Author: ISM Media Group - Page 321 - International Solidarity Movement

The Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project

Ei: Bringing the discussion home: The Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project
Andrew Ford Lyons, 1 May 2007

Possibly noteworthy was that more than 300 people attended the standing-room only public hearing on the project. People waited outside the building to get in to comment and observe. Forty-eight people spoke in support, 24 people expressed opposition. Hundreds of letters and emails flooded the city on the topic. Numerous phone calls also came in, according to council members.

What remains worth exploring, examining and scrutinizing was why the city council vote went as it did, and what was said by citizens during the open hearing on the matter. For anyone seriously studying current American popular opinion on the Middle East, a trove has been collected in Olympia during the last couple of months. Collect it, save it, dissect it with a scalpel.

April has been a punishing month in the U.S. for endeavors that recognize Palestinians as human beings. A sister city request failed in Olympia. Eighteen photographs in an exhibit featuring work by children from the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank were stolen from a Boston public library. Meanwhile, scare tactics and overt intimidation were once again employed, this time in South Florida, to coerce a theater company into canceling the play My Name is Rachel Corrie.

As an active participant in the Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project nearly since it began in late 2003, I have my own preference as to how things should have gone in Olympia. The scant headlines run by Olympia’s daily newspaper and picked up by the Associated Press and Reuters paint our attempt at official recognition as a failure. Fair enough. But on the other side of the world, in a battered, cramped town where most the inhabitants remain refugees from some other part of Palestine, Khaled Nasrallah saw it differently. “You really succeeded,” he wrote in an email after watching the digital video with others in Rafah. “It was my pleasure to see all of you in the meeting.”

I have to take Khaled’s view. People who live through the kinds of things that have happened in Rafah know something about recognizing the fleeting instances in our lives where some degree of victory can be found. His family’s home was destroyed by an armored and armed Caterpillar D9 bulldozer for the sole reason that the military it represented wanted to expand a buffer zone and was (in violation of international law) demolishing all the houses in the area. In one attempt by the military to destroy Khaled’s home, Olympia native Rachel Corrie was killed.

When people in Rafah have stood up to demand recognition of their right to exist, let alone their humanity, they’ve historically faced guns, bombs, fighter jets, tanks, sniper towers and bulldozers. Considering that, I think we in the U.S. can take a few wagging tongues, each alloted three minutes of microphone time in a city hall. And if it gives our friends in Rafah some sort of comfort to see us confront and grapple with the creeping phobias and racist stereotypes prevalent in our own communities, then he’s right, we found some measure of success.

After the vote against the sister city project we received a few emails. One was from a Eugene, Oregon, resident who said he’d like to know “what was at play when the City of Olympia voted against it,” and asked, “How can that be: in the home area of Rachel Corrie??!!”
In the end … our critics had fewer people in their ranks, but they were scarier

It’s worth mentioning that a group of people in Madison, Wisconsin, tried to take their sister city project with Rafah official a couple of years previously and were met with even more hostility and ultimately a negative vote from their city council. Why does this happen? In the end, and in both cases, our critics had fewer people in their ranks, but they were scarier.

Rather than recapping the play-by-play here, I’ll just tell you where to find the main criticisms and our responses. You can see them at the project’s website (see link at the end of this article). Members of the sister city project authored a document in the form of a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) in response to letters sent to the city council before the vote. As no one speaking against the proposal that evening offered anything new, these responses stand firm. The city council video (link provided below) also contains numerous articulate rebuttals to the critic’s claims at the meeting.

Instead, I’d like to focus on the general perceptions stated by opponents of the project and the resulting vote. What people in Rafah saw, via the Internet, was nothing new. It was yet another example of how there is really no way allowed for them to connect with the outside world. Palestinians are told that they must follow certain rules before they can be apart of the global community. What these rules are seems to shift depending on the situation. The Israeli military also has rules it’s supposed follow vis-a-vis international law, but these folks don’t seem to pay much mind to that.

