Tag: Ta’ayush

CPT-Palestine closes At-Tuwani project

November 2, 2011 | Christian Peacemaker Team – Palestine

In 2004, the village of At-Tuwani and its Israeli partner, Ta’ayush, approached CPT’s Hebron team and the Italian peace group, Operation Dove, asking if they could provide accompaniment for the children of the village whom settlers regularly attacked as they walked to school.

Although CPT had made regular visits to the South Hebron Hills villages over the years, the team on the ground and the organization as a whole deemed it important to respond to the villagers’ request for a permanent presence in the village of At-Tuwani.

Seven years later, CPT-Palestine is closing its At-Tuwani project. The growth of the South Hebron Hills nonviolent organizing work has made the presence of CPT less critical. The shepherds of At-Tuwani and surrounding villages now are part of a large nonviolent resistance network encompassing various regions of Palestine. They are part of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, and South Hebron Hills leaders regularly plan nonviolent actions to which they invite Israeli and international groups and offer nonviolence trainings to men and women in the region.

The village has grown significantly since 2004, when all the homes were living under threat of demolition. Defying these threats, At-Tuwani has constructed ten new homes, a health and community centre, electrical infrastructure, a paved road through the village, a new cistern, and a mosque. It has a woman’s co-op that sells traditional crafts to groups that come to the village, which helps to support families and the new infrastructure. The village has also received grants from various agencies, one of which it used to buy several computers to provide IT training for village youth.

The end of CPT’s permanent presence in At-Tuwani does not mean the end of its relationship with the South Hebron Hills villagers. CPT-Palestine will continue to support them by maintaining media and public awareness of the area, participating in actions organized by the nonviolent Popular Struggle Committee and bringing CPT delegations to the South Hebron Hills.

Because of the villagers’ stalwart nonviolent resistance, they now have relationships with hundreds of Israelis, Palestinians and internationals who support their efforts. Two international groups will continue to have a physical presence in the area. The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) now has an office in Yatta, the urban hub of the South Hebron Hills, and Operation Dove will continue to live in At-Tuwani.

AT-Tuwani team member Laura Ciaghi writes, “I think we have done a good job of empowering the community in doing nonviolent resistance, mostly by creating a safer space for people in Tuwani and lifting some of the heavy pressure of living under occupation, so that they had the time, the energy and the space to organize themselves. The olive tree we planted in our courtyard on Christmas 2005 this fall has yielded for the first time, a full bucket of big olives, and maybe this tells the story better than anything else.”

Notes from Area C / The right to return to the caves

Amira Hass | Ha’aretz

11 December 2009

This is a story of return, the return of Palestinians to their land in Area C. Just over a month ago, on November 8, two out of 15 families returned to Khirbet Bir el-Eid, in south Mount Hebron. By yesterday their number had reached eight.

“Everyone waited to see if they would kill us before they decided whether to return,” joked Ismail I’dra, 63, as he worked energetically to clean up one of the caves that serve as homes to residents the village. Indeed, less than two weeks ago, I’dra, too, was afraid to enter the area on his own, with his tractor laden with feed for his flock; he preferred to be accompanied by activist Ezra Nawi of Ta’ayush (an Arab-Jewish anti-occupation movement).

The first three weeks after residents began to return to Bir el-Eid were full of incidents in which settlers from nearby communities threw stones at the women and the flocks, and tried to enter the village to frighten people), and blocked the access road, sometimes with the help of the army. Only the submission of an urgent petition, two weeks ago, to the High Court of Justice by the inhabitants, by means of Rabbis for Human Rights, compelled the army to leave the road open.

“But, God be praised,” said I’dra on Wednesday, “during the past week it has been quiet.”

The minor incident last Saturday apparently no longer counts as a clash: About 20 members of Ta’ayush arrived to help clean up the village, which is actually a collection of caves. One settler appeared, as did Israel Defense Forces soldiers and Border Police. There was tension, and one Ta’ayush activist was arrested, which is a routine occurence. And this week, there are already more smiles on people’s faces: The constant presence of activists from abroad and daily visits by Israeli supporters add to their sense of security in Bir el-Eid.

Laundry fluttered in the breeze, chickens scuttled about and some of the sheep ventured off to chomp the first grass that sprouted after the rain, while others bleated from inside their stone enclosures. A few inquisitive children scampered around the mothers and the volunteers working to tidy the area, between the black water containers brought by Rabbis for Human Rights and the white tents protecting the caves – donations from the Red Cross.

On the agenda now are the cleaning and restoration of the village’s cisterns, which were dug by the residents’ great-great-grandfathers. A number of Ta’ayush volunteers have already acquired expertise in “this donkeys’ work,” as Nawi calls it. One noted with satisfaction that the first cistern he has been entrusted with would be a cinch; there is no need to slither down into it on a rope. The work will take two or three days, and it will be able to store enough rainwater to supply residents for a month.

