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.
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.
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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 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.
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.
You had the good sense to see what was coming – the security forces in cooperation with the judicial system of Israel decided to take steps against, what they call the “strategic threat”, of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and to do away with their leaders. They want to return us to the days of martial law – to fear, to the permits, to the dark cells of the security forces, to the era in which only collaborators could claim at least some of their rights.
Inside the 1967 borders, Israel was not yet employing the methods it now uses in the occupied territories. It did not execute people without trial, condone mass arrests, cause starvation, or destroy infrastructures. Now, as “the only democracy in the Middle East”, Israel claims to function according to just and lawful means.
But “the law” is the security forces and the police; the judicial advisers to the government and the judicial system are its full-time employees. Your sentence was passed even before the accusations against you were announced, and you have no way of establishing your innocence before these war criminals. They speak a language different from ours – in their eyes, anyone who is against war and aspires to the peaceful coexistence of two nations is classified as a criminal, and persecuted. You cannot conduct a political struggle from the witness box. They will not allow you to insist that you are fighting for both nations. In the courts of the police state, they will tie a rope around your neck.
The agonizing failure of the Israeli Army against the Lebanese Resistance maddens them. In the face of such a defeated and cruel establishment we must act wisely, intelligently. After all, it is more sensible for a freedom fighter who is cut off by a military unit to withdraw, or to escape, and to wait for a more favorable time to return fire – and here I am not speaking of live fire, but of the “fire” of thought and the written word.
Azmi my brother – THEY ARE AFRAID. The terrified commanders and their soldiers are afraid. I encounter them frequently in Jenin Refugee Camp where they fire on children who dare to glance from an upstairs window, or from round the corner.
Apparently you represent a ‘strategic threat’ to the “Jewish State”. It seems that your vision of a ‘state for all its citizens’ is a threat to the actual existence of Israel, a country that has been created out of force, control and discrimination of another nation. Ideas of equality or of the coexistence that the Balad Party represents, deprive the government of Israel of the main ideological elements it uses to justify its existence – power, despotism, segregation, racism, barriers and fences.
Azmi my brother, you did not run away!
You made clever use of conditions and circumstances, and managed to evade the execution squad with which the ‘judicial system’ confronted you. As a seasoned warrior you dodged the bullets of the security forces and went underground. And it makes no difference whether it was to the caves of the Galilee or to Qatar, Dubai, or Cairo.
Many will urge you to return. Many others would rejoice to see you rotting in the cells of the security police. There will be others who would sacrifice you – your courage concealing their helplessness and fear. All sorts of mud-slingers will sprout like mushrooms after rain, insisting that leaders do not abandon their flock. They will call you a coward and many other things. Ignore all their remarks about ‘courage and sacrifice’. Do not listen to your political opponents at home, who will call for stringing you up in the Town Square. Carry on with your struggle from abroad, like so many illustrious others. What is exile if not sacrifice!
And be assured – the day will come when you can return, borne on the shoulders of your comrades.
We have always praised the freedom fighters who succeeded in escaping the dungeons of the security forces. We rejoice when guerilla fighters are released by their comrades from behind prison bars. We applaud your successes in this puppet government and in revealing its true face.
You did not escape from arrest. You avoided being executed without trial – “targeted elimination” in the local jargon. Bless you for that!
