At 7.45am our neighbours, the Abu Haikels, began to pick olives from one of their trees, by which a Israeli military outpost is placed. At the same tree, we filmed settlers stealing olives two weeks ago. The Palestinians had to wait a week for the military and police to agree to let them pick their own olives. The soldiers had promised that they would protect them as they picked. At 8.15am, settlers surrounded the tree. They kicked over a bucket of picked olives and trampled them into the ground.
The international human rights worker (HRW) on the road watching school children spotted what was happening and alerted the rest of the team who then filmed from the apartment. Another HRW went up the hill to the Palestinian’s house. He was able to film from their garden.
The Palestinians asked the settlers to leave their land and a fight ensued. Border Police and soldiers arrived and separated Palestinians from settlers. One Palestinian man and a settler were arrested for fighting. The soldiers formed a line and moved the Palestinians back from the tree. They continued to allow the settlers to trespass and trample the olives.
The Palestinian family called Rabbis for Human Rights, who spoke to the DCO and alerted the press to what was happening.
Eventually the Border Police asked the Palestinians to move off the land. They threatened to arrest the HRW who was filming with them unless she left too, which she did. Once the field was clear the police and soldiers moved the settlers off the land. At this point they allowed the family back and they continued to pick the olives.
Four press photographers arrived too late — two from AFP and two from Reuters.
Once the first tree was finished the family moved around the corner away from the settlement and picked another large tree and two small ones. They finished picking around 4pm. They have picked most of their olives now and were happy with the harvest at the end of the day. However, the family is suffering a huge amount of stress from the continual harassment by settlers which is seriously affecting their health.
At 11:30am three of us went to the olive groves to protect the Palestinian families living in isolated homes among the olive trees.
Two settlers came towards us from the Seyaj House yelling abuse at us “Fuck Jesus. We killed Jesus and we’ll kill you too!” We began filming and kept ourselves between them and the Palestinian homes. They tried to enter Hani’s house where we knew there was a number of small children and two women. We refused to let them up the path and they headed off up into the Abu Haikal olive orchard. We contacted other Human Rights Workers (HRW’s) to make sure that there were people at the Abu Haikal house in case they made their way there.
We did not see them again but as we were checking the olive orchard to see where they had gone we noticed another settler, dressed all in white sat in the far corner of the orchard and either reading or praying. We kept an eye on him. At around 4pm we saw him move towards the Abu Haikal house so another HRW and I climbed up into the orchard to follow him. We began to film him since he was already trespassing on Palestinian land. He began to climb the wall towards the Abu Haikal house but was not able to get over the fence at the top of the wall. He started shouting and waving to the settlers who were on top of the military observation post close by.
After a while he came down and began to move back towards H’s house. The other HRW had moved out of the orchard back to the Hedad House. I was worried about the children there so I moved through the orchard quickly to try to get to Hani’s garden first. Suddenly he started to run and charged straight at me. This was the first aggressive move he had made so I was taken by surprise. I ran towards Hani’s house. To get into Hani’s garden I had to climb down a rough stone wall about a metre high. He reached me as I got there and gave me a savage push over the wall. I hit my head on a stone and fell into the garden. He laughed at me. As I lay there I turned the camera on him and he began to run away. I got up to follow him and shouted to warn the other HRW’s whom he was running towards. There was a group of about 20 settler tourists standing next to the Hedad House listening to a tour guide and he ran through them and down the hill towards Shuhada St.
I could see that my thumb was gashed but not too badly. I could not see the wound on my head but it did not seem to be too bad. My ankle was not too painful. I had a bit of a head ache but I decided to keep working as we had another hour before sunset and there was a large number of tourists hanging around the houses. At one point there were over 80 settlers gathered around a tour guide and stopping at various points in the olive groves. One or two of them attempted to enter Palestinian land but went away when we told them they could not enter.
At around 4:30pm I heard some loud chanting from somewhere near the mosque. I assumed it was the settlers but when I went to investigate I discovered that a large group of Palestinian children were demonstrating against the large settler presence outside their houses. The settlers left and there was no trouble.
At around 9pm one of the other HRW’s in our apartment offered to clean up my head wound for me. She discovered that it was quite deep and long and thought it might need stitches so I went to Al Ahli hospital where I was given 2 stitches. They x-rayed my left ankle and decided it was not broken but probably sprained. They bandaged it up for me and cleaned and dressed the wound on my right thumb.
The demonstration against Israel’s apartheid wall in Bil’in today was resolute, if small. Protesting against the construction of the barrier that is effectively annexing land to Israel for the use of Jewish-only settlements (illegal under international law), the villagers were once again joined by Israeli and international supporters — about 100 demonstrators in total.
Reaching the gate that leads to Bil’in’s agricultural land (now annexed behind the Israeli construction) the protesters were stopped by Israeli soldiers. The troops blocked the gate with a jeep and razor wire, waving their billy-clubs menacingly. Others took a higher position on a ridge of the patrol-road that is part of the construction that the International Court of Justice has ruled illegal.
After a few minutes of chanting against the wall and the Israeli occupation, the demonstrators were attacked by soldiers throwing concussion grenades. A few of the local teenagers retaliated by throwing stones at the well-armed troops. The situation escalated when the soldiers on the ridge started shooting tear-gas canisters and rubber-bullets at the demonstrators, most of whom retreated.
Falling back to the village proper, some of the international demonstrators observed soldiers occupying the roof of a Palestinian home, using it as a vantage point from which to shoot at local children. The children were mostly throwing stones at the soldiers. They do this as a symbol of their rejection of the Israeli military presence in their village and their homes. The international supporters tried to persuade the soldiers to leave the village and stop their violence, but they responded by throwing tear-gas grenades.
