3rd March 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Susya, occupied Palestine
The village of Susya in the south Hebron hills is still waiting for news of its imminent demolition at the hands of the Israeli military. On Sunday 26th the Israeli court was expecting the government to make clear its plans to execute the existing demolition order, but the government asked for another 48 hours of delay. Yesterday as that 48 hours came to an end the government again asked for 48 hours to make up its mind.
Meanwhile the villagers of Susya wait daily for what is nearly certain to be a demolition at some point. There are two reasons for the delays. The first is simple and happens all over Palestine: delays play into the sense of uncertainty and tension that Palestinians are placed under. Some villages and houses have been living under demolition orders for years. The second is more complex: Susya is one of the most successful villages in Palestine in harnessing international support against the continuing persecution they face from the Israeli government. Until the arrival of Trump in the White House this winter, demolishing Susya would have brought down the disapproval of the international community and the US on the Israeli government, and that pressure is still strong. However, the government is under equal or greater pressure from the settlers in the region to demolish the village, which inconveniently stands between the ‘Jewish archeological site’ of Susya (which used to be the village) and the illegal settlement of Susya. And the current Israeli administration requires the votes of the most right wing settler parties to maintain a majority in the Knesset.
Meanwhile, the villagers of Susya stand in the middle of this battle, calling in all the support they can globally and locally. But the ultimate outcome of this fight lies outside their hands and will involve the loss of homes and livelihoods this spring and summer.
23rd March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied West Bank
I’ve wanted to find out more about Laila since I met her on my first day here. She is the only woman storekeeper in the souk and she has a bed and breakfast here. One evening I saw her standing up to soldiers who did not want to let her pass to go home. I have seen nobody else with that firmness and confidence. Everything about her is unusual here (or indeed anywhere). When I do talk with her for this interview, I realise just how unusual.
Laila
Laila’s store sells the same beautiful traditional Palestinian products as many others in the souk but hers are the produce of a rural womens’ cooperative run by her sister Nawal. Laila serves tea and we settle down to talk. Next to me are boxes of beads, silver and stone that I rummage in idly as I sit with her.
Laila doesn’t come from a Hebron family: she was brought up in one of the hill villages and she is lyrical about her childhood there, in what must have been a tough upbringing. In winters they lived in the village, in a cave with the animals, and in summer in a tent near the summer crops: by the time she was a child her family were living on a tiny vestige of the land they had owned before 1948 and the Nakba. ‘If you think about our lives you never believe how we survive. We survive for little things. I remember when we are young our food is from the garden. We can have vegetables from the garden, we can cook, we can catch birds. It’s a simple life. We have a fire to cook, we have water from the wells or a spring. Its very hard for people but for us we like it, we enjoy it much, much better [than in the city].’
Then after 1967 with the coming of illegal settlements came the fear, and the fear was justified: over the years, either settlers or soldiers have burned down the majority of the village’s olive trees. They lost even more land in the last decade when the separation wall sliced away further areas ‘to make the road straight’ and they could no longer get to their own olive trees to crop. ‘In the beginning they let a few people, not many, enter in so they can pick olives but after they burned the trees. Now the land is empty and they took it and they use it for agriculture and they have a lot of cows in that [settler] village.’ Recently too, settlers who had been evacuated from Gaza in 2005 were resettled in new houses built near their village (so much for the munificence of the Israeli government in returning Gazan land to Palestinians). ‘It makes you very nervous and sad; you can see how they take your land. They have everything; at the same time you cannot buy even 200 metres of land to build a house for your child.’
Now Laila lives in the heart of a complex and dangerous city but it is not how she wants to live: ‘Now its more complicated the life, you have to buy everything; you have to buy the water, you have to buy the food, everything is modern and it costs more than we can pay. I miss the life before, I want my children to have the same life I had.’
The need to make a living drove Laila and her husband for three years to Jordan but she hated it so much they had to come back. Then she worked for many years for a women’s cooperative in Jerusalem until the Israeli government built the separation wall and she was unable to cross to work. That is when her new life in Hebron began: her sister Nawal asked her to take on the shop in the souk from her women’s rural cooperative, and despite Laila’s pleas that she did not speak English, Nawal left her for longer and longer periods until she was in full charge.
‘ISM, they have a girl, I never forget her, she came to the shop every day. She want to learn Arabic, I want to learn English. We start to write for each other and by her she encourage me to talk a little bit and I started to listen to people when they talk. I still learn day by day.’ Now her English is good if idiosyncratic and her entrepreneurial skills are considerable: she never pressures customers (unlike many who are desperate in these difficult times) and people like and return to her to buy.