The rules shifted in Olympia on 17 April. For the last year and a half, project participants in Rafah and Olympia have worked to meet both the letter and spirit of the requirements regarding sister city relationships with both Sister Cities International and city regulations. As Olympia City Management Assistant Diamatris Winston and Sister Cities International pointed out, we met those requirements. Some letter writers and public speakers, without offering any sort of findings to the contrary, simply ruled that we didn’t. With its vote, the Olympia City council sided with these people.

A number of speakers in opposition complained that the project lacked an Israeli component, stating that they’d support one that included an Israeli town as well as some “compatible city in the West Bank or in Gaza,” indicating that they would prefer that this were an Israeli sister city project that could, perhaps, include some token recognition of a Palestinian entity. In short: if we changed the name and entire scope of our project and told our participants in Rafah to help us find a better town than theirs, preferably one in Israel, then they would endorse it. The Olympia City Council sided with these people.

There are currently three officially recognized sister city relationships between U.S. and Palestinian communities. In one instance, the partners in a project to bind the West Bank town of Bethlehem with Burlington, Vermont, worked to include a relationship with Arad, Israel. There are about 40 official sister city relationships in all between Israeli and American cities. No one is demanding in these circumstances that a Palestinian component must be required. But in Olympia, critics declared that official recognition of any Palestinian community is entirely dependent trilateral relationship with an Israeli community. We offered to help out and lend our knowledge of the process to anyone interested in organizing a sister city relationship with an Israeli town, and that our projects could work on several joint events once they got up and running. This wasn’t enough. Again, double standards are nothing new for Palestinians who attempt to play by our rules.

Aside from the fact that no one in the entire span of our project’s existence has ever approached us about establishing an Israeli sister city (and no one has since the council meeting), there is an offensive element to this notion. It insinuates that Palestinians must only be considered in light of their Israeli neighbors in every aspect of life, as though they are not deserving of the same rights of identity and self-determination as anyone else. That’s what our critics brought to the table and to which the Oympia City Council agreed.

In the public hearing, speakers used the word “divisive” even more often than they dropped “terrorists” or “Hamas.” After four years of open, public existence in the community, either organizing, sponsoring or cosponsoring events that have attracted hundreds of individuals, the sister city project suddenly became a divisive issue in the last month and a half, mostly by people who hadn’t given our project a single thought one month before, and really won’t one month later.

I’ve been giving this notion of divisiveness some thought in recent days. Like my friend Khaled in Rafah, I wasn’t able to be at the city council meeting in person. I watched it via the little three-by-two-inch video screen on the city’s website. I’m working on a contract with an organization in Morocco that encourages cross-cultural exchanges between the U.S. and Middle East and North African nations. It was weird watching people I knew in my hometown make their cases on that small screen, but it gave me some idea of how the rest of the world would see the debate that took place there.

It’s been a tense couple of weeks here in Morocco. During the weekend before last a suicide bombing shook Casablanca. These bombers — alleged to be loosely tied with an organization calling itself “Al-Qaida of the Islamic Maghreb” in nearby Algeria — tend to target local community centers, secular organizations, internet cafés, places where men and women and boys and girls of any background can congregate.

Another like-minded group seems to have emerged in Gaza, emboldened by the chaos, increased poverty and isolation that U.S. and Israeli sanctions and the confiscation of public funds have brought. This other group, “The Sword of Islam,” seems to be targeting Palestinian community centers, secular organizations, Internet cafés, places where men and women and boys and girls of any background can congregate. The goal these groups seem to be striving for is isolationism and segregation, to make people fearful of places that connect them to the outside world or to one another. Through fear, it is sometimes said, control can be exerted.

In Rafah, the Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project fosters communication and people-to-people bonds among men and women of all faiths in an open manner. Our organization supports the Rachel Corrie Youth and Cultural Center and a number of other community centers in Rafah where men and women and boys and girls of any background can congregate, use the Internet to reach the world outside the prison-like conditions of Gaza, study, create art and connect.
Yet I still agree with Khaled; a degree of success was achieved.

