At 2:30 am, two jeeps and 20 soldiers invaded Bil’in, taking photos and walking through the village. They went to a family’s home and asked questions. In addition, they stopped Abdullah, who had gotten up to investigate, and asked him what was going on in Bil’in.
The soldiers also asked the two internationals whether they lived in the village and what organization they were working with. They told Abdullah they knew who he was, but they weren’t going to arrest him.
As of this writing, a jeep has prevented the two internationals and Abdullah from following the soldiers, some of whom are still in the village.
Israeli military prosecutors have opened criminal investigations following allegations by soldiers that they carried out illegal shoot-to-kill orders against unarmed Palestinians.
The 17 separate investigations were prompted by the testimony of dozens of troops collected by Breaking the Silence, a pressure group of former Israeli soldiers committed to exposing human rights abuses by the military in suppressing the Palestinian intifada. The investigations cover a range of allegations, including misuse of weapons and other misuses of power.
Some of the soldiers, who also spoke to the Guardian, say they acted on standing orders in some parts of the Palestinian territories to open fire on people regardless of whether they were armed or not, or posed any physical threat.
The soldiers say that in some situations they were ordered to shoot anyone who appeared on a roof or a balcony, anyone who appeared to be kneeling to the ground or anyone who appeared on the street at a designated time. Among those killed by soldiers acting on the orders were young children.
While the background to the soldiers’ experience is the armed conflict that has been going on in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since October 2000, many of the shootings occurred in periods of calm when there was no immediate risk to the soldiers involved.
Yehuda Shaul, the co-founder of Breaking the Silence, said it aimed to show that individual soldiers were not to blame for killings of innocent Palestinians. “It is the situation which is to blame and that is created by military and political leaders, not the soldiers on the ground,” he said.
The testimonies shed light on how around 1,700 Palestinian civilians have been killed during the second intifada.
The Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron is a major flashpoint of tension between Palestinians and Israeli colonial settlers. Around forty Israeli soldiers protect over sixty of the most racist and violent of Israeli settlers, forcing over one thousand Palestinians (whose families have lived in Tel Rumeida for hundreds of years) to live in a virtual prison. Fences, walls, and checkpoints block every entrance to Tel Rumeida, and there are Israeli soldier posts throughout the neighborhood. The closures make commerce virtually impossible, and it is difficult for any non-residents to visit their Tel Rumeida friends and family. Many families have moved out for this reason alone.
Even more troublesome than the constant prison-camp conditions are the fanatical settlers who regularly harass and attack their Palestinian neighbors. Palestinians live in a constant state of terror from being beaten, stoned, robbed, and threatened with guns but they refuse to be forced out of their homes or let it interfere with their daily life.
Several international activists from the Tel Rumeida Project live fulltime in Tel Rumeida. They work with volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement, Ecumenical Accompaniment Program for Palestine & Israel, the Christian Peacemaker Teams, and a variety of Israeli groups to accompany, document, and physically intervene to deter Israeli attacks and pressure authorities to better protect Palestinians and prosecute criminal settlers. Israeli soldiers and settlers regularly harass, threaten, intimidate, and stone the international and Israeli activists, but Palestinian children say they now feel safer playing outside their homes.
Even more encouraging, is the potential for a progressive change in the climate. Unlike other accompaniment groups, the goal of the Tel Rumeida Project is to support and empower Palestinians as they stand up against this colonial oppression.
For instance, last Saturday we got a call that settler children were throwing rocks at Palestinian passers-by. When we arrived, we found five 9-13 year-old settler boys hanging out in the Israeli military post. Palestinians immediately came out of their houses to tell us how the settler boys had just stoned them while the soldiers watched. The settler boys started throwing more rocks, some from inside the military post, and we began arguing with the soldiers that they should protect the Palestinians (supposedly a part of their job). The soldiers argued with eachother about what to do while we supported the Palestinians, including a mother and daughter, as they confronted the settler boys. Palestinians yelled at the settlers and soldiers for putting them through all this, and the Israelis were visibly intimidated. More settler children came out and began throwing stones, so we stood in front of the Palestinians. I got hit pretty hard in the leg, but the soldiers started trying to stop the settler boys, which made the soldiers a target for their stones. The situation escalated, but our presence supported the Palestinians’ expression of their outrage and prevented Israeli soldiers from repressing this Palestinian resistance.
