Oren and other pro-Israeli-policy activists (I hate characterizing people with the opposing views as 'Pro-Israel', there is nothing inherently anti-Israel about saying that Israel shouldn't be grabbing more and more West Bank land, and that they should give Palestinians a real state. I'm pretty sure the Israelis working on human rights issues in the West Bank that I have met don't consider themselves 'Anti-Israel') that I realized that MOST Israelis could care less about grabbing more West Bank land, that they really only support the occupation because they are afraid of Palestinian violence if the Israeli army pulls out. And that really changed the way I think about a lot of things, and what I think the best way to approach the conflict is. Basically what I'm trying to say is dialog is important, and that if we talked to and got to know one another, we might find that the gap between what the majority on both sides will find acceptable is smaller than we think.
-----------------------
ANYWAY, for those reasons, and just out of my own curiosity, I spent a weekend a little while ago with Elie jumping around Tel Aviv, Sderot, Ashqelon, and Haifa. Sderot, the town right next to the Gaza strip that gets bombarded with homemade rockets on a regular basis, was especially eye opening. Every children's park and bus stop had a bomb shelter next to it, the school had a giant concrete canopy over it. The people we were staying with told us that at some points they would be getting 70-100 sirens a day and they would have to run into the stairwell or a bomb shelter or something. Their windows got blown out at least once. They are happy that there is only a rocket every week or so now. And while they said they don't know many people that got injured or killed from them, they know several people who have been traumatized by it, that are just freaked out or stressed out all the time. Obviously no innocent person should ever have to live like that...
These people we stayed with were probably the chillest people I've met out here. It was like being back home in IV for a night, which I really, really needed. I felt more at home there than I have anywhere out here. It was kind of an Israeli Biko, a bunch of semi-hippies and artists going to the nearby college, just super hospitable super welcoming people. It was one of their birthdays so they were kind of having a little get together, and people were just passing around drinks and a few joints, playing music, just people having a good time joking around. Ah and this one dude was AMAZING on the guitar, if any of you know who Umm Kulsum is he could play that on the guitar, not to mention improvised flamenco, and even Super Mario themes;) We didn't really delve too deep into anything political, but they did express sympathy for the people in Gaza, that if it was like hell in Sderot they couldn't even imagine what it was like there. I have no idea whether they supported the war there or not, but they definitely weren't people that were happy about the idea of people getting bombed. The whole time I was sitting with these people, I kept thinking how most Palestinians I've met think that no Israelis want peace, that they are all against them, and I couldn't stop thinking just how wrong they were. Someone back in the states told me once that Sderot was "almost like a settlement," and I couldn't stop thinking how wrong that was as well, that while I'm sure getting bombed all the time generates a high percentage of right wing nutballs, this is just a normal town with many normal people. The people here aren't settlers going out of their way to harm Palestinians and confiscate their property, the people I met were just trying to live their lives...
Palestinians, and even some Palestinian activists including myself a year ago, are not aware that the majority of Israelis are like this, that they really do only support the occupation out of fear, and not out of greed. I would like to think that if more people on the Palestinian side became aware of this, that they would come to the conclusion that an explicitly completely non-violent struggle that makes no threats to Israel proper, and employs only demonstrations and extreme civil disobedience (like physically tearing down a wall separating them from their lands or blocking roads to settlements with their bodies) would be the most intelligent, not to mention moral, course of action.
However, I do think a major fault with many Palestinian activists is that they don't really understand Israelis, or what think and how they view the conflict. Hell, one year ago I was sure most Israelis really wanted to keep as much of the West Bank as possible, and to grow the settlements as much as they could. Don't get me wrong, I still think the Israeli right and those in power definitely do, but it wasn't until I spent a lot of time talking to Oren and other pro-Israeli-policy activists (I hate characterizing people with the opposing views as 'Pro-Israel', there is nothing inherently anti-Israel about saying that Israel shouldn't be grabbing more and more West Bank land, and that they should give Palestinians a real state. I'm pretty sure the Israelis working on human rights issues in the West Bank that I have met don't consider themselves 'Anti-Israel') that I realized that MOST Israelis could care less about grabbing more West Bank land, that they really only support the occupation because they are afraid of Palestinian violence if the Israeli army pulls out. And that really changed the way I think about a lot of things, and what I think the best way to approach the conflict is. Basically what I'm trying to say is dialog is important, and that if we talked to and got to know one another, we might find that the gap between what the majority on both sides will find acceptable is smaller than we think.
-----------------------
ANYWAY, for those reasons, and just out of my own curiosity, I spent a weekend a little while ago with Elie jumping around Tel Aviv, Sderot, Ashqelon, and Haifa. Sderot, the town right next to the Gaza strip that gets bombarded with homemade rockets on a regular basis, was especially eye opening. Every children's park and bus stop had a bomb shelter next to it, the school had a giant concrete canopy over it. The people we were staying with told us that at some points they would be getting 70-100 sirens a day and they would have to run into the stairwell or a bomb shelter or something. Their windows got blown out at least once. They are happy that there is only a rocket every week or so now. And while they said they don't know many people that got injured or killed from them, they know several people who have been traumatized by it, that are just freaked out or stressed out all the time. Obviously no innocent person should ever have to live like that...
These people we stayed with were probably the chillest people I've met out here. It was like being back home in IV for a night, which I really, really needed. I felt more at home there than I have anywhere out here. It was kind of an Israeli Biko, a bunch of semi-hippies and artists going to the nearby college, just super hospitable super welcoming people. It was one of their birthdays so they were kind of having a little get together, and people were just passing around drinks and a few joints, playing music, just people having a good time joking around. Ah and this one dude was AMAZING on the guitar, if any of you know who Umm Kulsum is he could play that on the guitar, not to mention improvised flamenco, and even Super Mario themes;) We didn't really delve too deep into anything political, but they did express sympathy for the people in Gaza, that if it was like hell in Sderot they couldn't even imagine what it was like there. I have no idea whether they supported the war there or not, but they definitely weren't people that were happy about the idea of people getting bombed. The whole time I was sitting with these people, I kept thinking how most Palestinians I've met think that no Israelis want peace, that they are all against them, and I couldn't stop thinking just how wrong they were. Someone back in the states told me once that Sderot was "almost like a settlement," and I couldn't stop thinking how wrong that was as well, that while I'm sure getting bombed all the time generates a high percentage of right wing nutballs, this is just a normal town with many normal people. The people here aren't settlers going out of their way to harm Palestinians and confiscate their property, the people I met were just trying to live their lives...