The people in Olympia speaking out against official status for this sister city relationship chimed in on some familiar themes. They warned against open communications between people and in favor of mistrust, which ultimately leads toward the same path: isolation, segregation and fear. And the Olympia City Council sided with these people.

Over the years I’ve developed a sort of inkling that if the road map to any sort of lasting peace in the Middle East actually did include a detour through the United States, it would find a more suitable route through Olympia, Washington, rather than Washington, D.C. There’s nothing peaceful about the latter. Spend a day on D.C.’s Capitol Hill and another amid dense thickets of pine trees of Olympia’s Capitol Forest and then tell me which one gave you a greater sense of peace.

But the road map should wind through more towns than Olympia. The conversation that took place was too important. It needs to happen elsewhere and it needs to be archived. In readily available public records and video now sits a time capsule from 17 April 2007, of public sentiment in Olympia, Wash., on the Middle East. It’s there for anyone to study one year, five years or fifty years from now. The process should be repeated everywhere. I would encourage people in towns across the United States to find connections with Palestinian communities. Develop the bonds and personal connections. Visit their homes and invite them to yours. Then, when the paperwork and documentation has all been laid out, take it to your city council for official recognition and see who shows up and says what. The results will say far more about the citizens in our country than they will about those in Palestine.

Andrew Ford Lyons is president of the Board of Directors in Olympia for The Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project and a former media coordinator for the International Solidarity Movement. His opinions are his own. He maintains a blog and can be reached at andy@orscp.org.

(Video): Al Hadidiya, Before the demolitions

Before the demolitions
by the ISM Media Crew 1 May 2007

Background:

Residents in Al Hadidiya prepare to Resist the Demolition of their Homes

The residents of Al Hadidya have been awaiting army action since April 21st when a court ruling came into effect ordering them to leave and for the demolition of their homes. Al Hadidya is a collection of Bedouin Camps in an isolated area of countryside, deemed a military area by Israeli occupying forces, close to the illegal Israeli colony of Ro’i. International activists have maintained a constant presence in the area since Saturday and are planning to resist the demolitions.

When internationals arrived in Al Hadidya many of the villagers were in the process of moving their tents to an area three kilometres away. The new camp is situated next to a fenced off settler water pumping station but Palestinians are forced to travel to Ein al Shibli by tractor to fetch water. The new camp is a further 3km away across rough terrain from this water supply, meaning an addional hours journey by tractor a day for some families.

Those families who have been forced to move are afraid that the army will issue them with another demolition order. Residents say that there is now nowhere else to go and that they will be forced out of the area if this happens.

Several families have chosen to stay in the ir homes despite the danger of demolition. One local farmer has said that he will not move and that even if they demolish his home he will rebuild again on the same spot.

Most farmers in the area have had their homes demolished two or three times since in the last five years.

One resident, describing the previous time the Israeli military had come to demolish his house said ‘they came with ten vehicles, fifty soldiers and bulldozers to demolish my tent. During the demolition several of my sheep were run over by military vehicles, when my wife tried to protect them she was assaulted’

Despite the threat of violence villagers will not give up their land, where many have lived since before 1967, and will stay to resist the demolitions and to rebuild again.

The Israeli policy of house demolitions in the Jordan Valley is intended to ethnically cleanse the region by marginalising Palestinian access to land and pushing Palestinians out of areas where they can retain Jordan Valley IDs. The number of Jordan Valley permits, only given to permanent residents of the area, has significantly decreased since the Intifada while settler domination of the area has increased. 97% of the valley is either militarised, closed to civilians, or controlled by the settlements.

59 Years Ago: Deir Yassin

Remembering Deir Yassin
by Anna Baltzer, 1 May 2007

Um El Fahim town in present-day Israel, home to 48,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel, mostly internal refugees denied services equal to Jews or the right to return to their homes.

