It was a beautiful morning but as usual too hot. We went with Mahmud’s family to harvest their olives. 7 of us rode with Mahmoud on his tractor as it jumped up and down the street filled with un-repaired potholes.
Once we arrived at the family’s olive trees, Mahmud’s wife began singing Palestinian folk songs. In any other world this would have been a perfect day with good food and happy people enjoying each others company while they worked. But this is not that world. This is occupied Palestine.
A military jeep pulled up close to Mahmud’s land and two soldiers approached us. They said we could not stay there without permission from the District Coordination Office (DCO). We explained that it is nonsense for Mahmud’s family to be forced to ask “permission” to farm land that he legally owns.
Mahmoud’s family is required to ask for permission to farm their own land because of the illegal Israeli settlement that sits a few hundred meters away. A road for Israeli settlers cuts through Mahmoud’s land. Two settlements sit on the tops of hills nearby and the residents speed past the olive grove. We suspect one of the settlers who drove past while harvested olives called the military.
Fearing he might be arrested if he protested this treatment too much, Mahmoud and his wife decided to return home. They had collected about one bag of olives. Some other bags filled with olives collected the day before had to be left once again.
This is the mundane reality of the settlements in the West Bank. They are obstacles to the normal lives of everyday Palestinian families just working to make a decent living and enjoy their lives. While politicians argue over non-existent settlement “freezes”, Mahmoud’s family hopes they can receive “permission” to collect olives off trees they own.
On Monday 6th September, farmers in Aqraba were forbidden by the Israeli army to work on a 200 dunam area of land near the village.
The land is currently in the process of being converted, by a combination of local workers and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, from rocky terrain into usable farmland to increase the productivity of local agriculture.
The land in question was bought one year ago by a businessman from the area as a gift for many local farmers, and is located next to the main road between Nablus and the Jordan Valley (southwest of the village, towards Jurish). Three days ago, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees received a letter from the Israeli authorities saying that they must depart the area immediately. They claim that the land is in Area C, despite papers held by the owner showing otherwise. In one month, the land would have been ready to be used as farmland in the winter. The army threatened to confiscate bulldozers, and arrest workers and union members if work continued.
Ayssar, a member of the Aqraba Municipality, is convinced that the Israeli army have a different agenda. He said, “When they say it belongs to them, their aim is clear: they want to enlarge the settlement, they want to take our land. They threaten the workers, they take the machines, sometimes they burn the land. It is simple: they want to confiscate our land.”
The letter sent to the UAWC
The illegal settlement of Migdalim is located about 2 kilometres south of the land in question.
The municipality reports that many local farmers have been forced to sell their animals, as land grabs in the area have not left enough land to graze animals on. Despite threats from the army to confiscate machinery and arrest workers, local workers are still determined to clear the land, build, and plant trees by hand, and are requesting international accompaniment.
Background
The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) is a Palestinian organisation that was set up in 1986 to support farmers in their struggle against the occupation policies of destruction of Palestinian infrastructure and confiscation of Palestinian resources. See more at http://www.uawc-pal.org.
Aqraba is a small village with a population of around 8000 in the village proper, situated 18 kilometres southeast of Nablus. According to the ARIJ GIS Database of 2009, 90.1% of Aqraba village land is classified as Area C; this area contains all the agricultural lands, and the open spaces in the village. 4.1% of the village’s land area is taken up by settlements (can be seen at http://www.poica.org/editor/case_studies/ITS_Map1.jpg). Of the farmlands, 62% are olive trees, 8% are for fruit and vegetables, 30% for animal grazing.
Fire engines struggle to control the blaze in the olive groves of Burin
At 11:30 yesterday, 26th July 2010, settlers from the Berakha Shomronim settlement began shooting at Palestinians in the village of Burin and setting fire to crops on their land.
Trouble flared when Israeli authorities ordered the demolition of a structure in an illegal settler outpost because of the freeze on settlement construction. Israeli police failed to contain the settler riot which followed and closed Huwara checkpoint, near Nablus, in response.
