Tag: Tulkarem

by Joey Weinberg

Photos by Pippi Lundgrensen

Today (Thursday, Nov 16) is definitely a good day to pick some olives; in fact, with the heavy rain from yesterday, it is even better that we are doing this as soon as possible. Too much rain makes problems for the harvest and for the olives harvested (I’m not sure why but too much water is no good), so it is good that we’re harvesting today. Full of early morning coffee and tea, we are going to pick olives with a couple of Faroun villagers in their olive groves, which lie across the street from the village (just south of Tulkarem). So, if you live in Faroun and have land that you want to get to, all you have to do is cross a street.

I rarely think of crossing a street as difficult, but our friend Yusef has to go through a lot of trouble to cross this street. Immediately on either side of the street is a tall fence loaded with electronic sensors; on either side of this fence is a wide pathway, then another fence, then a bunch of razor wire, and then a trench.

You see, like so many Palestinian villages, Yusef’s village, Faroun, is cut off from its agricultural land by Israel’s annexation wall. Just like Bil’in, Jayyus and many other rural communities, the main road through the village comes to a dead end at the annexation fence. Unlike the two other villages I named though, at the place where the main road through Faroun meets the annexation fence there is no gate through which to pass, so access is a bit trickier. So, early this morning, like we did yesterday morning, I, a few foreigners and our friend Yusef start our trek through the village of Faroun to Faroun’s agricultural land by walking around the village — yes, around the village.

The nearest point of access between Faroun the village and Faroun the agricultural land is off a road that goes around the village. This road around the village has a turnoff which comes to an end at an Israeli checkpoint. On the other side of this checkpoint is a road which goes directly to Yusef’s land, but the road is a restricted access road open only to Israelis and the few native Palestinians who hold Israeli work permits. To access the 4500 dunums (roughly 900 acres) of Faroun land which lie between the Green Line and Israel’s annexation fence, the Faroun residents must first get a permit from Israel, and those with permits must travel an additional 7-9km to the Jubara checkpoint to present their permit to the soldiers. Even with the permit, access ultimately depends on the discretion of the Israeli soldiers stationed at the checkpoint.

For the first time in two years, Israel has granted Yusef access to his land, and he now carries a permit good for one month. Even with this permit, there are some additional barriers: the nearest point of access to his land, where the village road meets the Israeli road, is at this checkpoint through which, technically, he is not allowed to pass.

You see, Yusef’s land access permit is meaningless at the nearest checkpoint, as it only allows him access to his land, not to the State of Israel, and the road to his land is officially claimed as part of the State of Israel. However, this morning we decide that, since Yusef has four foreigners with him, we’d try to pass through this checkpoint, hoping that, in the presence of foreigners, the Israeli soldiers would let everyone through. We successfully passed through with Jawad yesterday, so why not try again?

This early in the morning there is no line. As we reach the checkpoint, the casual interrogation begins. “Why are you here?”, “Where are you from, etc.” Yusef hands over his permit, and, after another soldier arrives to debate the status of this permit, the first soldier turns to me and says, “You can pass here, but he cannot pass.” To which we ask, “Why? He lives here — his olive grove is just 100 meters up this road. Why can foreigners pass and this man can’t? We think it’s ridiculous that we can go to his land and he can’t. What is the problem?”

To this the second soldier replied, “It is complicated, but…” and explained that, as mentioned earlier, only Israelis or those who have a permit to work in Israel can pass. After about thirty minutes trying to get the soldier to change his mind –“this is silly, we’re only going 100 meters down the road, can you call your superiors, etc.”– a commander offers Yusef a compromise. “You can escort them to the land, then you must return here and go around to pass through the proper checkpoint.” This is just too stupid to be real. Yusef heads back to catch a ride to the Jubara checkpoint, and the four of us walk up the restricted road to his land.

We arrive in the grove to find Yusef’s cousin and his mother pouring the tea, so we have some tea and get started right away. First, we lay plastic tarp on the ground, then some of us start stripping the tree of olives ether by hand or with a small, hand-held rake, letting olives fall to the tarp beneath the tree. Cousin Raed –who has a 3-month permit– and a family friend get in the trees to show us foreigners how real work gets done.

Some of these trees are so loaded with olives that it takes a group of five people one hour to finish one tree, but some of them are underdeveloped and don’t have much fruit. For the small or underdeveloped trees, we don’t bother laying a tarp, instead plucking the olives by hand and catching them with buckets or aprons. We get a pretty good rhythm going: as some of us finish one tree, others get started on another. We clear away two years of undergrowth and scrub brush to prepare the area to lay a tarp down, then start plucking, yanking, raking, and picking olives. We spend the rest of the morning repeating the process.

Occasionally one or two of us collect olives from the ground, and occasionally we pass around a bottle of water. Occasionally one or two of us gets a bit winded from the work or squints a bit too much from all the sunshine, and occasionally one of us will make the others laugh by making monkey noises from up in an olive tree. My role is not only to harvest but also to periodically munch on partially-dried olives. Only once did I almost fall from a tree.