59 years ago this month, the militant Zionist Irgun and Stern Gang systematically murdered more than 100 men, women, and children in Deir Yassin. The Palestinian village lay outside the area the UN recommended to be included in a future Jewish State, and the massacre occurred several weeks before the end of the British Mandate, but it was part of a carefully planned and orchestrated process that would induce the flight of 70% of the native population to make way for an ethnically Jewish state.

Deir Yassin was just one of more than 400 Palestinian villages depopulated and destroyed by Jewish forces in 1948 (or shortly before and after). I recently visited the ruins of a Palestinian village called Kafrayn in present-day Israel on a tour with Zochrot, “a group of Israeli citizens [both Jewish and Palestinian] working to raise awareness of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948.”

Our group met in the home of Adnan, a refugee from another village called Lajjun who now lives in Um El Fahim town in Israel. A well-dressed man in his late sixties, Adnan welcomed us into his living room when we asked to hear his story. His grown son brought around fresh strawberries and fancy chocolates before sitting down to translate as his father began to speak:

“I remember Lajjun as if in a dream. I was only seven years old when the men with guns came, but I still remember certain things so clearly. I remember my school, and the name of my teacher. I remember we had a community center for visitors, and the village was very excited because an English ambassador was planning a visit. We worked for weeks renovating the big gardens in anticipation. I remember our village had a strong spring and a sophisticated water system. Israel has succeeded in convincing the world that Palestinians were primitive and uneducated until the Zionists arrived, but that is propaganda. We even had developed agricultural tools like trucks to turn corn. We were well-educated and we had good relations with our Jewish neighbors living in a kibbutz several kilometers away.

Adnan holds a map of his village Lajjun, which he and his family were violently expelled from in 1948. Although they are Israeli citizens, they have never been allowed to return.

“Then the soldiers came. I remember them shooting from atop a mountain, bullets flying over my head as we ran. We fled to a town called Taybi, taking nothing with us – we had no time, and assumed we would be back when the war was over. In Taybi we had to borrow woolen tents to live in. Eventually we found our way to Um El Fahim with thousands of other refugees, and we’ve been here ever since. Our village had 44,000 dunums of agricultural land and they took ever last one of them. We are citizens of Israel, but never allowed to return to our land and our homes nearby. We are refugees in our own state.

“Between 1948 and 1966, Palestinians in Israel lived the way Palestinians now live in the West Bank and Gaza. We were prisoners in our homes in Um El Fahim, under constant curfew, controlled by checkpoints, etc. Although certain restrictions have been lifted, as non-Jews we are still generally refused from more than 93% of the land in Israel, owned by the state or the Jewish National Fund. That includes my land, my village. They’ve surrounded it with a fence and won’t even let us go pray in the mosque, one of the only structures still standing. The mosque belongs to the nearest kibbutz now, so Jewish kibbutzniks can visit it when they please.

“How can Israel call itself a democracy when I cannot go to my land simply because I am a different ethnicity from my old Jewish neighbors? What kind of a democracy is this where political parties can’t challenge the Zionist exclusivist framework, but they can challenge the rights of the indigenous population to stay here? Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman came from Russia a few years ago, and now he’s talk about sending Palestinians away, we who’ve been here for hundreds if not thousands of years! The Jewish people know catastrophe and suffering. They work for justice in their own lives… why not in mine?”

Almost all the residents of Um El Fahim are internal refugees from 1948 like Adnan. They live as second-class citizens, receiving fewer services than their Jewish counterparts. Israel spends an average of 4,935 shekels ($1,372) for each Jewish student per year, compared to 862 ($240) per Arab one. In the words of the Israeli parliamentarian Jamal Zahalka, “Israel is a democratic state for its Jewish citizens, and a Jewish state for its Arab citizens.”

Driving around with Nakba survivors trying to find villages that no longer exist.