Palestinians, and even some Palestinian activists including myself a year ago, are not aware that the majority of Israelis are like this, that they really do only support the occupation out of fear, and not out of greed. I would like to think that if more people on the Palestinian side became aware of this, that they would come to the conclusion that an explicitly completely non-violent struggle that makes no threats to Israel proper, and employs only demonstrations and extreme civil disobedience (like physically tearing down a wall separating them from their lands or blocking roads to settlements with their bodies) would be the most intelligent, not to mention moral, course of action.
Got shot at with live ammunition the other day...
One of the classes I teach out here is to college students from the local university, and after class one day one of my students named Mu'ath mentioned that he was from a village named Iraq Burin 10 miles or so out of town, and invited me to visit him. I had heard of the village because a couple weeks ago settlers from the nearby settlement of Bracha had set fire to many of the olive trees of the village (take a wild guess if anyone is being prosecuted), and a journalist friend of mine had gone out there to cover it. Anyway, I was curious to see it for myself, so last Saturday I headed out there to meet him. It started out pretty normal, just having tea in his living room and talking, and looking at pictures of cousins and friends on the wall who had been killed on the way to work or the bus stop or something (sadly that's pretty normal out here too, so many people have a friend or relative who was killed in one way or another). He told me that, recently, every Saturday the settlers come onto their land, sometimes damaging the trees, sometimes bathing in the well, etc. We went out to where a bunch of the village youth had gathered to yell and curse at the settlers, and you could make out on the opposite hilltop where a group of four or so settlers where gathered. Mu'ath explained to me that all the land and the olive trees up to that hill and elsewhere belonged to the villagers and had been farmed for generations, but that the Israeli army had forbidden them to access it because it was too close to the settlement, which of course has a major impact on people who rely on those trees and the olive harvest for income. Anyway, after a while a group of 4 or so of the villagers decided to climb the opposite hill and chase the settlers away. Mu'ath explained that in addition to fear that the settlers would damage property as they had in the past, the villagers were afraid that eventually the settlers would set up a tent or caravan and make an outpost on their land, and claim it as their own (again, sadly pretty normal out here). Once the villagers got close enough to the settlers, the two groups started throwing rocks at each other, and soon after you could see an army jeep racing towards them. Everyone from yelled to the villagers throwing rocks that the army was coming, and they climbed back down the hill and over to the main crowd before the 10 or so soldiers could catch them. Anyway the soldiers started shooting tear gas at everyone, and as I wasn't expecting a protest I hadn't brought any onions, which apparently really do make a big difference as to how much that shit affects you;) Basically it feels like your face and eyeballs are on fire, and if they get one close enough too you, you pretty much feel like you are about to barf your lungs out. The soldiers started firing one or two at first that didn't quite make it to us, but then they shot this giant barrage all at once and Mu'ath just grabbed me and said 'RUN!'. While we were running we heard gunshots, and according to the people I was with they were using live bullets (you can tell from the sound of the gunshot according to the villagers and other internationals I met there). As soon as that started we ran into the nearest house, and just listened and watched from the window. We heard a lot of loud banging coming from the house upstairs, and learned later that the soldiers had busted in the window and kicked out the family that was living there, including three small children. I was freaked out enough as an adult, I can only imagine what a soldier breaking into your house must be like for a child... Anyway, after about 20 minutes or so of gunshots and yelling, the soldiers left. We wandered back out into the street to see what had happened to everyone. Only one person had been injured, thankfully, and not even too badly. We went upstairs and had tea with the family who's house had been broken into, and listened to their story, and I ended up translating for an international who was writing a piece about what was happening in the village. After that, it was getting dark so we all caught a ride back into town. Today in class Mu'ath told me that yesterday night the army invaded the town again in the middle of the night and occupied houses for several hours.
Its getting late, I'm tired from teaching all day (7am to 6pm), and I'm tempted to spare you the political diatribe, but here it is anyway. The settlements, their continuous expansion, and the violent actions of the settlers contribute in such a huge way to the this conflict. From the people I've met in villages, you can sense how angry and frustrated people are. Their lives and livelihood are constantly under threat from the settlers, and the Israeli army sure as hell doesn't do much to protect them. I've talked to so many people that have been beaten or shot at, and people that have had relatives and friends beaten or killed, so many people that have had the land they depend on for a livelihood either outright confiscated by settlers, or declared off-limits by the army in order to create a protective buffer around settlements, which settlers then help themselves to, later necessitating a bigger buffer of course. The impression from so many of the people I've met here, probably the vast majority of ordinary people at least, is that Israelis are all pretty much like the settlers, that almost all Israelis are set on taking all their land and kicking them out of their homes at one point or another. Why else would they be occupying the West Bank for over 40 years and continuously confiscating land for bigger and bigger settlements, they ask. Settlers, and the army, are the only time many of these people come into contact with Israelis. The only group of people I've met who've consistently had a different impression is are those that have been helped by Israeli human rights groups, who will tell you that there is a small amount of Israelis that don't want to claim all of the West Bank for themselves.
I have not met a SINGLE Palestinian yet who believes that Israelis, even ordinary Israelis, want peace. If I ask them, they look at me as if I am asking them the dumbest question in the world. One of the first things they will always site is the fact that Israeli settlements continue to grow, and that Israelis continue to protect them. The other issue that Palestinians always site is all the checkpoints and limitations on their movement, which are necessary all throughout the West Bank in order mostly to protect the settlements (otherwise why wouldn't they just put checkpoints at the borders?). Almost all Palestinians I've met think that the whole 'peace process' is a ruse by Israel to buy more time to confiscate more land (personally I believe this to be true of the Israeli right). I would say the majority Palestinians don't hold much faith that peaceful negotiation with Israel will achieve anything at all at this point. Most don't seem to think that violent resistance, or at least suicide bombing and rockets, does much good either, but most have a lot of sympathy for those that do espouse such views, just because they are seen as doing SOMETHING, and not just giving in. Knowing that most Israelis don't care all that much about the settlements, or at least the small ones deep into the West Bank, I think it is unfortunate to say the least that they continue to look the other way and allow the religiously-motivated far right to do as it pleases, with such disastrous consequences for everyone.