Cordova School is a Palestinian girls’ school located directly across from Israeli settlement apartments and a settler school. Settler children often harass Palestinian students and teachers as they pass by. Yesterday was the first day of school for Palestinians, so we brought a team of internationals and media to accompany the children. Two Israeli military jeeps and a police jeep arrived shortly after us. All in all, there were 25 internationals, 12 soldiers, and four police officers to get around 100 Palestinian girls to school.
There were fewer internationals and soldiers for the girls’ afternoon walk home, and the settlers escalated their attacks. They threw stones and eggs from their apartment windows, while others hollered insults and threatened us. The Israeli police (who’s job it is to arrest settler law-breakers) also became a target of the settler violence, but they did nothing to stop it. We continued patrolling the area for the rest of the day, trying to have a presence in all the areas where settlers and Palestinians interact. “We’re like human security cameras,” one activist commented, “we never let the settlers out of our sight until we know another international can see them”.
A little before 2pm, several internationals had to leave and we went out to meet their replacements. On our way back in, we got stopped at the recently upgraded Tel Rumeida checkpoint. What used to be a green tower with concrete blockades is now a fortified trailer with metal detectors and electronic sliding doors. They’ve even tried to make it prettier by painting it to look like the white stone of the surrounding ancient buildings. An Israeli soldier at the checkpoint said that they would no longer allow in any internationals that are part of organizations, “Only tourists and residents” he said. We tried to explain that we are residents and have a house in Tel Rumeida, but because he had seen us doing accompaniment and documentation work he refused us entry. To go around the checkpoint, we had to wind through back allies, scale a wall, and crawl under grapevines.
During this time, a group of settlers took advantage of our absence and attacked several Palestinians. We found a 13-year-old Palestinian boy with cuts and bruises on his arms and stomach. He said a group of around 20 settlers in their late teens had surrounded him and beat him with sticks for around ten minutes. Other settler youths threw large stones a group of Palestinians, injuring an older Palestinian woman’s leg. We accompanied the Palestinians to file reports with the police, and then became more diligent with our patrols.
Things came to a head around 5pm, when a large group of settler children, some in masks, (observed from the hill by their parents and other settler adults), began throwing large stones and other debris at Palestinians, internationals, and Israeli soldiers in the area. One international was injured on her hand when she blocked a sharp rock from hitting her head. When the police arrived, the settlers briefly dispersed but then quickly regrouped. They began intensely stoning the police, who did nothing but videotape and stay in the protection of their armored jeeps. More police arrived and drove into the settlement area, and eventually an officer grabbed a settler boy. A small riot ensued, and settlers attacked the police officers.
Later in the evening, Palestinians reported that settler boys intensely stoned two Palestinian homes. Saturday, the Jewish holy day Shabbat, is a busy day for settler religious fanatics.
All in all, we hope that the settlers now know that their days of terrorizing Palestinians with impunity are over. Though the Israeli violence continues, Palestinians are now armed with international and Israeli activists, cameras, video-cameras, potential lawsuits, and contacts with the international community. I feel privileged to be able to stand with Palestinians in their struggle, it’s an honor to be stoned along side them.
In Israel and occupied Palestine the colour orange is symbolic of opposition to the Gaza ‘disengagement’. It can be seen on banners; t-shirts; propaganda material; protesters storming the old city in Jerusalem or the young people with petitions gathering signatures in Israeli bus stations. Orange streamers are handed out at road junctions in Israel and attached to cars flying down the settler-only highways of the West Bank.
It therefore came as a surprise to hear that one of the orange streamers was seen attached to a tractor belonging to a Bedouin Palestinian living in the Jordan Valley. When questioned, the man replied, “If they are thrown out of Gaza, they will come here. They are dangerous. We don’t want them here.”