Several elderly Um El Fahim residents accompanied us on our tour to Kafrayn. It was a strange thing, driving around in a bus looking for a village that no longer exists. Before we’d reached Kafrayn, one elderly Palestinian named Muneeb jumped up and began motioning outside the window: “That’s it! That’s my village!” I turned to see several hills covered with trees. Like so many others, Muneeb’s village (near Kafrayn) had been emptied of Palestinians and then planted over with fast-growing Jerusalem pines by Zionists who would later brag about “making the desert bloom.”

Muneeb pointed excitedly towards one part of the hill: “That’s where I used to walk to school! And that’s where we’d go to fetch water! And that – that’s where my house was…”

Nakba survivors and their descendants commemorate their destroyed village with Zochrot.

Suddenly Muneeb’s voice cracked and he looked down, embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have come here today,” he confessed after he’s regained his composure. “It’s too emotional. You were here thousands of years ago and you miss your land,” he spoke to the Jews in our group, “I was here fifty years ago and I miss my land.”

What most struck me about our drive was how bare everything was. Nobody was living in Muneeb or Adnan’s villages, or anywhere near them. Their villages had been turned into forests, military bases, and grazing land, controlled by kibbutzim sometimes many miles away. One Israeli on the tour explained to me that Israel typically develops large land-intensive projects to maintain control over empty areas where it doesn’t want Palestinians to settle. When we arrived in Kafrayn, we found several empty fenced off areas. One was labeled “Welcome to military base 105.” Another posting said “Danger: Firing Area – Entrance Forbidden!” A third sign read “Cattle-grazing land.”

“So they let cows live here but not Arabs?” I asked my new friend.

“Cows don’t have nationalist aspirations,” he smiled. “Besides, do you even see any cows around here?” He was right – there were no cows in sight, nor soldiers for that matter.

One common misconception about the Palestinian refugees’ right of return is that its implementation would create a new refugee crisis by displacing most Israelis. In fact, according to Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, a former member of the Palestine National Council and researcher on refugee affairs, “78% of [Jewish Israelis] live in 14% of Israel. The remaining 22% of [Jewish Israelis] live in 86% of Israel’s area, which is Palestinian land. Most of them live in a dozen or so Palestinian towns. A tiny minority lives in Kibbutz… Thus, only 200,000 Jews exploit 17,325 sq. km, which is the home and heritage of 5,248,180 refugees, crammed in camps and denied the right to return home” (See Dr. Abu Sitta’s highly recommended Nakba Map, available HERE.

The issue is not about space, it’s about demographics. Allowing Palestinian refugees to return would threaten the ethnic character of Israel. Rather than being the state of the Jews, it might have to become the state of the people who live in it, some of whom are Jews, some of whom aren’t. But until that happens, the most people like Muneeb and Adnan can look forward to is an occasional tour with Jewish fringe activists every few decades. Some of the Kafrayn expulsion survivors who accompanied our tour had not been back since 1948 – almost 60 years. They wandered around, as if in a dream, pointing out where the old cemetery and school used to be. One survivor, Abu Ghasi, recalled his story for the group:

“We had all heard about the Deir Yassin massacre a few days before, so when the Zionist forces arrived and began shooting, we all ran. Those of us who survived took shelter in a nearby village, and soon we heard the blasts that we knew were our homes being exploded. After the Jewish forces had moved on, we returned to find our village completely obliterated. It was clear we had no alternative but to move elsewhere, and eventually we settled in Um El Fahim.”

An old woman from the nearest kibbutz spoke with the survivors and all agreed that their communities had gotten along well before the expulsion. They reminisced about a school bus driver they had shared, and the woman confirmed their story about the Zionist forces razing and bombing Kafrayn. The tour ended with a communal lunch between survivors, kibbutzniks, and the rest of the group next to Kafrayn’s old springhouse and main water source.

Nakba survivors and their descendants commemorate their destroyed village with Zochrot.