Its getting late, I'm tired from teaching all day (7am to 6pm), and I'm tempted to spare you the political diatribe, but here it is anyway. The settlements, their continuous expansion, and the violent actions of the settlers contribute in such a huge way to the this conflict. From the people I've met in villages, you can sense how angry and frustrated people are. Their lives and livelihood are constantly under threat from the settlers, and the Israeli army sure as hell doesn't do much to protect them. I've talked to so many people that have been beaten or shot at, and people that have had relatives and friends beaten or killed, so many people that have had the land they depend on for a livelihood either outright confiscated by settlers, or declared off-limits by the army in order to create a protective buffer around settlements, which settlers then help themselves to, later necessitating a bigger buffer of course. The impression from so many of the people I've met here, probably the vast majority of ordinary people at least, is that Israelis are all pretty much like the settlers, that almost all Israelis are set on taking all their land and kicking them out of their homes at one point or another. Why else would they be occupying the West Bank for over 40 years and continuously confiscating land for bigger and bigger settlements, they ask. Settlers, and the army, are the only time many of these people come into contact with Israelis. The only group of people I've met who've consistently had a different impression is are those that have been helped by Israeli human rights groups, who will tell you that there is a small amount of Israelis that don't want to claim all of the West Bank for themselves.
I have not met a SINGLE Palestinian yet who believes that Israelis, even ordinary Israelis, want peace. If I ask them, they look at me as if I am asking them the dumbest question in the world. One of the first things they will always site is the fact that Israeli settlements continue to grow, and that Israelis continue to protect them. The other issue that Palestinians always site is all the checkpoints and limitations on their movement, which are necessary all throughout the West Bank in order mostly to protect the settlements (otherwise why wouldn't they just put checkpoints at the borders?). Almost all Palestinians I've met think that the whole 'peace process' is a ruse by Israel to buy more time to confiscate more land (personally I believe this to be true of the Israeli right). I would say the majority Palestinians don't hold much faith that peaceful negotiation with Israel will achieve anything at all at this point. Most don't seem to think that violent resistance, or at least suicide bombing and rockets, does much good either, but most have a lot of sympathy for those that do espouse such views, just because they are seen as doing SOMETHING, and not just giving in. Knowing that most Israelis don't care all that much about the settlements, or at least the small ones deep into the West Bank, I think it is unfortunate to say the least that they continue to look the other way and allow the religiously-motivated far right to do as it pleases, with such disastrous consequences for everyone.
Sleeping on the Street with Evicted Palestinian Families in East Jerusalem
Last week I went to the overwhelmingly Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, where the Ghawi, Hanoun, and al-Kurd families have been evicted from their homes of over 50 years in order to make way for Israeli settlers, and 25 more families are being threatened with imminent eviction. After being thrown into the street by Israeli police and watching Israeli settlers take over their homes, all three families set up tents in the street across from their former homes as a form of protest and to have a place to sleep. Some friends and I visited these families in order to hear their stories, sleep in the street with them in solidarity, and to help keep watch at night in case settlers attacked, as they have in the past.
The al-Kurd family, which was an elderly couple of a disabled man in a wheelchair and his wife, Umm Kamil, where the first to be evicted. According to their neighbors, Israeli police burst into their homes in the middle of the night and literally tossed the two out of their homes, all their possessions where hauled away in a police van, and settlers moved in almost immediately. After living in the tent for a couple weeks, the husband became ill and died a few days later in a hospital. Umm Kamil stayed in the tent for months, but recently moved in with relatives when police destroyed her tent. The Hanoun family was the next to go, and also all lived in tents, and also mostly have moved in with relatives after having had their tent destroyed. A few of the older men of the family still sit in front of the house every single day, and sometimes sleep on mattresses in the street. At the time I visited, the Ghawi family, a big family with lots of children and teenagers, was the only family that had a tent left. I heard from friends that the day after I left to return to the West Bank to teach my classes, the police came and destroyed their tent. They rebuilt it, and it was destroyed again and their possessions confiscated. The last I heard a truck driver from the neighborhood had placed a shipping container in the street and that they have been living in that. They say that if it comes to it, they will stay in front of their house with no shelter at all, that nobody has the right to kick them out of their own homes and to make them refugees a second time over, and that they will refuse to leave...
The settlers claim that they have a right to these peoples' homes because Jews lived there before the creation of Israel in 1948. In 1948, East Jerusalem, which was and still is predominantly Palestinian, came under the control of the Jordanians. Many of the Jews that lived there where driven out, including, according to the settlers, the Jews that owned the land in question. Before and during the 1948 war in which Israel was created, 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes in fear from what was to become Israel and became refugees. After the war ended, Israel refused to let any of these people return to their homes and instead confiscated their lands and property. These people lived in giant tent cities for years until the U.N. was able to give them adequate shelter. In 1956, the U.N. built several apartment complexes on the land in question, and gave homes to 28 of these refugee families, the same families that live there today (several of the people I talked to have memories of moving from refugee camps and into these homes as children or teenagers). In 1967, Israel captured East Jerusalem, along with the rest of the West Bank and Gaza, and unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem against international law and against the will of the inhabitants. In the 1980's an Israeli settler group produced a document claiming that they were the owners before 1948, and the Israeli court gave them legal ownership of the homes and the authority to charge rent. The families refused to pay rent on homes they believe they own, and starting around August of this year, evictions have begun being enforced. The remaining families are fighting in court to be able to stay in their homes, and the lawyer the family hired was able to get a document from the Turkish National Archives that states that the land was leased to Jews, not sold, which calls into significant doubt whether the settler groups claims and documents are even authentic (it wouldn't be the first time forgeries were used to claim Palestinian land and homes). The court says its too late for the families that have already been kicked out, but the rest are holding out a sliver of hope...
Even if the settlers claims are real and Jews did own the property in question before 1948, the blatant hypocrisy in this case is absolutely sickening. Why is it that Jews can reclaim land they lost during Israel's creation in 1948, but the millions of Palestinian refugees and descendants of refugees from what is now Israel, most of whom STILL live in the refugee camps to this day, aren't allowed to reclaim THEIR confiscated property and land? Why does a Jewish settler organization that MAY have owned a piece of land before 1948 have the right to push 28 Palestinian refugee families onto the street while those families don't have to right to reclaim or even receive compensation for land that was forcibly confiscated from them by the Israeli state? This is pure racism. I'm really not sure what else you can call it. One standard for Jews, and another for the Palestinians. Not to mention that a large land organization that prefers only to lease to people of a specific religious/ethnic identity is a troublesome concept at best. The Israeli far right openly calls for ethnic cleansing; it's stated goal is to forcibly transfer Palestinians into other countries or cantons in the West Bank (i.e. Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman), or at the very least move in as many Jewish settlers as possible to surround Palestinian populations to ensure that certain areas, like predominantly Arab East Jerusalem, will stay under Israeli control, denying the inhabitants of those areas the right to self-determination, the right to rule themselves in their own state.