Is this cleaning operation allowed, we wondered. After all, this is Area C, where every heart needs a permit to beat from the Civil Administration. The activist’s reply: Digging new cisterns for collecting and drawing rainwater is forbidden, but repairing existing cisterns is allowed.

During a tour by Haaretz in August 2007, this place looked like a lost cause – manifest proof, it seemed, that the designation of a locale as belonging to Area C is the final stage before “cleansing” the place of Palestinians and effectively annexing it. No sign of life was visible on these slopes back then. The cisterns were in ruins. The half-destroyed stone fences and structures, and partly blocked caves, looked like memorials, situated as they were between the two unauthorized outposts overlooking the area: from the south the Lucifer farm, and Magen David (also called Mitzpeh Yair) from the north.

An attack back then by two settlers on UN field researchers and on a Haaretz correspondent and photographer was added to the list of abuses suffered by the indigenous inhabitants, which spurred them to flee. The harassment was backed up by closure orders of the area by the army, and by inaction on its part, and on that of the Civil Administration and the police.

Useless complaints

The harassments began in 1999; by 2003 the last family had departed. A petition by inhabitants of Bir el-Eid in 2006 to the High Court of Justice, submitted on their behalf by Rabbis for Human Rights attorney Quamar Mishirqi-Assad, gave all the details: the killing of sheep, burning of fields, destruction of crops, damage to property, use of gunfire and dogs, building of dirt mounds to prevent access, throwing of carcasses into the cisterns. Complaining to the police was worthless.

At the end of January 2009, about five years after attorney Mishirqi-Assad began her correspondence with the authorities, climaxing in the petition to the court, the state gave its response: “In the wake of the completion of the examinations and assessments of the issue, it has been decided that the army will allow the petitioners to come to the area of Bir el-Eid for purposes of grazing and dwelling … starting from the second part of 2009 …”

On Wednesday Mussa Raba’i, one of the residents, said the real problem in the area is not with the settlers, but rather with the Israeli authorities – i.e., the central government: It allows the settlements (including unauthorized ones) to sprout up and develop, while preventing the original inhabitants from building or connecting their dwellings to the electricity and water grids. This, added Raba’i, effectively prevents adoption of a modern way of life.

The state’s response to Rabbis for Human Rights also stipulates: “Nothing in what is stated allows your clients to enter areas that have been declared state lands or to carry out construction of any sort without obtaining the requisite building permits from the responsible authorities.”

Maryam Raba’i and her daughter Abir, a student of business management at the Al-Quds Open University, smiled when asked whether they live in the caves of their own free will. Abir, who cannot study at night because there is no electricity, said of course not. Everyone wants modern and convenient housing, she added, but on their own land.

In various places in the West Bank, clusters of similar semi-nomadic dwellings (tents or caves) had by 1967 developed into villages with permanent structures, but this natural process of development was halted by the Israeli occupation.

“In the period when the central government was weak,” explained geographer and archaeologist Nazmi Ju’beh, “people left the khirbehs [rural outposts] in which they had been living and moved to larger, central villages to seek protection mainly from acts of robbery by nomadic Bedouin tribes. As the central government grew stronger, after 1830, habitation near their springs, grazing lands and cultivated fields – in accordance with the seasons – became more permanent. A mosque was built here, a school and a shop went up there. Jordan encouraged this process. Now the situation is reversed: The government is causing the insecurity and selective non-development.”

Why didn’t you build stone houses before 1967, we asked the inhabitants of Bir el-Eid. They immediately corrected us: Some 40 roughly hewn stone houses had been built during the period of the British Mandate in the village of Jinba, in a valley about three kilometers to the southeast. Bir el-Eid is an integral part of Jinba, in terms of the families living there, the land and the history. However, in the 1980s, without anyone being aware of it, the IDF demolished most of the houses because they stood on land that was declared a “military training zone.”

The determination to return, the legal battle, and close support of Israeli and international activists have rendered the expulsion only temporary. Neither the massive demolition or the training grounds designation; nor the building prohibitions that Israel imposed in the early 1970s; nor the restrictions of “Area C” are what has impelled people to abandon their lands. The official Israeli limitations only force people to live in harsh, traditional conditions that do not accord with the younger generation’s aspirations and expectations.

In reply to a query from Haaretz regarding measures being taken to protect the safety of the inhabitants of BBir el-Eid, the IDF spokesman and the spokesman of the coordinator of activities in the territories replied: “The IDF takes seriously the claims regarding friction between Palestinians and the settlers, and carries out various activities at known points of confrontation in the sector with the aim of preventing and limiting occurrences that disrupt public order. Recently the brigade command has also carried out a tour of the site, in cooperation with people from the Civil Administration and the prosecution, to assess the situation.

“In the wake of incidents that occurred there, and after carrying out a security assessment of the situation, the army determined that, provisionally, entering the Bir el-Eid area can be done by means of an access route that is different from the one that initially served the inhabitants.