The village of Burin covers 1500 dunams and about 3000 olive trees are planted on this land. Much of this was destroyed yesterday after fires were lit by a group of approximately 120 settlers and then spread to the next village of Kafr Qalil. The Palestinian fire services arrived to help the villagers who were attempting to put out the the flames with olive branches.
International activists from ISM arrived in Burin to report on the incident but were quickly and forcefully dragged away by Border Police, who took their passports and stated that “there was nothing to see here”. Later they were told that it was unsafe because the settlers were armed – but according to a local witness, Ahmed from Iraq Burin, the Border Police were acting as security for the settlers and preventing an ambulance from entering the area.
The ambulance was called after two Palestinians were injured. Reports received by ISM allege that these injuries were sustained from being shot at by settlers. At present we have been unable to verify this, the identity of the victims, or reports that this morning one person died in hospital from their wounds. Both ISM and EAPPI members are conducting further interviews and photography on the scene.
There were also reports of settlers smashing the windows of houses and cars, and throwing stones in the village of An Nabi Saleh in the Ramallah region.
Ramallah, Occupied Palestinian Territories, PM – Israel has exposed the extent of its crackdown on resistance in an affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court on April 29, claiming that the Shin Bet intelligence agency has been conducting surveillance on ISM activist and Australian citizen Bridget Chappell in Area A of the West Bank. The affidavit claims that her arrest and continuing surveillance of her movements is justified on account of various Israeli military orders, highlighting its overall authority in its implementation of apartheid in the Occupied Territories and its total disregard for the sovereignty of the Palestinian Authority and the Oslo Accords.
“My arrest from Ramallah in February and the Shin Bet’s new claim that I am under surveillance in Area A of the West Bank serves to further abolish the myth of Palestinian control in the West Bank,” says Chappell. “It’s clear that Israel is the authority in the Territories and that this is apartheid. Israel’s matrix of control in the occupied territories extends not only to the entire Palestinian population, but international activists involved in the popular resistance here, which is very dangerous grounds for them as their attempts to crack down on our participation in the struggle focuses the eyes of the world on what Israel has hoped to execute as a very stealthy and systematic bantustanization of Palestine.”
The state’s affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court on April 29 claimed that the arrest of Chappell was based on her violation of a 1970 military order stating that non-residents of the West Bank are prohibited from staying in the area longer than 48 hours without written permission from the military commander of the region. This is in-keeping with what may become Israel’s strategy of removing internationals from the Palestinian territories via the system of martial law enforced in the West Bank since the military occupation in 1967. Attempted implementation of these military laws on internationals in Palestine will spell the exposure of one of Israel’s most veiled weapons – the system of martial law that has enabled the imprisonment of over 650,000 Palestinians since 1967, mass annexation of land and the network of checkpoints and apartheid roads.
Omer Shatz, attorney for Chappell and Marti, states: “We are pleased that the state has finally admitted that it is the authority in Area A, as if the Oslo Accords have disappeared, and that the ‘bantustan’ known as the Palestinian Authority has no significance. This straightforward position will certainly interest the U.S. secretary of state, in light of the start of proximity talks”.
The gathering momentum of non-violent popular resistance has been met with extreme measures by Israeli forces targeting Palestinian, international and Israeli activists. In the cases of Chappell and Ariadna Jove Marti, Eva Novakova, and Ryan Olander, Israeli authorities used the ‘Oz’ Immigration Unit in an attempt to deport foreigners for their political activities. In the case of Chappell and Marti, the Supreme Court ruled that the use of the ‘Oz’ and the Israeli Defense Forces to implement arrests of internationals residing in the West Bank is illegal.
These arrests are part of a wider crackdown on the growing movement of popular struggle in Palestine, that has seen the arrest and imprisonment of many members of the popular committees of Al-Ma’asara, Ni’lin, Bil’in, Nablus and Nabi Salih. The latest codified measures of arrest are a sign that Israel is intensifying its resources against the grassroots Palestinian struggle. Targeting international supporters is just part of a multi-tiered campaign to quash a quickly spreading model of non-violent resistance.