Somebody had painted “Death to Arabs” in Hebrew on the springhouse before we arrived, but we didn’t let that keep us enjoying the spring’s natural beauty as several people got up to speak. One Jewish woman who had immigrated from Canada to Israel 27 years ago said it took her the first 20 to really understand the truth about Israel’s past and present. One man asked the kibbutznik woman if she thought her Palestinian neighbors should be allowed to return, but she was unwilling to give a straight answer, saying it was complicated. An Israeli man responded to her with frustration, saying, “We are here on 100,000 dunums of empty land. We have in Israel many internal refugees from this land that lies empty. Why not give families just one of their thousands of dunums to let them come back to their homes?”

A Kafrayn survivor addressed the kibbutznik as well: “Look, we all want peace. It’s very easy to say, but peace requires making an effort. I’ve lost 60 years on my land. How can you expect me to live in peace with the Jews if they refuse to give me back my land and my rights?” Another refugee echoed his sentiments: “Peace does not look like one type of person enjoying land and others forbidden. If you want peace, let’s share everything. Let’s live together.”

The Palestinian refugees on our tour are the lucky ones. Unlike the two thirds of Palestinians who are in the diaspora, Adnan, Muneeb, and Abu Ghasi are still here, in historic Palestine. And although not as privileged as Jews, they are at least not living under Occupation like their West Bank and Gaza refugee counterparts. This year, I spent Deir Yassin day in Izbat At Tabib, a village of 226 Palestinians refugees from 1948 whose families resettled in the West Bank and have been facing repeated attempts by Israel to expel them a second time. Almost the entire village is under demolition order to clear the way for settler roads and the Wall.

Not only have the massacres and expulsions of the past never been officially acknowledged, but the Nakba goes on in some form or another for all Palestinian refugees today, whether in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, or the diaspora. This is not ancient history – this is now, this is urgent. The Nakba continues. Deir Yassin continues.

———————————————————————————–

CALL TO ACTION:

The injustices must not remain unrecognized. This year, remember that May 15 is not only Israeli Independence Day… Consider organizing a Nakba Day commemoration event!

Join activists across the country in remembering the Nakba. Here’s a simple, interactive, moving action you can organize in your city. Zochrot, an Israeli activist organization, has already created it, but we need YOU to put it on. Please take a look HERE.

If you are interested, email Hannah at hmermels@hotmail.com with confirmation and questions. She can also tell you if anyone else in your city is already planning a similar event.

In peace,
Anna

Anna Baltzer is a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service in the West Bank and author of the book, Witness in Palestine: Journal of a Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories.

Israel Confiscates 238 Dunums in Jordan Valley

Israel confiscates 238 Dunums from Bardala in Jordan Valley
from Jameel, Brighton-Palestine, 30 April 2007

Receiving the notices of confiscating 238.6 dunums by the Israeli authority yesterday was painful for the residents of Bardala in the north of the Jordan Valley, especially for those who own agricultural land. The notice said, “According to my authority as commander in the Israeli Defense Force in the area of Judea and Samaria, and since I believe the matter is necessary for military reasons … I announce confiscating these lands for military reasons to build the Security Wall.”

Bassam Sawafata, head of the Union of Agricultural Workers in the Federation of Palestinian Worker Unions in Tubas clarified that the tragedy actually began on Feb 16, 2004, the day when an order was issued by the Israeli authorities stating their intentions to build a fence preventing the land owners from working their land.

But residents and owners of the land had not lost hope, as they explored legal options. “Our hope has become true and has been broken at the same time,” one of them said. “After a long wait we received a paper from the International Committee of the Red Cross saying that the owners of the lands were allowed to enter through the gate and plant there. We received this the same day we received the land confiscation notices of our private property.” One of them commented ironically, “It starts as a joke and ends up by destroying us.”

Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the Palestinian Liberation Organization, strongly denounced the Israeli decision describing it as unjustifiable and illegal and that it was part of the Israeli attempt to create new realities and facts, especially in the Jordan Valley, preceding any final peaceful negotiations.

