Tag: Farmers

We left Gaza city early …

13 April 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

We left Gaza city early; we were going to Faraheen, a small village near the buffer zone to help farmers plant peppers. Israel has declared a 300 meter “buffer zone” along the entire border with Gaza. What does the buffer zone mean? Simply, that Israel will shoot anyone who approaches within 300 meters of the border. They don’t really have rulers though; usually they don’t even have soldiers. Just remote control guns controlled by teenage conscripts in the basement of a military base somewhere, maybe an office park, maybe the soldiers telecommute, that would be more convenient for them. For the soldiers, it is basically a video game, push a button on your mouse, and shoot a farmer.

The fields that we were planting aren’t actually in the buffer zone, but they are close, and even being close to the buffer zone is dangerous – it isn’t easy to judge distance with a mouse. April 6th was a beautiful day; the weather was perfect, no wind and not too hot. A drone hovered overhead; occasionally bursts of remote controlled shooting came from the Israeli gun towers that line the border. They weren’t shooting at us; they were shooting at some other anonymous farmer trying to work on his land. Maybe they were shooting at an unemployed man who went to collect rocks near the buffer zone? The importing of cement is banned by Israel, and it is in desperate need to repair the damage from Operation Cast Lead and to accommodate the needs of the growing population.

We didn’t manage to finish planting all of the peppers on Wednesday, so we went back to work on Thursday. The ‘weather’, the farmers joked, wasn’t so good on Thursday, there were a lot of drones, and occasionally the thunder of distant bombing reached our ears. We kept working, what else could the farmers do? They have to plant their peppers to feed their families. The weather kept getting worse as the day wore on, more drones, more thunder. We finally broke for lunch when the Apaches arrived. They hovered over the border like giant evil mosquitoes. Lunch lasted for three hours while we waited for the Apaches to leave. Then back to work. We quit at sundown.

We still hadn’t finished planting all of the peppers, so back to work on Friday. The goal was to finish before noon so the men could go to the mosque. The weather was even worse and the thunder of the bombs was closer; Israel had killed three in Khuzaa, the neighboring village, overnight. There was no electricity, and therefore no water. There is no 24 hour electricity in Gaza, they aren’t allowed to import enough fuel for the power plant, and it was attacked during Operation Cast Lead, so you get electricity when you get electricity. Not having electricity to run the irrigation pumps makes planting peppers rather painful. You take two fingers, jam them into the earth, make a hole, and put the pepper in the hole. If the earth is wet and the soil is loose it is ok, but if the earth is dry it isn’t easy.

The thunder finally reached us just as we finished planting the last of the peppers. It was loud, somewhere in Faraheen. We hadn’t noticed any Apaches in the air, but the noise of the drones had become like background noise – always there. The men took me to my friend’s house. Faraheen was on the news. The younger children were afraid of the bombing, but a bit excited to see their village on the news. The excitement didn’t last. Etufa, the oldest daughter came into the room. She had just heard that a friend of hers had been killed in the bombing. The room grew silent. Etufa went to her room to cry.

Tractors confiscated in Al Jiftlik, Jordan Valley

29 March 2011 | Lydia

At approximately 7 am this morning the Israeli army entered the village of Al Jiftlik. Soldiers went door to door ordering all tractor owners to bring their farming vehicles to the closed military zone between Miswa settlement and a nearby Israeli army base, where they had set up a temporary base.

The Palestinian farmers and their tractors were forcibly escorted to the temporary military base in the closed military zone. There they were kept under the surveillance of Israeli soldiers, police, and a private military company. Approximately forty tractor owners were questioned, and their ID’s and vehicle ownership were checked. They were made to stand next to their tractors, after which soldiers photographed and filmed the men with their vehicles. All people were informed that their tractors would be confiscated if they proved unable to provide proof of ownership.

The forty farmers had to wait in the sun for up to 7 hours to find out the army’s decision on what would happen to their farming vehicles. At 3 pm four owners were ordered to drive their tractors into the military camp (next to Al Jiftlik), escorted by military police and police vehicles. When one of the farmers refused to do so he was arrested, but released several minutes later on the condition that he would drive his tractor to the camp anyway, which he did. The four tractors were confiscated and kept inside the military camp after the farmers brought them there.