Settlement housing at Mekhola.
On the 25th of June 2005 an Israeli spokesperson announced a plan intended to increase the number of settlers in the Jordan Valley by 50 percent in one year. The cost of new housing units will be $13.5 million (U.S.) in the initial year, and will increase to $32.5 million in the following year. The plan focuses on the development of agriculture and tourism in the valley, with grants of up to $22 million available for agricultural development. Additional economic incentives and benefits will be offered to encourage potential immigrants, particularly newly married couples.
The plan has already started to emerge on the ground, as the silver arches of newly-constructed greenhouses materialise, shimmering in the August heat. Large areas of land have suddenly been surrounded by fences and declared ‘Military Zones’: the initial stage in the process of colonisation. And a new wave of evictions has begun.
Settlement well above Palestinian housing.
The six or seven thousand settlers in the valley live in 36 different settlements that each claim large areas of land. They are subject to Israeli civil law whilst the Palestinians are subject to Israeli military law. Israel controls 95 percent of the land in the valley.
Most of the 50,000 Palestinians in the valley live in a state of absolute poverty. Since the beginning of the occupation in 1967 they have been systematically denied basic human rights, particularly access to water and housing. Thirteen Palestinian villages were declared ‘legal’ by Israel in 1967. They are visibly obvious, being the only Palestinian areas where most of the houses are made of anything more substantial than plastic, wood and a few sheets of scavenged metal. Outside of these areas concrete constructions are invariably destroyed.
I drank tea with a Bedouin family in their ‘house’ in Fasayil, which was made of wood and plastic. The village is half legal and half illegal; a quick glance is enough to determine which area is which. As she spoke to us, the Grandmother of the family fluttered a piece of paper between her fingers. It was the military demolition order for their home, issued about a month before. Apparently, no dwelling is too humble to face the might of the military bulldozers and tanks, and the family was waiting for them to arrive. It was not the first time they had been evicted: In 1948 they were made refugees when the state of Israel was created. Last year they were evicted from a site about three kilometers away, to make way for new settlers. When I asked what would happen if their home was demolished, the woman replied that the Red Crescent would bring them tents to live in. “Where will you put them?” I asked. “Here. We have nowhere else to go.”
A typical home in what’s left of the Palestinian village of Jiftlik in the Jordan Valley.
The Israeli Occupation Forces demolished eleven houses in Jiftlik on the 22nd of June. Next to one of the remaining concrete buildings is a shack made of plastic. The men who built the concrete house live in the plastic one next door. They are afraid to move themselves and their things into the concrete house, anticipating that it too will soon be demolished. They recently moved out of their family house when one of their brothers got married. It consists of two rooms constructed from clay and wood, and ten people live there. As families expand they need more room to live in, but the space for the natural growth of the Palestinian population in the Jordan Valley is systematically denied.
Road 90, which extends the length of the valley parallel to the Jordan River, cuts between huge plantations of palm trees, grapes and banana trees, as well as greenhouses full of plants and vegetables for export. Such intensive agro-industry requires massive amounts of water, which is provided by wells four or five hundred meters deep. These are housed in cylindrical towers that sit on the foothills of the mountains separating the Jordan Valley from the rest of the West Bank. Underneath the towers it is often possible to see Palestinian communities living in their flimsy housing. They are denied access to the water above them, and have to take tractor carts to the nearest wells they are permitted to use, often a distance of more than 20 kilometers. The three cubic meters of water they collect with their portable tanks only lasts a few days and gets very hot under the relentless sun.
Near Jiftlik, we saw a young woman with a donkey slowly climbing the hill to the water tower above her home. She was on her way to ‘steal’ some water, a few gallons perhaps. It was midday, and the overwhelming heat reduced the likelihood of a guard being on duty near the tower.
I never imagined that water reserves could look threatening.
An abandoned Palestinian well.