Its one thing to read about these kinds of things happening, and something else entirely to witness it and to hear it from the people that have experienced it. I was sitting drinking tea with the Hanoun family one night when one of the settlers came home and went inside. One of the old men I was talking to told me, "Can you imagine how I feel right now watching that woman walking into my home? That is the home I grew up in, where my children were born, where I raised my children. Now I have to watch the person who took it from me walk right in like she owns it, while I have no place of my own. And there is nothing I can do about it." One of the mornings I was at the Ghawi tent, the mother was dressing one of the little kids and sending him to school while he just started whining, "All I want to do is go home, why cant we just go home?" A brawl had broken out between the settlers and the families the day before I got there, and despite the fact that several people from both parties had been hospitalized, only Palestinians had been arrested. Talking to the youth of the family and their neighbors that gather there every night, you can feel how bitter and angry they are.
The only silver lining in all of this is that due to how many Israeli activists come to support them, many of the family members see that not all Israelis are like this, a realization that in many cases seems to be lacking in much of the West Bank. The settler groups and their supporters though don't want any kind of a just peace, they want to grab as much land as possible. And the rest of Israel, and the rest of the world, are so far letting them get away with it.
The al-Kurd family, which was an elderly couple of a disabled man in a wheelchair and his wife, Umm Kamil, where the first to be evicted. According to their neighbors, Israeli police burst into their homes in the middle of the night and literally tossed the two out of their homes, all their possessions where hauled away in a police van, and settlers moved in almost immediately. After living in the tent for a couple weeks, the husband became ill and died a few days later in a hospital. Umm Kamil stayed in the tent for months, but recently moved in with relatives when police destroyed her tent. The Hanoun family was the next to go, and also all lived in tents, and also mostly have moved in with relatives after having had their tent destroyed. A few of the older men of the family still sit in front of the house every single day, and sometimes sleep on mattresses in the street. At the time I visited, the Ghawi family, a big family with lots of children and teenagers, was the only family that had a tent left. I heard from friends that the day after I left to return to the West Bank to teach my classes, the police came and destroyed their tent. They rebuilt it, and it was destroyed again and their possessions confiscated. The last I heard a truck driver from the neighborhood had placed a shipping container in the street and that they have been living in that. They say that if it comes to it, they will stay in front of their house with no shelter at all, that nobody has the right to kick them out of their own homes and to make them refugees a second time over, and that they will refuse to leave...
The settlers claim that they have a right to these peoples' homes because Jews lived there before the creation of Israel in 1948. In 1948, East Jerusalem, which was and still is predominantly Palestinian, came under the control of the Jordanians. Many of the Jews that lived there where driven out, including, according to the settlers, the Jews that owned the land in question. Before and during the 1948 war in which Israel was created, 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes in fear from what was to become Israel and became refugees. After the war ended, Israel refused to let any of these people return to their homes and instead confiscated their lands and property. These people lived in giant tent cities for years until the U.N. was able to give them adequate shelter. In 1956, the U.N. built several apartment complexes on the land in question, and gave homes to 28 of these refugee families, the same families that live there today (several of the people I talked to have memories of moving from refugee camps and into these homes as children or teenagers). In 1967, Israel captured East Jerusalem, along with the rest of the West Bank and Gaza, and unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem against international law and against the will of the inhabitants. In the 1980's an Israeli settler group produced a document claiming that they were the owners before 1948, and the Israeli court gave them legal ownership of the homes and the authority to charge rent. The families refused to pay rent on homes they believe they own, and starting around August of this year, evictions have begun being enforced. The remaining families are fighting in court to be able to stay in their homes, and the lawyer the family hired was able to get a document from the Turkish National Archives that states that the land was leased to Jews, not sold, which calls into significant doubt whether the settler groups claims and documents are even authentic (it wouldn't be the first time forgeries were used to claim Palestinian land and homes). The court says its too late for the families that have already been kicked out, but the rest are holding out a sliver of hope...
Even if the settlers claims are real and Jews did own the property in question before 1948, the blatant hypocrisy in this case is absolutely sickening. Why is it that Jews can reclaim land they lost during Israel's creation in 1948, but the millions of Palestinian refugees and descendants of refugees from what is now Israel, most of whom STILL live in the refugee camps to this day, aren't allowed to reclaim THEIR confiscated property and land? Why does a Jewish settler organization that MAY have owned a piece of land before 1948 have the right to push 28 Palestinian refugee families onto the street while those families don't have to right to reclaim or even receive compensation for land that was forcibly confiscated from them by the Israeli state? This is pure racism. I'm really not sure what else you can call it. One standard for Jews, and another for the Palestinians. Not to mention that a large land organization that prefers only to lease to people of a specific religious/ethnic identity is a troublesome concept at best. The Israeli far right openly calls for ethnic cleansing; it's stated goal is to forcibly transfer Palestinians into other countries or cantons in the West Bank (i.e. Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman), or at the very least move in as many Jewish settlers as possible to surround Palestinian populations to ensure that certain areas, like predominantly Arab East Jerusalem, will stay under Israeli control, denying the inhabitants of those areas the right to self-determination, the right to rule themselves in their own state.
Its one thing to read about these kinds of things happening, and something else entirely to witness it and to hear it from the people that have experienced it. I was sitting drinking tea with the Hanoun family one night when one of the settlers came home and went inside. One of the old men I was talking to told me, "Can you imagine how I feel right now watching that woman walking into my home? That is the home I grew up in, where my children were born, where I raised my children. Now I have to watch the person who took it from me walk right in like she owns it, while I have no place of my own. And there is nothing I can do about it." One of the mornings I was at the Ghawi tent, the mother was dressing one of the little kids and sending him to school while he just started whining, "All I want to do is go home, why cant we just go home?" A brawl had broken out between the settlers and the families the day before I got there, and despite the fact that several people from both parties had been hospitalized, only Palestinians had been arrested. Talking to the youth of the family and their neighbors that gather there every night, you can feel how bitter and angry they are.