In response to this, letters of protest will be sent to countries actively involved in the peace process, demanding that they pressure Israel to canceling its decision to confiscate the land. As well, the letters will ask the countries to call on Israel to stop these unilateral moves and rearrangements of the demographics of the land without dialogue or negotiation. The letter will affirm that the Palestinians seek a just and comprehensive peace based on the international agreements, which includes a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

IWPS: “We’re Not Moving!” (al Hadidiya)

We’re Not Moving!
from IWPS, 30 April 2007

On April 21st, an Israeli court decision ordering the demolition of all the homes of the approximately 100 inhabitants of the Bedouin hamlet of Al Hadidiya, in the northeast West Bank, came into effect.

An’am (40) and Omar (50) have seven children, of whom the two youngest, boys ages three years and seven months, are at home with them. The family is refusing to leave and move their tent-home and flock of 140 goats and 100 sheep to where the Israeli Civil Administration has suggested.

Al Hadidiya lies in the Jordan Valley, which comprises almost one third of the West Bank’s territory and provides access to the water reserves of the River Jordan. Israel regards it as strategic and a buffer between it and the Arab states to the east, and wants to keep it for itself.

Of the 2,400 square km. of land in the valley, 455.7 square km. is considered “closed military areas,” and 1655.5 square km. is occupied by 24 illegal Israeli settlements. These “facts on the ground” affect the traditional lifestyle of the Jordan Valley Bedouins and deprive them of their livelihoods. The grazing area for their animals is becoming ever smaller, and consequently the flocks are smaller than they used to be. Also, travel restrictions hinder the shepherds from going to neighboring towns to sell cheese, and reduce the number of merchants coming into Bedouin villages to buy sheep or goats. All of this has affected the earnings of Bedouin families.

Yet the confiscation of Palestinian land and the attempt to expel the Bedouins are not the only measures Israel is taking to transform the Jordan Valley into a land without Palestinians. Another element has been the isolation of the Jordan Valley from the rest of the West Bank. Four principal checkpoints separate the valley from the rest of the West Bank, and since March 2005 only those Palestinians whose home address is in the Jordan Valley, as entered in their identity cards, are allowed to pass. This means that some two million Palestinians from the rest of the West Bank cannot enter the Jordan Valley.

An’am and Omar married and settled in Al Hadidiya two decades ago. They have already suffered two home demolitions. This time they are determined to stay in the tent and resist the demolition, even though they face a danger of being arrested. They have invited international solidarity activists to support them and possibly to document the expected brutality of the Israeli occupation, when and if the bulldozers come through. Omar’s words reflect sadness, more than bitterness, when he speaks of the previous demolition some years ago, when several of their sheep were run over by the military vehicles and An’am was assaulted while trying to prevent this. Grazing the herd and producing cheese from the milk is their way of life, and how they provide for their family.

After supper and over a glass of warm, sweet milk, An’am and Omar show family pictures and recount how Arif, their firstborn son, was killed by the Israeli army at the age of 13. He had been throwing stones at soldiers with other boys; the soldiers opened fire on the youngsters and shot Arif in the head. He died six days later, in February 2003. The couple’s four daughters and eldest surviving son attend school in the nearby town of Tammun. An’am and Omar are scared for their two smallest sons, who live with them, and Omar is aware that his resistance to demolition may get him into an Israeli jail, but he repeats they will stay in this house and “will sleep under the stars until they rebuild a new one at the same place.”

As we prepared to leave Al Hadidiya we were given homemade cheese and newly laid eggs. Despite our insistence, An’am and Omar would not take any money; smiling, they kept saying that we were most welcome. The next day, Omar telephoned to ask about our journey home to Haris. They have lost a child to the occupation, the state of Israel has been denying them their basic human rights, such as the right to housing, to earn a livelihood, freedom of movement; bulldozers may come any day to demolish their home; and yet they remain hospitable and think of their guests even after they are gone. We are humbled.