She has recently branched out into operating a bed and breakfast in the souk (if you are ever in Hebron: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/2148561?s=LVjE97o5). Again she had the help of ISM. When their Tel Rumeida apartment became a closed military zone some time ago, Laila put them up. ‘Then I have a friend who help me put it on airbnb. People who stay with me teach me how to use it. And after [that] I started to make lunch for people, for groups. Friend by friend they know about me and they like it and they tell other people.’This degree of independence and initiative is surprising in the very masculine environment of the souk. But then Laila volunteers something that I really wasn’t expecting: she says, ‘I like to do some thing women they cannot do it, just for man. I like to put myself in [a] place I can be strong in.’ Why is that, I ask?
‘I don’t know, she says. ‘Because maybe when I grew up with my father, always he taught me how to be strong: when you have problems, talk about them. He was really clear with me. Really, he loves me more than the boys. And all the people in the village they never say I am a girl. I am look like boy, not girl. And I continue with this. I respect the men but I never feel shy to be in places where the men have to be. Allah he cannot give them things more than he give me. He give the same. I am nine months, they are nine months. I am female is just from Allah, but I feel I can do what they do. I like it.’
Then we talk about life now in Hebron and that is when she nearly makes me cry, and when she tells me that ‘we have not to cry, we have to be patient’. Her two sons have been arrested several times. One threw stones at soldiers when he was fifteen and went to prison. The other attempted to work in Israel without a permit and was imprisoned three times, for 45 days, for three months and then for six months. Both are still unemployed but she would never want them to go abroad to work.‘When my son was arrested I feel as mothers feel and from that time I start to fight: if I see they stopped any boys or children, I have to ask: ‘why you search them? be nice with them, do it in a nice way’. Some are aggressive with me. They are very scary for us and we don’t know what they can do to us but I never care if they want to kill me: if Allah he want to take my soul, its not by their hand. It should be your time is finish. Allah he decide. This is how the mothers of children [who] got killed by the soldiers they believe their time is finish: I cannot say ‘it is haram* he has died’ because it is the will of Allah. This is how we continue. Allah gives the patience. You never believe your children will die, when you start to think you will become crazy. You never believe you can continue.’‘We have to continue by good food, by water, by air, we have to continue: its enough for us.’
21st March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Ni’lin, occupied Palestine
Jamal is younger than I am but he doesn’t look it. He is always there, as are all the storekeepers in the souk and he always greets us, as does nearly everybody (walking down the souk when it is open can be a slow business). We walk through the souk several times a day to monitor tension at the mosque and at the checkpoints beyond them.
Jamal
Jamal sells beautiful Palestinian embroideries, rugs and cushions, but nobody buys. I stay with him for an hour to do this interview, and unusually in that time he has one group of customers, tourists from France who have bought before, but they don’t buy today. He gets out all his rugs and explains how good they are. He asks nervously if they wouldn’t like to buy a small something today, but they don’t. I want to shake them but I don’t.
We settle down to a cup of ginger tea (no conversation conducted without tea or coffee) and he tells me that he has been coming here for forty-seven years, starting as a child after school and in the holidays. It is his father’s store. (I’m going to leave Jamal’s words in the good but slightly broken English that he speaks in his very soft voice.) He has been here through all the troubles in Hebron.
‘I did watch the first intifada and the second intifada and now the third intifada. I did stay all that time and when settlers began occupying lands after the war in 1967, they start building settlements outside the city, and after that they move to the heart of the city you could say the 80s, inside the city, four settlements.’
That’s the situation we have now and that is what makes Hebron unique: four settlements in the heart of the old city, in Palestinian houses, with about 600 settlers living behind barbed wire and checkpoints, with between 1500 and 2000 armed Israeli soldiers stationed to ‘protect’ them from their Palestinian neighbours.
‘Number four the one it’s behind my store and on top of my store; it’s what they call Abraham Avino settlement. They built it on the main vegetable and fruit market. They occupied all these old houses above us, they rebuild them which is not their properties, they just took them, their owners did not sell them, they fight in court and they won the case but [the settlers] didn’t leave them.’
What this doesn’t convey is how close and how hostile the settlers are. They live literally above the shop, above a wire netting filled with rocks and rubbish which they throw from their windows: ‘We done it, we fix it as a kind of protection and sometimes that metal net won’t do any good as while you are standing they pour on you liquid such as dirty water, urine, rotten eggs, and all that happens in front of the soldiers’ eyes. On both sides there are watching towers, sometimes we do complain, we shout to the soldiers.’ The soldiers however do nothing. The soldiers do not do anything to protect Palestinians (or internationals) when settlers attack them and this happens often. They say it is a matter for the (Israeli) police but the police are never there.
I ask him how things used to be before the 1994 Massacre in the mosque that led to the obscene division of Hebron city centre into the two halves we have today. ‘It used to be crowded, active, so busy because you see the main city to produce this stuff [embroideries and rugs] is Hebron. Palestinians from all over used to come every day, even from the Gaza Strip, to buy their goods from here and to pray in the mosque and to leave late in the afternoon, and even internationals from the embassies from Ramallah and Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, they used to come at the weekends to buy their stuff. We used to make a lot of money, we had a nice business and good life, no trouble, no problem, no nothing.’