The only silver lining in all of this is that due to how many Israeli activists come to support them, many of the family members see that not all Israelis are like this, a realization that in many cases seems to be lacking in much of the West Bank. The settler groups and their supporters though don't want any kind of a just peace, they want to grab as much land as possible. And the rest of Israel, and the rest of the world, are so far letting them get away with it.
Olive Picking near an Israeli Settlement
Last weekend I went to help pick olives in Yanoun, a small Palestinian village in the West Bank which is right next to the Israeli settlement of Itamar. Yanoun was made briefly semi-famous in 2002 when the settlers of Itamar, after years of harassing the inhabitants of Yanoun, raided the town and threatened to kill everyone who was still there by the next Saturday (a Palestinian gunman unrelated to Yanoun had killed 4 people in Itamar a few months before). All but 2 people, one of whom was a refugee from the creation of Israel in 1948 and said he would rather die on his land than become a refugee again, fled the village the next day. When the Israeli army refused to do anything about the situation, Israeli and international peace activists set up a presence in the town to protect the villagers and make them feel safe enough to come back, and about half of them did (approximately 100 people). Intense harassment from the settlers continued, including beatings of both Palestinians and Israeli/international peace activists, so a European church group (EAPPI) set up a permanent international presence there to deter the Itamar settlers from terrorizing the Palestinian villagers. Apparently, the settlers are much more reluctant to use violence on internationals (although it happens), as opposed to Palestinians and Israeli peace activists, who they perceive as traitors. Fortunately, things have calmed down a bit over the last year or so and there haven't been any violent incidents in a few months, although verbal harassment and threats are still commonplace.
Picking olives with these people and listening to their stories for a couple days was one of the most intense experiences of my life. I'm not really even sure where to begin. I asked someone how it all started, and he pointed to the ridge of a hill that is now covered in sheds and prefabricated homes from the settlement. He said one day 10 or 15 years ago, a tent showed up on the ridge. A year or so later, a shed, and then electricity wires. Then the settlers started coming onto their land. Settlers would come into their village with submachine guns, yelling that all the land was theirs, that it belonged to their ancestors. They uprooted many of the olive trees and moved them back to the settlement, claiming that their ancestors had planted them and that they therefor belonged to them. Waleed, one of the people I got to know best, told me how when they were shepherding their sheep and goats on the hillside, settlers would come down and beat them and tell them that the hills were now theirs, and that the villagers weren't allowed there anymore. He told me that because the hills were where the villagers mostly took their sheep and goats to graze, they had to sell more than 3/4 of their flock, which is a big deal for people living at the subsistence level. Others told me how they had been shot at picking in their olive trees, on land they owned, that the settlers now claimed as their own. Waleed's uncle had been shot in the leg while running away from settlers who had approached him while he had been picking his olives, on land he legally owns, on one of the hills. People told me stories about how the settlers used to break into peoples houses and beat them up in their own homes in front of their families and children, how they destroyed property and fields, burnt down the electricity generator the U.N. had donated (and threatened to burn it down again if it was rebuilt), etc, etc.
I was listening to stories like this all weekend. Probably the most intense interaction I had was when I was when I came across a small family of a couple of young men, a small girl, and their 80 year old grandmother. I was trying to talk to one of the young men about what had happened in the village, and what he thought the solution was for both the village and for Palestine in general. The old woman kept interrupting, red in the face and on the verge of tears, shouting things like "they killed my grandson! All he was doing was herding his sheep! Why would they do that? He wasn't hurting anybody. He was such a nice boy, he had just been engaged, he had his whole life in front of him." Five minutes later, "they beat up my neighbor! They beat him so hard his left eye fell out of his head! He has to put a glass eye in there now so there isn't a hole in his head!". And so on, for about half an hour. What the hell am I supposed to say to someone in that situation? How do you respond to something like that? I just quietly said I was sorry, and didn't know what else to do.
I asked Waleed if they ever tried to call the authorities for help whenever anything would happen, and he said that they had tried over and over. That when the settlers would call the army, they would show up in a few minutes, but that when the villagers tried, they would show up hours after the settlers had already left, and when they saw that nothing was happening currently, they would leave. One time he said one of the army people was standing right there smoking a cigarette while the settler was beating someone up, and that other times the army was present while settlers uprooted trees, and didn't do anything to stop them. They were there only for the protection of the settlers. Waleed said that whenever they would try to file a complaint or criminal charges against the settlers with the army, they would tell him that it wasn't their job, and to go talk to the military police. They would go to the military police, and they would tell them to go talk to the army. They were never able to get even a single settler held responsible (the only time some of the settlers were brought to trial was when they beat up and broke the nose of a man named David Nir, an Israeli businessman from Tel Aviv who was there as part of an Israeli peace group, but all the charges were dismissed).