162 artesian wells in the Jordan Valley, established by the Jordanians during their period of control of the West Bank, are now dysfunctional. They have either been destroyed or they have dried up because of the deeper, settler’s wells nearby. Zubeidat is a village of 1,600 people on an area of land just over ten acres. Their well became salty and polluted in 1984, because of the nearby settlements. Last year they were finally granted permission to build a new well. In the intervening years each family had to bring water from Jericho, a distance of about 25 kilometers, or steal it from the settlements. In 2004, five people in the valley were prosecuted for ‘stealing’ water. All of the Israeli plantations are surrounded by electric fences to prevent such activity.
Zubeidat still uses the old well for irrigating it’s agricultural land, despite the poor quality water it extracts. In Jiftlik I saw (and smelt) farmland that was irrigated with sewage water from Nablus and one of it’s adjacent settlements, Elon More.
The most obvious source of water in the valley is the Jordan River, but it is impossible to reach this because of the electric fence which extends from the Green Line in the North to beyond Jericho in the South. This fence annexes 500 square kilometers of land, once used by the Palestinians for agriculture. Amazingly, it is not marked on the maps produced by the UN.
A demolished home in Jiftlik.
The Palestinian population in the valley has little choice but to try to sustain their livelihoods by farming. I spent a surreal couple of hours sweltering in the heat of a wooden and plastic house, listening as a farmer told me about the time in the late 1980’s when the export company took a huge quantity of agricultural produce from the Palestinian farmers and then claimed that the ship taking it to Europe had sunk. Not only did the Palestinians not get paid for their produce, but the company actually made the farmers pay for the boxes they were packed in and the stickers that announced their place of origin: Israel. I could not quite believe what I was hearing. How many farmers were effected? The entire valley.
The name of the company? Agrexco, which trades by the brand name of Carmel.
Carmel might be a name familiar to European and American consumers: their fresh fruit and vegetables are common in any supermarket. Perhaps people who pay attention to international freight know that Agrexco also make their own ships, including the state of the art “Carmel Ecofresh… a revolutionary design for cargo refrigeration”.
A Carmel packing house at the Tomer settlement.
Agrexco is 50 percent owned by the Israeli state and all of the produce exported from the valley is packed by and sold through them. Palestinian farmers no longer attempt to export because their dealings with the company have been so catastrophic. Nor are they able to take their produce to other markets in Palestine, because it is impossible to get it through the Jordan Valley checkpoints. Entire vegetable crops have been left to rot in the ground or used to feed sheep and goats.
There was no chance of the Palestinian farmers seeking legal redress in the case of the sinking ship, or in other cases where Agrexco has behaved illegally in the valley. However, the company will find itself in a British court next week, and although they do not stand accused they will find themselves in the position of defending their activity.
In November last year a group of British activists blockaded the company’s main distribution centre in Middlesex, UK, preventing tens of thousands of pounds worth of goods from reaching supermarket shelves and subsequently British kitchens. Seven people are facing charges of aggravated trespass: the prevention of lawful activity. They will argue that the company’s activity is unlawful, being ancillary to the crime of apartheid, war crimes and crimes against humanity. This in addition to the fact that the goods Agrexco export from settlements in the West Bank are illegally sold as “Produce of Israel”, thereby benefiting from the preferential terms of trade that Europe grants Israeli imports.
The difference between the luxurious life in the settlements and the absence of the bare necessities in the Palestinian communities of the Jordan Valley is far from accidental: the subjugation is meticulously planned and executed. It is blatant and brutal apartheid. But although it could be argued that this segregationist system is based on religion (nobody could claim that the citizens of Israel and its settlements are from a single ethnic or racial group), I believe we need to discard the framework of analysis that presents the Palestine/Israel conflict as one of Jews against Muslims, or Islam against the West. Instead we need to look at it as part of the global domination of the all-powerful force of capital and it’s warriors, the transnational corporations. Indigenous people who live sustainably, primarily from their direct environment, are under attack all over the world.
A mother and her child in Jiflik.
The cost of a box of Carmel tomatoes, dates, flowers or grapes is unimaginably high. It is not paid for in coins by the person at a supermarket checkout in the UK, but in the suffering of the Palestinian people. The time for Western consumers to recognise their complicity in such suffering is long overdue. Seven people who stand accused at Uxbridge Magistrates Court on Wednesday will highlight the connection between the produce and the persecution, our pounds and other people’s poverty.