Israeli settlers have strengthened their campaign of colonization and violence in the Nablus region of the West Bank in recent weeks. A mosque was vandalized and three cars torched in a Israeli settler attack on Huwara village on April 14. In the neighboring village of Burin, attacks on Palestinian civilians and homes continue as six mobile homes have been established on Burin’s land, constituting a new settler outpost.
On Thursday, April 15, international solidarity activists visited Huwara, a village of 6,500 inhabitants, to express solidarity with the village after the mosque had been defaced by settlers early Wednesday morning. Huwara mayor, Samer Odeh, reported that five to six settlers descended on the village in the early morning hours and spray-painted graffiti on the eight-year-old mosque. They also set fire to three cars belonging to inhabitants of the northern region of the village that lies a short distance from Yitzhar settlement. The Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) arrived and immediately closed off the entire area surrounding the mosque. They took pictures and then set to work painting over the graffiti – ostensibly to clean it up, but much more likely to cover up the act. The paint that was used was the wrong color and villagers came to clean the mosque as soon as the Army departed. Some of the graffiti remains and we were able to photograph it.
Another mosque in the village was defaced by settler colons in a similar way just two years ago. The mayor went on to note that the Israeli Army often comes into the village’s nursing school and harasses the women. The grade school, which is near the main road, also suffers such harassment – yet more examples of the extreme hubris of the Israeli Army which harasses and intimidates merely because it can.
From Huwara we traveled north to Burin to visit the head of Burin’s popular committee Bilal and his family and to hear about the incursion of the settlers from the nearby illegal settlement of Bracha into the village. Bilal reported that two weeks ago approximately 20 settler colons entered the village at night, shooting and throwing stones into the windows of two homes. Shortly thereafter the Army arrived, echoing the settlers’ violence with further intimidation aimed at the people in Burin in an effort to silence their protest.
The settler colons from Bracha and Yitzhar are a constant problem and threat to the villagers of Burin – Bilal, himself, carries the scars of a beating by settler colons.
Four days ago, settler colons attempted to steal a horse belonging to a Burin farmer as he made his way down the slopes of the mountains that envelope the village, brandishing a weapon at villages as they came to rescue the frightened animal. Six months ago, settler colons set fire to the house that Bilal is building at the summit of a nearby hill. Since that incident, Bilal has set the house in concrete so as to avoid another arson attack, but that has not stopped the settler colons from spray-painting the home. Looking out over the surrounding hills one can see Bracha very clearly, where 20 new houses have recently been built, despite the alleged 10 month freeze on construction implemented by the Israeli government last year. Six new temporary mobile homes have been established on the peak adjacent to Bilal’s new home five weeks previously, constituting the establishment of a new outpost. Prior to this, settlers had set up tents on the hill, but have since upgraded the constructions to include walls and roves, as well as electricity and water supply.
The settlements of Yitzhar and Bracha, built on the lands of Huwara, Burin and the neighboring villages of Urif, Einabus, Iraq Burin, Madama and Asira al-Qabliya were originally established as Israeli military bases in the early 1980s. Despite their “de-militarization” and alleged transformation to civilian communities, their positions in the region retain strategic value to the Israeli military and significantly aid the continuing annexation of Palestinian land. Residents of the religious settlements have increased their campaign of violent colonization in the past two years, wrecking havoc on the indigenous Palestinian communities and aided by the conspiratorial forces of the Israeli military. Route 60, the main highway running north to south through the West Bank passes directly through Huwara village, constituting the constant threat of settler and military harassment. Burin, situated in a valley between the two settlements bears the brunt of their territorial zeal. Despite the settlements’ violation of international law, Yitzhar was earmarked for increased funding in Israel’s 2009 national priority map.
9 September 2010 | ISM Media