Although the level of physical violence has decreased, there is still a lot of bullshit going on. According to one of the international volunteers I was staying with, one time the settlers came and started bathing themselves and their dogs in the village drinking water well, armed to the teeth of course. Death threats and verbal harassment are commonplace. The settlers used to have a giant search-light that they would shine on people's houses in the middle of the night, looking through their windows, although when I was there they only had giant stationary spotlights that illuminated the village. Israeli soldiers go on patrol through the town and the fields a couple times a day, and although the villagers aren't afraid of them at all in terms of physical abuse, they get out sometimes and take a bunch of pictures of everything. According to one of the international volunteers there, that is so that when anything new is built, even something as small as a goat shed with a tarp on the roof, they can issue a demolition order. He pointed to some rubble, which is what was left of a house one of the older sons of our neighbor had tried to build for himself. He was also presented with a bill for the cost of demolishing his own house. The son has since moved into a nearby city to try to start a life for himself. According to the volunteer, the villagers, with assistance from the volunteers, had tried to get permits to build, but they are always ignored. They were not even able to receive permits to repair houses that were damaged by settlers. And when the villagers build anyway, a bulldozer can show up at any time and demolish what they've built. When you look up around the ridge surrounding the town and see all the sheds and houses that the settlers have built over the years, at the vineyards they are now planting on the hills they confiscated from the Palestinians, at the chicken sheds that are apparently one of the biggest sources of organic free-range eggs in Israel, the contrast is particularly striking. I have heard that occasionally Israel demolishes these illegally built outposts of settlers, but it is definitely not happening in this case. Also, the villagers need to apply for a special permit to go on any of their own lands that border the settlement outposts (which are illegal even under Israeli law). The week before I had arrived, they had been given three days to pick in that area. According to Waleed, he would need two full weeks to pick all his olives there, but 3 days was all they were given. In years past, after the permit ended and the army forced them out of the area, the settlers came down and picked the majority of the olives that were left for themselves. This year, international volunteers initially went with the villagers into the permit zone to make sure they were not harassed, but at the request of an angry Israeli settler, the army cleared them from the area, as well as pushed back the borders of where the Palestinians were allowed to pick. After that particular incident, according to one of the international volunteers, one of the Israeli soldiers came up to him and apologized, and said that if it was up to him he would let the internationals stay and let the villagers pick wherever they wanted. The volunteer said he scoffed at him and asked him why he didn't raise his voice and do something about it, but even though this guy is aiding and perpetuating what I can't see as anything other than a racist and colonialistic situation, I can't help but feel just a little bit sorry for him, if he doesn't believe in what he is probably being forced to do by his superiors. Incidentally, while I was researching an organization an Israeli friend of mine is working for, I found the testimonial of a soldier who was sent to jail for refusing to serve protecting the settlements, and it turned out he was one of the soldiers stationed at Itamar, you can read his letter here: http://kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=33069. I don't think most Israelis support the creation and expansion of settlements, or many of the things settlers do. But the overwhelming majority do look the other way at it, or minimize their importance, and don't recognize the settlements as one of the major sources of conflict. This is just one little town, this kind of stuff is happening all over the West Bank. If you want a super in-depth account of what is happening in Yanoun from a former international volunteer, go to http://www.kirkensnodhjelp.no/Documents/Kirkens%20N%C3%B8dhjelp/Geografiske%20filer/Midt%C3%B8sten/Living%20with%20settlers.pdf. Also, if you want to listen to some of the interviews I translated for a French friend of mine who is some kind of journalist, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8g01rRVoTA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdCW-QqnCFo. There is one point in there where I ask Waleed if he thinks that the international presence helps a little bit, and he responds "No, not a little bit. A lot! Before the internationals came the settlers would come here EVERY DAY and harass us, but now we are ok."
I have read about these kinds of things happening, but to hear it told from people who have experienced it first hand is something else entirely. These people are living in a situation where Israel, the state that controls the area, has controlled the area for the past 40 years, and will continue to control the area for the foreseeable future refuses to give them any kind of police protection whatsoever, forcibly denies them access to land they legally own, and refuses to issue building permits and then demolishes homes if they are built anyway, while the settlers, simply because they happen to have been born Jewish, have an army unit stationed nearby for their protection, are not prosecuted for assaulting Palestinians even when death is involved, are allowed to forcibly confiscate land from Palestinians and designate areas where the Palestinians are not allowed to go, even if those places are private Palestinian property, and are allowed to keep building outposts, despite the fact that they are technically against Israeli law, without fear of having them demolished. I have my own opinion of what that constitutes, I will let you decide for yourself.
---------------------
Half my experience in Yanoun was extremely intense, but the rest was very enjoyable. I spent a couple days picking olives with the villagers. They work sun-up to sun-down, it is pretty tiring work. But I think I like manual labor, working up a sweat and just joking around with everyone around you all day while you work. All the villagers cousins come in from the nearby city, and they all pick olives as a big extended family, from little children to old women. Every few hours you take a 10 minute break for tea, and everyone just lays back under the shade of a tree and tells jokes or throws olives at someone who isn't looking, or wrestles someone or whatever. Both the adults and children, it seems their favorite thing to do is to point at someone and say to me "Him, he is... crazy!" in English and then they all crack up laughing;) At the end of the last day I was there we loaded all the bags of olives onto a tractor the U.N. had donated and drove into the little nearby city of Aqraba (isn't that the name of the town in 'Aladdin'?) and went to this garage with a big olive press machine there. A whole lot of other farmers from other farming villages were waiting in line, and everyone shared tea and traded stories. The press machine grinds up the entire olive, seed and all, and then presses it to get out the oil. It comes out dark green, but they tell me that after the silt settles you have pure yellow olive oil. The rest of the stuff, the ground up pits, gets thrown out this shoot out the back of the garage, and the tractor pulls up to collect it. Apparently they use it instead of firewood when it gets cold. Anyway the stuff is soft and mushy and a tiny bit oily, and the little kids would play in it when no one was looking and make little snowballs to throw at each other (and me;) until the adults would yell at them to stop. Then an adult would make a snowball and peg a little kid when he wasn't looking and it would start all over again;) I went roaming around the little area around the press and met a lot of people, once they found out I was a foreigner I even got a little crowd around me asking me all kinds of weird questions, it was pretty fun. These people are really just PEOPLE, not some stereotyped violent fanatic savages. There may be some cultural differences, and they may seem large when you can't speak to them, but underneath they are really just people, not all that different from you or me...
Picking olives with these people and listening to their stories for a couple days was one of the most intense experiences of my life. I'm not really even sure where to begin. I asked someone how it all started, and he pointed to the ridge of a hill that is now covered in sheds and prefabricated homes from the settlement. He said one day 10 or 15 years ago, a tent showed up on the ridge. A year or so later, a shed, and then electricity wires. Then the settlers started coming onto their land. Settlers would come into their village with submachine guns, yelling that all the land was theirs, that it belonged to their ancestors. They uprooted many of the olive trees and moved them back to the settlement, claiming that their ancestors had planted them and that they therefor belonged to them. Waleed, one of the people I got to know best, told me how when they were shepherding their sheep and goats on the hillside, settlers would come down and beat them and tell them that the hills were now theirs, and that the villagers weren't allowed there anymore. He told me that because the hills were where the villagers mostly took their sheep and goats to graze, they had to sell more than 3/4 of their flock, which is a big deal for people living at the subsistence level. Others told me how they had been shot at picking in their olive trees, on land they owned, that the settlers now claimed as their own. Waleed's uncle had been shot in the leg while running away from settlers who had approached him while he had been picking his olives, on land he legally owns, on one of the hills. People told me stories about how the settlers used to break into peoples houses and beat them up in their own homes in front of their families and children, how they destroyed property and fields, burnt down the electricity generator the U.N. had donated (and threatened to burn it down again if it was rebuilt), etc, etc.