Saturday, September 3, the day after the demonstration in Bil’in, two of us boarded a bus bound for Hebron, a town of 130,000 Palestinians, 600 lunatic settlers, and thousands of soldiers and police to ‘guard’ the settlers. Arriving at noon on Saturday, the day most settlers run rampant over everyone, we were told to immediately go to the top of the hill that separates settlers from Palestinians.
Within a half hour, several settler boys between 10-17 came strutting down the road toward the small Palestinian children playing in front of us. The children left immediately, and we turned on our cameras as they advanced toward us. The older boys egged the younger ones to pick up stones and throw them at us two women who were sitting on a stoop. Stones came flying through the air, hitting me in the hand and thigh. Two soldiers who had been standing there watching finally called the police.
I screamed at the boys and started up the hill after them, only to be pulled back by the soldier who said, “I’m sorry, but they get very upset when they see a camera. You need to put it away.”
“Put it away? Not on your life. You think I’m going to let those damned thugs get away with throwing stones at two women who were sitting there doing nothing?”
“I know, I know, but there’s nothing we can do about it. They’re under 12 years old.”
“Then take their parents in. Collectively punish them the way you do the Palestinians. Fine the crazy bastards.”
You get the idea of the conversation.
We had taken plenty of video and could clearly see which boy had hit me. The soldiers suggested we take it to the police station the next day, and, if we left, they would stop them right away. Well, these nasty kids began a full-on riot, throwing stones at the police and army, throwing pipes off the top of their settler apartment at homes beneath them, screaming obscenities, throwing garbage and flashing mirrors in the faces of the soldiers. Little settler girls started to come down and throw stones.
It was so disgusting, I finally left. The rioting went off and on for hours, into the night, where they threw boulders onto the homes of the Palestinians.
One Palestinian man called us and asked us to come to his home. The settlers had come in the week before, and they had cut through every single grape vine that he had, vines that were over 100 years old, thick as my thigh. When he called the army, they had come in and said, “Go back in your house or we’ll kill you.” He had no choice, and every single vine has been cut in half. He took us out and pointed at one.
“That one has a shoot growing already. They’ll come back someday.” My God, what could any of us say in the face of that optimism and courage?
I spent all day Sunday and Monday at the police station making out a report and giving them video tape of the attack. One policeman said, “I really sympathize, but there’s nothing we can do. They’re under 12.”
“That hasn’t stopped you from punishing Palestinian families when their kids throw stones… and you have 600 Palestinian children between 13-14 years old in jail.”
After an hour of increasingly hostile conversation, he finally admitted that the last time he had tried to stop them, they had slit all 4 of his tires. Another policeman said that they had broken his windshield.
Nothing will happen. Nothing will be done. These teenagers will grow up to be the worst kind of thugs, and even the police admit that. 600 of them have made life miserable for the Palestinians; they have closed the stores, thrown excrement and stones on the tops of homes, cut the trees, chain sawed the grape vines.
Yesterday, I went to Qawawis, a small village of 40-45 shepherds. We had gone for the day to protect them from the settlers, who have beaten them and killed their sheep. Several settlers had beaten a man who had already been badly beaten last year and had gone to Iraq for surgery. He refused to make a complaint, more afraid of settlers and knowing that, even with 3 internationals, 2 UN observers who check in once in a while, and an Israeli from Tayyush, they will find him and kill him.
I am tired, I am hot, I am dusty, I finally had a shower after three days. I am burned, and I wonder what the hell I’m doing here and if we make one bit of difference. Israel is committing silent genocide on a people who have been ignored and villanized for 57 years. The children look at us with big eyes and ask us why the world doesn’t see what is happening.
What do I tell them? That the police and army refuse to see what they’re doing? The policeman yesterday, a Sephardic Jew, admitted to me that he knew he was a second class citizen in a racist society. “But at least I’m a Jew.” he said. God help us all.