Faris, one of the farmers who had to bring his tractor into the military camp, said his tractor cost him 40.000NIS; “All the money I collected from farming, I put into the tractor.” He also indicated that he will be unable to continue farming his land without having a tractor.

Villagers harassed by Israeli army whilst trying to farm their land

12 February 2011 | International Solidarity Movement

In the village of Jaloud, south of Nablus, around thirty villagers, two internationals, and six Israeli peace activists accompanied farmers to their land to help plant one hundred olive trees. Towards the end of the planting, a settler from the illegal settlement of Shilo came down in a pickup carrying an assault rifle. He contacted the army and, 15 minutes later, two jeeps came down, followed by another three. There were around 25 – 30 soldiers in total, armed with rifles with tear gas canisters, some swinging batons. Soldiers requested that the people move back to the road and agreed to let five people finish planting the trees. Had the Israeli activists and internationals not been there, the weapons may well have been used on the Palestinians.

Villagers try to plant trees near Jaloud

There are illegal settlement outposts all around the village. The farmers of Jaloud have had 16,000 dunams of land seized by settlers and are prevented from farming their land. The small village, which has 600 inhabitants, faces regular harassment from the settlers. There have been reports of settlers walking into the village shooting into the air to frighten the children, stealing animals, going into families’ houses and burning land.

It is expected that the settlers will destroy the trees that were planted.

Israeli settlers lay in front of tractors; attempt to prohibit Palestinian agricultural work

23 January 2011 | Operation Dove & Christian Peacemaker Teams

At-Tuwani, South Hebron Hills, West Bank – On Saturday, 22nd of January, Palestinian farmers successfully plowed fields in Khoruba valley, despite heavy harassment by settlers from the nearby settlement of Ma’on.

In the early morning, about twenty farmers from At-Tuwani started sowing seed and plowing fields in Khoruba valley, southeast from At-Tuwani. Soon thereafter, five settlers arrived from nearby Havat Ma’on outpost and positioned themselves in front of the tractors, in an attempt to prevent the farmers from completing their work. As more settlers arrived, tempers flared and the farmers attempted to move the settlers and physically block them from interfering with the land cultivation.

Approximately thirty minutes later, Israeli soldiers and Border Police arrived and immediately stopped the tractors from plowing. The Israeli forces took the ID cards of three farmers while removing both settlers and farmers from the immediate vicinity of the tractors.

The Israeli District Coordinating Office (DCO), the branch of the Israeli military responsible for the coordination of civilian affairs, later confirmed the right of Palestinians to plow the fields but the Border Police requested that all Palestinians and international peace activists leave the area, except for the farmers directly involved in the agricultural work.

Three settler youths moved from Khoruba valley to an area one kilometer south where they stopped another tractor from plowing and proceeded to throw stones at a Palestinian shepherd and his flock. Israeli forces again intervened, removing the settler youths from the area.

After the completion of the agricultural work, one Palestinian farmer was taken to the Kiryat Arba police station for questioning, and later released, after a settler made a formal complaint that he was assaulted.

An international delegation with four British MPs, was present for part of the incident and spoke with Palestinian farmers, Israeli forces, and an Israeli settler.

In the last five years, through several coordinated nonviolent actions, Palestinians from At-Tuwani and Yatta have successfully cultivated fields previously made inaccessible due to settler violence and harassment, Through the reacquisition of this land, Palestinians are asserting their right to the land and working to ensure their food security for the coming seasons.

Operation Dove and Christian Peacemaker Teams have maintained an international presence in At-Tuwani and South Hebron Hills since 2004.

[Note: According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Hague Regulations, the International Court of Justice, and several United Nations resolutions, all Israeli settlements and outposts in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal. Most settlement outposts, including Havat Ma’on (Hill 833), are considered illegal also under Israeli law.]