I was listening to stories like this all weekend. Probably the most intense interaction I had was when I was when I came across a small family of a couple of young men, a small girl, and their 80 year old grandmother. I was trying to talk to one of the young men about what had happened in the village, and what he thought the solution was for both the village and for Palestine in general. The old woman kept interrupting, red in the face and on the verge of tears, shouting things like "they killed my grandson! All he was doing was herding his sheep! Why would they do that? He wasn't hurting anybody. He was such a nice boy, he had just been engaged, he had his whole life in front of him." Five minutes later, "they beat up my neighbor! They beat him so hard his left eye fell out of his head! He has to put a glass eye in there now so there isn't a hole in his head!". And so on, for about half an hour. What the hell am I supposed to say to someone in that situation? How do you respond to something like that? I just quietly said I was sorry, and didn't know what else to do.
I asked Waleed if they ever tried to call the authorities for help whenever anything would happen, and he said that they had tried over and over. That when the settlers would call the army, they would show up in a few minutes, but that when the villagers tried, they would show up hours after the settlers had already left, and when they saw that nothing was happening currently, they would leave. One time he said one of the army people was standing right there smoking a cigarette while the settler was beating someone up, and that other times the army was present while settlers uprooted trees, and didn't do anything to stop them. They were there only for the protection of the settlers. Waleed said that whenever they would try to file a complaint or criminal charges against the settlers with the army, they would tell him that it wasn't their job, and to go talk to the military police. They would go to the military police, and they would tell them to go talk to the army. They were never able to get even a single settler held responsible (the only time some of the settlers were brought to trial was when they beat up and broke the nose of a man named David Nir, an Israeli businessman from Tel Aviv who was there as part of an Israeli peace group, but all the charges were dismissed).
Although the level of physical violence has decreased, there is still a lot of bullshit going on. According to one of the international volunteers I was staying with, one time the settlers came and started bathing themselves and their dogs in the village drinking water well, armed to the teeth of course. Death threats and verbal harassment are commonplace. The settlers used to have a giant search-light that they would shine on people's houses in the middle of the night, looking through their windows, although when I was there they only had giant stationary spotlights that illuminated the village. Israeli soldiers go on patrol through the town and the fields a couple times a day, and although the villagers aren't afraid of them at all in terms of physical abuse, they get out sometimes and take a bunch of pictures of everything. According to one of the international volunteers there, that is so that when anything new is built, even something as small as a goat shed with a tarp on the roof, they can issue a demolition order. He pointed to some rubble, which is what was left of a house one of the older sons of our neighbor had tried to build for himself. He was also presented with a bill for the cost of demolishing his own house. The son has since moved into a nearby city to try to start a life for himself. According to the volunteer, the villagers, with assistance from the volunteers, had tried to get permits to build, but they are always ignored. They were not even able to receive permits to repair houses that were damaged by settlers. And when the villagers build anyway, a bulldozer can show up at any time and demolish what they've built. When you look up around the ridge surrounding the town and see all the sheds and houses that the settlers have built over the years, at the vineyards they are now planting on the hills they confiscated from the Palestinians, at the chicken sheds that are apparently one of the biggest sources of organic free-range eggs in Israel, the contrast is particularly striking. I have heard that occasionally Israel demolishes these illegally built outposts of settlers, but it is definitely not happening in this case. Also, the villagers need to apply for a special permit to go on any of their own lands that border the settlement outposts (which are illegal even under Israeli law). The week before I had arrived, they had been given three days to pick in that area. According to Waleed, he would need two full weeks to pick all his olives there, but 3 days was all they were given. In years past, after the permit ended and the army forced them out of the area, the settlers came down and picked the majority of the olives that were left for themselves. This year, international volunteers initially went with the villagers into the permit zone to make sure they were not harassed, but at the request of an angry Israeli settler, the army cleared them from the area, as well as pushed back the borders of where the Palestinians were allowed to pick. After that particular incident, according to one of the international volunteers, one of the Israeli soldiers came up to him and apologized, and said that if it was up to him he would let the internationals stay and let the villagers pick wherever they wanted. The volunteer said he scoffed at him and asked him why he didn't raise his voice and do something about it, but even though this guy is aiding and perpetuating what I can't see as anything other than a racist and colonialistic situation, I can't help but feel just a little bit sorry for him, if he doesn't believe in what he is probably being forced to do by his superiors. Incidentally, while I was researching an organization an Israeli friend of mine is working for, I found the testimonial of a soldier who was sent to jail for refusing to serve protecting the settlements, and it turned out he was one of the soldiers stationed at Itamar, you can read his letter here: http://kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=33069. I don't think most Israelis support the creation and expansion of settlements, or many of the things settlers do. But the overwhelming majority do look the other way at it, or minimize their importance, and don't recognize the settlements as one of the major sources of conflict. This is just one little town, this kind of stuff is happening all over the West Bank. If you want a super in-depth account of what is happening in Yanoun from a former international volunteer, go to http://www.kirkensnodhjelp.no/Documents/Kirkens%20N%C3%B8dhjelp/Geografiske%20filer/Midt%C3%B8sten/Living%20with%20settlers.pdf. Also, if you want to listen to some of the interviews I translated for a French friend of mine who is some kind of journalist, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8g01rRVoTA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdCW-QqnCFo. There is one point in there where I ask Waleed if he thinks that the international presence helps a little bit, and he responds "No, not a little bit. A lot! Before the internationals came the settlers would come here EVERY DAY and harass us, but now we are ok."
I have read about these kinds of things happening, but to hear it told from people who have experienced it first hand is something else entirely. These people are living in a situation where Israel, the state that controls the area, has controlled the area for the past 40 years, and will continue to control the area for the foreseeable future refuses to give them any kind of police protection whatsoever, forcibly denies them access to land they legally own, and refuses to issue building permits and then demolishes homes if they are built anyway, while the settlers, simply because they happen to have been born Jewish, have an army unit stationed nearby for their protection, are not prosecuted for assaulting Palestinians even when death is involved, are allowed to forcibly confiscate land from Palestinians and designate areas where the Palestinians are not allowed to go, even if those places are private Palestinian property, and are allowed to keep building outposts, despite the fact that they are technically against Israeli law, without fear of having them demolished. I have my own opinion of what that constitutes, I will let you decide for yourself.
