The village of Jabaa will hold two non-violent direct actions against the theft of their land by Israeli settlers and soldiers this weekend. A month ago, close to a thousand of the village’s olive trees were uprooted to prepare for the construction of the Wall, which will confiscate 600 Dunams, or roughly one sixth of the village’s agricultural land. If the wall is built according to its planned route the farmers of Jabbaa will be cut off from the means of their livelihood.
Therefore, on Thursday June 1’st at 10 am the residents of Jabaa, accompanied by international and Israeli solidarity activists, will march to the planned route of the wall at the location of Beit Shemesh checkpoint. Following this, on Friday June 2nd, at 9am farmers will bring a bulldozer and attempt to plough their land in the Jum Jum area near the settlement of Bat Ayin. The owners of this land have been prevented by the Bat Ayin settlers from accessing their land for the last seven years. In previous instances when they have approached their own land, these Bat Ayin settlers have beaten the landowners and fired shots towards them and their live stock, killing some of their sheep.
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Four settler children were throwing stones at a Palestinian home. The two youngest were less than four years old and the older two were between 7 and 8 years of age. A Danish Human Rights Worker (HRW) approached the Israeli soldier on duty, and asked him to stop the children. The older two settler children then turned on the Danish HRW, and began throwing stones at him, one of which hit an Australian HRW who was filming the incident.
The entire incident lasted about five minutes, and ended when the soldier on duty called for backup.
7:30 pm, Tel Rumeida St, just outside the ISM apartment
A Spainish HRW was in the street playing football with some Palestinian children. Ten or twelve settler children, around thirteen years of age came up Shuhada st, swearing at the Palestinian children. The HRW and a Palestinian man went to stand in the entrance of a nearby Palestinian store. The children threw stones at them, until the soldier on duty shooed them away. They moved up Tel Rumeida road, to a nearby Palestinian house, taking a table from the front yard and tossing it into the street.
When they moved further up Tel Rumeida strett, the HRW tried to return the table, at which point the settlers threw stones at him again.
Last night settlers from the Efrat settlement put a fence around 20 dunums of land belonging to Samir Al-Allamah of Beit Ummar. They have also put up tents inside the fence. People of Beit Ummar with international and Israeli activists plan to remove the fence from Al-Allamah’s property tomorrow at 8:30am.
I had a pretty bad case of stomach flu for the last few days and was reluctant to even try to go to the doctor because it meant leaving Tel Rumeida on foot, as Palestinians are not allowed to drive cars here. Not even taxis, buses or ambulances. The entrances to the neighborhood are blocked off by checkpoints and roadblocks. Settlers are, of course allowed to drive cars, buses, taxis, ambulances and can leave the neighborhood through settler-only roads that Palestinians are not even allowed to walk on.
I had decided it might be better to just stay in bed than to try to walk out and catch a taxi but then some friends came over and told me they had a car parked at the roadblock outside Tel Rumeida and would take me to the hospital. It was at night so the temperature outside was not so dreadfully hot and I decided it might be a good idea to at least get some fresh air.
As we were walking to the roadblock, about a quarter of a mile away from where I live, I asked my friend “What happens here when someone is really sick and cannot walk to the checkpoint or to one of the roadblocks ?” He told me that they have tried to call for ambulances to come in here but they are not allowed. Last year his uncle had a heart attack. They had to carry him out to the checkpoint where an ambulance was waiting. But by the time he got to the hospital, he was already dead.
So that was the answer to my question.
Some observations about this Palestinian hospital:
At first I was reluctant to go at night because it meant going to the emergency and stomach flu was not an emergency and I didn’t want to get in the way of people who were really sick, but my friend said, no it was ok and not to worry. I was expecting to wait like 4 hours like you do when you go to the emergency at night in the United States. What happened when I got there shocked me.
I literally did not even sit down in the waiting room. I was seen immediately but two nurses and a doctor. They did a blood test and gave me an injection. I was in and out in about 40 minutes (the blood test took half an hour to process).
Total cost for an uninsured foreigner ?
$10
This is of course if you can make it out of the Israeli controlled part of Hebron into the Palestinian controlled part without dying first.
So, Americans.. you go to the emergency with no health insurance, get a blood test and an injection.. I think it would be safe to say that you can count on paying minimum $400 for this. This is democracy ! We can give billions of dollars to Israel and spend God knows what on a war in Iraq but we cannot afford to give all our citizen health insurance.
Settler carries gun as they bike through Beit Omar
Last Thursday, May 24, we visited Beit Ummar, which is a village of 20,000 just south of Bethlehem’s large settlement block that includes Gush Etzion. The main road, route 60, connects Bethlehem to Hebron and goes right through Beit Ummar. It is not a settler-only road, but because there are settlers near both Hebron and Bethlehem, they also use this road. The Border Police and Army use their duty to protect these settlers as an excuse for confiscating land along route 60 and destroying property.
Before the flower shop and grocery were destroyed
We visited two groups of people whose livelihoods have been demolished by Israeli military bulldozers the night before. The military has issued demolition notices to all the business and homes 150meters from this road in Beit Ummar, saying that they needed to protect the settlers and these buildings posed a security risk. They also accused them of building without a permit, which in some cases is true because Israel rarely grants permits to Palestinians even on land that they own.
After the bulldozers came
The IDF chose to bulldoze a flower shop with a small grocery and a mechanics shop a day before. At the flower shop, ceramic pots and flowers lay in the midst of rubble from grocery shop while back at the owner’s house, plants that the guy had managed to salvage lay out in the sun wilting for lack of water and cover. Habess Shehdah Adami, the owner of the land and shop lamented, “I see them dying in front of my eyes and I can’t do anything. In 5 hours these will be dead. What can I do? They cost thousands of shekels. I can’t cover them, I can’t irrigate them, I can’t sell them.”
And then he added, “What did I do? I’ve never been arrested. I am a man of peace. I am a romantic man. I love flowers. Even if they can’t make good to me, they should make good to the trees, to the flowers. They are a gift from god!”
Habess had papers proving that he owned the land and had a permit to build. When the bulldozers came in the night, however, and he told the commander of the 60 soldiers who showed up that he had a lawyer, the commander told him, “Let your lawyer sleep” and then proceeded to level the building.
As we stood near route 60 on the rubble in his lot brooding and feeling helpless, three army jeeps drove by heralding the approach of about 200 settlers on bicycles. It was the holiday of Jerusalem Day, which is the celebrates the capture of Jerusalem in 1967, and entails parading through Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem wearing Israeli flags. These settlers wanted to do some parading of their own, donning the Israeli flag and something not as accepted in Jerusalem: there were about three of the young guys wearing M-16, army issued, strapped to their backs. Some young women yelled at us and the Palestinians, “You are all donkeys!” and we laughed, because of the way she acted, it seemed obvious and pathetic that she was scared of us even though we just stood there.
The settlers are like a branch of the military, their presence makes it easier for the military to be there and their undercover violence towards Palestinians is unchecked by the military.