Life and death in the buffer zone

16 January 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Vera Macht

Death comes quickly at a place like this. On sunny winter days, when the smell of the night’s rain is still in the air, as if it would have brought some hope for the raped, barren land of Gaza, overrun hundreds of times by Israeli tanks and bulldozers. The land between the foothills of the village of Bait Hanoun and the Israeli border, guarded by watchtowers, soldiers, snipers, helicopters and drones is a land in which death is a regular guest.

But despite all that, the 65-year-old Shaban Karmout probably had something like hope when he woke up on that winter morning. His house is in the 300 meter wide strip of land in the so-called buffer zone. He built his house 40 years ago, in 1971, when Gaza was already occupied by Israel, and yet he thought to have a future there for himself and his family. Shaban began to plant fruits, his land was full of palms and trees, lemon, orange, clementine and almond trees were growing there. He had a good life.

But in 2003, just at the time of the almond harvest, the Israeli bulldozers came in the middle of the night. It took them three hours to raze the work of 30 years to the ground. Since the Israeli attack in 2009, he could no longer live there, the buffer zone had become too dangerous, where his home was, which has now been declared a closed combat zone by Israel. He had since lived in a small rented concrete house in the middle of the refugee camp near Bait Hanoun, in Jabalia, cramped in a tiny apartment with his large family.

He went back to his land, every morning, and worked there until the evening. He and his family had to make a living from something, after all. And so this morning, in the morning of the 10th January 2011, he woke up with hope, around 4 o’clock, and left for his fields. Full of hope he was because he and his neighbors had recently received a new well, their old one had been destroyed by an Israeli tank incursion. The Italian NGO GVC had built the well, it was financed by the Italian government.

On that day he was visited by an employee of the organization, to see how his situation had improved. She had an interview with him, and he asked her to come into the house, as it would be not safe outside. As she left, he advised her to rather take a short cut, you never know. He told her that he himself still had to go into the garden once more to tie his donkey. The NGO worker had just reached the village of Bait Hanoun, as three shots fell. One hit Shaban in the neck, two others in the upper part of his body. He was dead on the spot.
“It’s like a nightmare,” the Italian said, stunned. “I will never see him again. From here to the morgue in two hours. ”

In the interview that he gave shortly before his death, he told me about the unbearable situation in which he had been living. “It felt as if someone had ripped out my heart,” he described the night in which he lost all his land under the blades of eight bulldozers. And he told how he and the farmers from the neighbor fields had risked planting yet again, you have to make a living from something after all, and had grown wheat. When it was ready to be harvested, it was burned down by the Israeli army. And he told how he and the farmers from the neighboring fields yet again had the courage to plant, the children have to eat something after all, and tried to grow wheat. When the workers went to the field to sow, they were fired upon by Israeli soldiers.

What he now makes his living from, he was asked. “I collect stones and wood, and I grow some crops in my garden,” he replied. Crops, for which he had recently gotten water, thanks to a donation of a well from the Italian government. Shaban therefore probably looked somewhat optimistically into the future, the well could have restored the income from his garden to him. This was his only income since it had become too dangerous for him to enter his fields. “At any time the Israeli bulldozers can come again to destroy my house, you never know what they do next,” he said. Whether he isn’t afraid to be there, the employee of the NGO asked him. “No, I don’t mind the shooting too much,” he replied. “Even if something happens to me, humans can only die once. And only God knows when I am going to die.”

His nephew, Mohammed Karmout, stood a bit apart from the morgue. “The Israelis know my uncle very well,” he says quietly. “He’s there every day, and the whole area is monitored by cameras and drones. They know he lives there.”
And so it is quite doubtful that only God alone knew that Shaban would die at that day, while he was tying his donkey, by three shots in his upper body.

Shaban Karmout is the third civilian being shot dead in the buffer zone in the last month. At Christmas, the Shepherd Salama Abu Hashish, 20 years old, died by a shot in the back while he was tending his sheep. Since the beginning of last year, about a hundred workers and farmers have been shot by Israeli snipers in the buffer zone, 13 of them died.