---------------------
Half my experience in Yanoun was extremely intense, but the rest was very enjoyable. I spent a couple days picking olives with the villagers. They work sun-up to sun-down, it is pretty tiring work. But I think I like manual labor, working up a sweat and just joking around with everyone around you all day while you work. All the villagers cousins come in from the nearby city, and they all pick olives as a big extended family, from little children to old women. Every few hours you take a 10 minute break for tea, and everyone just lays back under the shade of a tree and tells jokes or throws olives at someone who isn't looking, or wrestles someone or whatever. Both the adults and children, it seems their favorite thing to do is to point at someone and say to me "Him, he is... crazy!" in English and then they all crack up laughing;) At the end of the last day I was there we loaded all the bags of olives onto a tractor the U.N. had donated and drove into the little nearby city of Aqraba (isn't that the name of the town in 'Aladdin'?) and went to this garage with a big olive press machine there. A whole lot of other farmers from other farming villages were waiting in line, and everyone shared tea and traded stories. The press machine grinds up the entire olive, seed and all, and then presses it to get out the oil. It comes out dark green, but they tell me that after the silt settles you have pure yellow olive oil. The rest of the stuff, the ground up pits, gets thrown out this shoot out the back of the garage, and the tractor pulls up to collect it. Apparently they use it instead of firewood when it gets cold. Anyway the stuff is soft and mushy and a tiny bit oily, and the little kids would play in it when no one was looking and make little snowballs to throw at each other (and me;) until the adults would yell at them to stop. Then an adult would make a snowball and peg a little kid when he wasn't looking and it would start all over again;) I went roaming around the little area around the press and met a lot of people, once they found out I was a foreigner I even got a little crowd around me asking me all kinds of weird questions, it was pretty fun. These people are really just PEOPLE, not some stereotyped violent fanatic savages. There may be some cultural differences, and they may seem large when you can't speak to them, but underneath they are really just people, not all that different from you or me...
Travels in Israel and Palestine!
Hey whats up everyone! So I've been out here a few days, and, as promised, am trying to write to everyone / start a blog, and figured this was the easiest way to do it. If you guys want to keep getting these just subscribe to my notes I guess, or just look at them now and then, otherwise just ignore the spam;) Anyway, so its late and I'm feeling way too lazy, so I'm pretty much copy and pasting an email I wrote to Carole when I first got here for this first post, here it goes:
Hey! So i just made it to the school, and just got into my apartment! I like my other roomates / other volunteers, they are all pretty cool, especially this quirky 60 year old Japanese man who keeps yelling out "Your mother's pussy!" in Arabic, and is really proud of himself for knowing how to say it;) It was definitely an adventure getting here though, the information in the guidebook was completely wrong, I got questioned for 5 hours at the border, and got into Jerusalem at 1am, and just walked around the old city checking it out in the middle of the night (with$500 in my pocket which probably wasn't very smart;) It was mostly all arabs in the old city, everybody just assumes I'm palestinian until I open my mouth, then they are just confused;) they go "are you.... Egyptian???" because I speak with the Egyptian accent, but I do it badly so they are even more confused. But they are cool and helpful and all want to talk and all that. The tension in the old city is pretty intense. I went to the wailing wall and saw a bunch of orthodox jews praying, and then I went out into the street and hung out with this group of Palestinian teenagers, they said they had all been to prison and told me some crazy stories about being harrassed by cops and soldiers all the time. And they were sitting outside the door to the big mosque there, and any time a jew would try to look at the door they would taunt him and tell him to go away and that it was theirs and he couldnt go in. Its not all like that though, some of the Israeli security gaurds were cool, and even the guy who interogated me, even though he accused me of being a liar and thought I was a homeless bum and didnt believe me that I worked at Google and had cash, or that I lived in a bus, and thought I was a complete weirdo (I was talking to him for hours so I pretty much ended up telling him my life story), and thought that Elie Sherman and Oren Ofer didnt exist and accused me of making them up, after this guy told me he had just found out that I was lying and should tell him the whole story (which I did because when I thought about it there were so many simple ways he could have known), after I told this guy that I was going to the West Bank and that I was going to teach children, he just gave this sigh and gave me this look and said "why would you want to lie about that? Volunteering with kids isnt a crime, thats not something you need to hide." Look at that run-on sentence, and I'm supposed to be here teaching English;) And this one gaurd in the old city taught me how to say "Boka Tov" and "Layla Tov" (good morning / good night in Hebrew), and was super friendly, even though he did have his hand on his gun the whole time;)
Anyway I start my first class at Al-Ayn refugee camp at 7am tomorrow morning! So I need to pass ouuuuut I am exhausted, I will talk to you all later!
Hey! So i just made it to the school, and just got into my apartment! I like my other roomates / other volunteers, they are all pretty cool, especially this quirky 60 year old Japanese man who keeps yelling out "Your mother's pussy!" in Arabic, and is really proud of himself for knowing how to say it;) It was definitely an adventure getting here though, the information in the guidebook was completely wrong, I got questioned for 5 hours at the border, and got into Jerusalem at 1am, and just walked around the old city checking it out in the middle of the night (with$500 in my pocket which probably wasn't very smart;) It was mostly all arabs in the old city, everybody just assumes I'm palestinian until I open my mouth, then they are just confused;) they go "are you.... Egyptian???" because I speak with the Egyptian accent, but I do it badly so they are even more confused. But they are cool and helpful and all want to talk and all that. The tension in the old city is pretty intense. I went to the wailing wall and saw a bunch of orthodox jews praying, and then I went out into the street and hung out with this group of Palestinian teenagers, they said they had all been to prison and told me some crazy stories about being harrassed by cops and soldiers all the time. And they were sitting outside the door to the big mosque there, and any time a jew would try to look at the door they would taunt him and tell him to go away and that it was theirs and he couldnt go in. Its not all like that though, some of the Israeli security gaurds were cool, and even the guy who interogated me, even though he accused me of being a liar and thought I was a homeless bum and didnt believe me that I worked at Google and had cash, or that I lived in a bus, and thought I was a complete weirdo (I was talking to him for hours so I pretty much ended up telling him my life story), and thought that Elie Sherman and Oren Ofer didnt exist and accused me of making them up, after this guy told me he had just found out that I was lying and should tell him the whole story (which I did because when I thought about it there were so many simple ways he could have known), after I told this guy that I was going to the West Bank and that I was going to teach children, he just gave this sigh and gave me this look and said "why would you want to lie about that? Volunteering with kids isnt a crime, thats not something you need to hide." Look at that run-on sentence, and I'm supposed to be here teaching English;) And this one gaurd in the old city taught me how to say "Boka Tov" and "Layla Tov" (good morning / good night in Hebrew), and was super friendly, even though he did have his hand on his gun the whole time;)
Anyway I start my first class at Al-Ayn refugee camp at 7am tomorrow morning! So I need to pass ouuuuut I am exhausted, I will talk to you all later!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)