“Indeed, the inhabitants submitted a request for an urgent discussion in the High Court of Justice, but prior to deliberation (and with no connection to it), an additional assessment of the situation was conducted, and it was decided to allow the inhabitants free access also along the original route, if there is no concrete security impediment, in the future. On November 28, there was friction between Palestinians and settlers, in the aftermath of which the area was declared a closed military zone, with respect to Israeli civilians. The settlers were evacuated in order to prevent a conflagration.

“The IDF is continuing to take all measures to ensure public order in the area within existing limitations, with the aim of reducing the incidents as much as possible.”

Settlers, farmers, soldiers, internationals

Max Blumenthal | Mondoweiss

On Saturday I traveled to the South Hebron Hills, to the Palestinian village of Safa, with an Israeli group called Ta’ayush that works to protect Palestinian farmers from settler violence and documents the proliferation of illegal settlements (Ta’ayush is Arabic for partnership). Things were peaceful when we arrived in the verdant grove of grape trees below Safa. A tractor plowed the land, a few farmers picked grape leaves, and the Ta’ayush activists greeted members of Anarchists Against the Wall, and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) volunteers were already on the scene.

Within minutes, however, a group of settler children clad in white tsitsis assembled on the hill high above the valley, rolling tires down the hill and chanting in a single, piercing cry, “Death to Arabs!” The children were residents of Bet Ayn, one of the most fanatical Jewish settlements on the West Bank and home to a terrorist underground that planned to bomb a Palestinian girls’ school in Jerusalem. Recently a Palestinian resident of Safa killed a 13-year-old boy from Bet Ayn, setting off a series of violent reprisals that culminated when a masked mob of 30 settlers attacked two elderly farmers with clubs, breaking one man’s skull and seriously wounding the other. Since then, the farmers of Safa have been reluctant to work their fields without international and Israeli activists present.

The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has lined up firmly on the side of the settlers of Bet Ayn. This means that the army is a de facto arm of the settlers and responds to their every command. As soon as the settlers became agitated by our presence, they called an army unit to remove us. Four soldiers rushed to the scene in a jeep, a commander ambled down the hill — he seemed tired and unhappy about leaving his air-conditioned vehicle – and presented the farmers and activists with a closed military zone order. We had five minutes to leave the scene or be arrested.

Then, a Ta’ayush member named Amiel stepped forward with an Israeli high court ruling stating that the farmers must have access to their land without settler harassment. He warned the commander that he would be sued and held personally responsible if he enforced the illegal closed military zone order. The commander huddled with his troops, then retreated – a move that is often viewed within IDF ranks as a reprehensible display of weakness. The troops eventually vacated the scene and so did we, riding up the hill on a tractor to Safa. Joseph Dana, an Israeli Ta’ayush activist, told me the action was successful: there were no arrests or settler attacks (a regular occurrence), and perhaps the farmers could work for the rest of the day.

I hung out with some Palestinian kids in Safa until our ride came, throwing rocks into a dumpster from a few yards away. This is what passes for pickup basketball in the village. The kids liked imitating me exclaim, “Nothin’ but net!” Then we were off to Hilltop 26, an illegal settler outpost near the uber-settlement of Kiryat Arba, which dominates the landscape above Hebron.

When we arrived, four teenage settler boys were waiting for us. They immediately called the army, who arrived like clockwork with a border police unit and two members of Kiryat Arba’s security force. The settler boys, who only last week attempted to set fire to a Ta’ayush protest outpost (now destroyed), went to greet the police commander and a few soldiers they apparently knew. It was a meeting of minds, a portrait of collaboration between fanatical Jewish colonists and the Israeli government. The army commander approached us with a closed military zone order, demanding that everyone leave the scene.

The army was aware of the media’s presence, however – I was filming and an Italian photojournalist snapped pictures. So the commander also asked the settler boys to leave. They protested angrily. “You can change the order to let us stay!” one of them shouted to the commander. “You’ve done it before a few times.” But when the army marched us off the scene, they also escorted the settlers towards Kiryat Arba. Of course, the police commander walked with his arm on the shoulder of one of the settlers boys, but the relatively even-handed enforcement of the order was unusual.

“Normally they force us off and let the settlers stay,” Joseph Dana told me. “This is the first time they’ve made them go too. But they will almost certainly let the settlers go back in a few hours. I think they only did this because the media was here.”

Whether or not the settlers returned that day, their illegal outpost remained intact. It is just another stake in the Occupation, a rickety shack that, with the help of the Israeli army and the encouragement of Netanyahu’s government, will someday be a neighborhood in Greater Israel.

Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and blogger whose articles and video documentaries have appeared in The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Huffington Post, Salon.com, Al Jazeera English and many other publications. He is a correspondent for The Daily Beast, a research fellow for Media Matters for America and a writing fellow for the Nation Institute.