I queried him: really, even though the settlements had begun to make their presence felt? ‘The settlements when they came in the eighties they were small and it wasn’t like any trouble between Palestinians or settlers. It used be that a lot of settlers even they came from Kiryat Arba to buy fruit and vegetables.’
Then I ask him about the Oslo Accords, that set of negotiations and agreements from the 1990s to the 2000s which led to the setting up of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank: that seemed to be a time of hope for many Palestinians, didn’t it? ‘People thought Oslo was good in a way. It might help and sort problems and solve it. We might have our own state. We were disappointed after that because they said at the beginning by the year 2000 all settlements in the heart of the city, they were going to leave them and to go and to live in Kiryat Arba, the main and the first and the biggest settlement outside the city.’
And why did it not happen? ‘Since that time the Israelis don’t want the peace process to go forward to let Palestinians have their own state, they don’t want it. Americans and British and a lot of countries, they said to them stop building settlements; they ignore everyone; they are not listening to anyone, they don’t want to give us a state.’
Jamal is very clear about the Israeli strategy: ‘Life is so hard, difficult, tough. We don’t feel safe and secure down here from the army and the settlers, we are frightened they will open fire on us and shoot us. Look what they have done round the mosque: they have shot so many people, they want the area empty, they want people to be frightened and to leave the area. By shooting these kids they made it so frightening even I don’t go there.’
I am sitting here writing this as my fellow activist Jenny comes in with breakfast and tells us that someone was shot and killed ten minutes ago at one of the checkpoints, not the one that we just came back from, one that none of the internationals was at. This says two things to me: this is exactly what Jamal is saying. Every day, small things and big things. Every day, pressure to leave. And secondly, if I was ever unconvinced, standing for two hours at a checkpoint counting and watching, that my time is well spent, I am not now. This would not have happened if international observers had been there. I am sure of this. How can we be everywhere all the time?
And Jamal reminds me of the other reason we are here: ‘The media is not on our side, it is on their side. When you go back home you are going to tell your husband, you are going to tell your kids, your neighbours, you are going to say what you have seen with your own eyes and they will know from you the harassment and the attacks and the bad things they do against us.’
There is already a funeral today. Now there will be another tomorrow, if the Israelis release the body. Muslims have to bury their dead the same or the next day. Three funerals last week. Funerals every week.
Jamal rejects violence for himself and his family. All that is left is sumud, steadfastness: ‘We are resistant, we are determined to stay, its hard for us to leave. It’s in our blood, it’s in our soul. To stay and to be patient. Here you have to live and to take this way of life because this is the way it goes, safe or not safe, peace or not peace, to me as a person I can’t do anything about it.’
29th November 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus team | Huwwara, occupied Palestine
UPDATED: 05.01.2016
Congratulations! With 420 US dollars collected we have now reached a third of the amount needed to cover the costs of the lawyer, who is representing Mahmoud in the Israeli court. However, we still have to collect 867 US dollars.
Please, keep sharing the campaign and encourage the people who care to donate through PayPal on our website, every contribution matters!
Free Mahmoud!
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UPDATED: 28.12.2015
So far, 310 dollars have been collected. We are still far away from the 1287 dollars we need to cover the costs of the lawyer, Khaled Al Araaj, who will be representing Mahmoud in the Israeli court. Please continue your kind donations!
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Palestinian human rights activist and community supporter Mahmoud Abujoad, from the Deishah refugee camp in Bethlehem is still in prison waiting to be reunited with his wife and family! Mahmud was arrested on September 9th 2015 whilst traveling with his newly wedded wife to Jordan on a family holiday. He is being charged by the occupation authorities under allegations of throwing stones at a demonstration against Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” massacre in Gaza, more than a year ago. A military judged ruled to release him on bail and his loved ones gathered the money that was needed with your help. However, the military prosecution appealed and the decision to release him was overturned as an act of collective punishment.
Newly married Mahmoud Abujoad and his wife Sireen
Military Judge Lt. Colonol Shmuel Keidar said in his decision “ I believe that the court can deviate from the micro-considerations regarding the defendant himself and to include considerations of general deterrent, considering the wide population in the area. Because of these things I believe it is not wrong to use the the reason of general deterrent straightaway or for detention and should express it as much as the situation needs. For all of these reasons I accept to keep him until the end of proceedings.”
Now, Mahmoud and his family and friends are appealing for support for 5,000 NIS (1,287 US$) for the costs of the lawyer, Khaled Al Araaj, who will be representing Mahmoud. Please donate through PayPal on our website, every contribution matters!
Free Mahmoud!
Mahmoud and his wife Sireen, married just three months at the time of Mahmoud’s arrest in Jordan by Israeli authorities.