Six Palestinians were injured by rubber-bullets, tear gas canisters and shrapnel from the concussion grenades.
Human Rights Workers noticed that there were settlers in the Abu Haikal orchard next to their house. Two HRWs went to the house to talk to the family and began to film. Two others began to film from our apartment. As another HRW approached the land he noticed that two police officers had already stationed themselves on the Palestinian land and were quietly observing. Then he saw several young settler women approaching from the olive groves. He photographed and filmed them as they entered the Abu Haikal property through a gap in the fence. He called over to the police officers to ask them why they were allowing settlers to trespass on Palestinian land but they refused to answer. He moved next to the house where he could film the whole gathering. Most settlers were arriving up the military stairs and past the military observation post through a gap in the fence at that end of the orchard. It now became clear why settlers had been running electric cables up to the observation post two days earlier “with all the correct permits”. They had been fixing up a powerful light so that the settlers could see the path through the fence.
About 80 settlers gathered in all, mostly quite young in their 20’s. A group of men were dressed in black. They began to pray, to chant and to sing. It was very frightening for the family as they had been given no warning that this was to happen and it was not clear how things would develop. Some of the chanting was very loud and aggressive. This huge gathering was right next to the house where the family was gathered.
Two soldiers were patrolling back and forth around the house and one of them attempted to take photos of all the Human Rights Workers and family members as they entered or left their house. Some of the family got very angry at this provocation. It seems the soldiers were trying to take revenge because HRWs often photograph them when they are misbehaving.
After about an hour the settlers with very young children left and 15 minutes later everyone left. The group of young men in black stayed the longest, singing and dancing. It was very clear that this event had been planned in advance with the authorities and had active participation by the police and army.
On Wednesday I harvested in the village of Qaryot with another international volunteer and 2 Israelis, assisting 80-year-old Salimon, his brother Aziz, and his 27-year-old son Ahmed. We were greeted in the morning with a hearty “Buenos dias!” and warm smiles from the elder men. Both Salimon and Aziz spent 20 years working in Brazil, and during that time were unable to come home to see their children grow up. Between them they have a very large family and over 1,000 trees in the area, which is sandwiched between a few relatively new Israeli settlements. One is called Gilad — an extremist outpost that is illegal even by Israel’s standards.
Salimon and Aziz are friendly men of few words. We spent the day communicating through a bit of Arabic and also Spanish and Portuguese, which both men and some of the volunteers happened to speak. Salimon, whose hospitality is in true Palestinian style, watched us carefully and often re-lit the cigarettes he handed out, which must have gotten damp at some point. Aziz spent the day pruning the trees silently with his small saw, occasionally saying “Aaaiiii-wwaaa, tamam” (yes, good) and “Bueno” (good), when he cut a branch down and volunteers began to pick olives from it.
Earlier in the week Israeli settlers hiked down the hill to throw rocks at Palestinians harvesting in Qaryot, sending one man to the hospital with a head injury. Many families were afraid to return to finish picking, but the brothers who have land in the most dangerous area, were determined to finish.
The road-block made by the settlers.
We began the morning picking close to the settlement road. Within 10 minutes we were approached by three Israeli soldiers and three Israeli border policemen, who told us that we needed to stop for the day. Although we asked to see a court order that stated so, we were offered no explanation except “someone is coming with a map”. The brothers returned to picking and the volunteers attempted to join them. The soldiers demanded that we stop and not touch any olives until more of them arrived with answers to our questions.
Eventually more vehicles of soldiers, border police, and a military lawyer showed up. They also could not answer our questions, and as we stood around waiting and wasting precious picking time, they pulled out a map and started arguing over what to do. The founder of an Israeli human rights group with experience in the area showed up after our phone calls. He negotiated with them over an apparent land dispute that began recently when settlers created a dirt mound roadblock in order to claim some of the land as their own. One soldier even said: “It’s obviously Palestinian land, let’s just let them stay,” but it was decided that we were only allowed to harvest on the other side of the roadblock for the day, closest to the village.
Following the lead of the elders, we agreed and moved to an area that was not claimed by the settlers to continue picking. This felt frustrating since the trees are hundereds of years old like the village, and the settlement is only about 20 years old. Even though some of the soldiers and police disagreed with each other about who the land belongs to, the message this situation sends is pretty clear: it is possible for a simple mound of dirt placed in the road by Jewish extremists to throw legal borders into upheaval, effectively blocking the rightful owners from accessing and harvesting it.
The next day we met Salimon and Aziz again. After a successful negotiation on behalf of the human rights group, we spent the day picking olives beyond the roadblock, on the “disputed” land directly next to the settlement road. This time we brought more volunteers due to the high risk of attack. Throughout the day about two Humvess or jeeps full of Israeli soldiers and police watched us from a short distance. They claimed it was for our protection, but were clearly facing us and watching us with binoculars, not the settlement.
Eventually Aziz picked up his tarp and bucket and walked right over to the settlement entrance road, a couple feet from a guard dogs fence and about 200 feet from the nearest home. This is the closest to a settlement that any family I’ve been with over the last week and a half has dared to work. I get the impression that Aziz is not scared of anything, even though he said that most of his children are afraid to come harvest the land with him. The soldiers and police pulled their vehicles up right next to us, but we ignored them and continued picking until the brothers decided they were finished with the area for the day.
We returned to the village piled onto a tractor with large bags of olives. Aziz’s kaffiyeh blew in the wind as he smiled and waved to greet neighboring farmers. Salimon rode ahead on his donkey. Ahmad reported that we had picked a few hundred kilos of olives, and thanked us warmly for our presence. In the following days we will continue to have an international presence in Qaryot, until all of the olives are picked.