We stop for lunch at around 11:30AM; I don’t know where it came from; Um Yusef must have carried it with her, because one minute she’s putting olives in buckets and the next she’s telling us to sit and eat, which is probably my favorite thing to do here. Maybe harvesting olives is a close second, but eating ranks pretty high.

People here like their guests to eat, and in this I fancy myself an overachiever. If only my appetite matched my enthusiasm, I would be a Palestinian children’s story or some sort of Saint for food-eaters. But it’s not only the food but the sharing — the culture of collectivism I’m slowly getting accustomed to. Cooking Arabic coffee over a campfire, sipping tea under an olive tree, and keeping such great company make it quite easy to forget the utter stupidity, casual inhumanity and naked brutality of the circumstances which have brought us here. At the moment I see no soldiers, no police, no weapons, no racism and hate… and I am truly happy to be here. Should I feel ashamed for having such a good time with Yusef, Raed, and the rest of our hosts? It really doesn’t feel like work.

As the Palestinian olive harvest nears its end, I consider the persistence of these farmers who continue to defy the theft and expropriation of their land: these farmers are the last line of defense for Palestine’s very survival. In fact, the olive harvest itself may be the biggest roadblock to a seemingly impending erasure of a culture.

Of course you can discuss perhaps the economics of the olive, the olive tree, olive oil and the region, but this resistance act is not an economic act. The travel restrictions which make import/export unavailable to Palesinians renders any such discussion almost pointless. The economics? There are none. Israel has pretty much managed to sever the economic ties between the Palestinians and their most famous domestic product –the olive– through travel restrictions. Under this occupation, farming your olives is much less a profit venture than a necessary way to be what you are. It is no longer profitable to maintain your groves, pick your olives, and simply be what you are — an olive farmer. Hell, in some circumstances it is not even possible.

So why continue? Why do these people bang their heads against the wall? Why spend all available time jumping through Israel’s hoops to get permits, then walking one or two hours out of the way just to work as an olive farmer and not make a living? You could say that many of these farmers have nothing to gain and everything to lose. The very fact that these farmers continue to work in their fields and on their lands may be the biggest act of defiance and complete noncooperation I have seen: they simply refuse to disappear. These people are as solid and as strong as the hundreds-year-old trees they care for, as persistent as the thousands-year-old traditions they keep. As they refuse to let the occupation kill their traditions and their lands, they refuse to let the occupation kill their spirits.

You could say that the olive doesn’t fall far from the tree.

by Daniela, Tuesday 26th September

This weekend I attended a small rally in Tulkarem, where Palestinian NGOs were calling for a boycott of Israeli goods. Although the group was small, they were organized and seemed intent to follow through with this goal. On our way back to Ramallah, our taxi slowed to a stop. A line of ten cars was ahead of us, waiting at the checkpoint.

When our time came to pull up beside the soldiers we all passed our IDs to the driver. The three soldiers glanced at the IDs and began to walk around the car, inspecting the passengers. We opened the door and they instructed my friend to step out and speak with them. He walked over to their station, lifted his shirt upon request, and turned in a circle to prove that he was not carrying a weapon. He said nothing. (One day later, I would watch this same guy as he furiously chanted in front of a group of soldiers, “Hey Israel what do you say, how many kids did you kill today?”)

The three soldiers spoke to him for a short time, and then asked the driver to pull over to the side and wait while they called in my friend’s ID. “It will only take five minutes,” they said, and went back to chatting. One soldier appeared bored with this game, and blithely urged his friend to just let us pass, but he refused.

Five minutes turned into fifteen, and the car’s passengers began to get restless. After my friend’s failed attempt to reason with the soldiers, I decided to get out, and use any pull that I might have as a U.S. citizen to get back the ID.

“What do you want,” called out one soldier as I approached them.

“Listen, I’m not sure what the problem is, but we’re really in a hurry,” I said, trying to sound casual and degrading at the same time.

“What’s your hurry, do you have to catch a plane back to the U.S. or something?” one of the younger ones joked.

“No, but there are people in that car that have things to do with their day. They have to get to work, they have to meet people in Ramallah, they have lives to get back to.”

“This will only take a few minutes, we have to check your friend’s ID.”

“Why,” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said another one.

“You don’t know, but you’re making us wait here for 20 minutes?”

“Well, he could be a suspect,” he responded authoritatively.

“He could be a suspect? That’s it?” I said, trying to be careful with my words. “Listen, can you just give me his ID and let us go. We really need to get to Ramallah.”

They looked me up and down, and then hesitantly handed me the green ID. I snatched it up and walked back to the car.

When I was only a few steps away, the youngest of the soldiers called back to me, “Don’t hate us sweetie,” in a tone of condescension that I had not been subjected to in a while.

I turned around, prepared to say everything that I thought this kid needed to hear, everything that I hadn’t spoken out loud since I arrived in Palestine. But I looked down at the ID in my hand, wondered what might happen to my fellow travelers if I talked back to the soldiers, thought about the four more checkpoints we would have to go through that day, and remembered that this wasn’t my fight.

Recently I have been working on a report for ADDAMEER (Arabic for conscience, a prisoner support and human rights association) on Palestinian child detainees, and the various military regulations that apply to their interrogation, trial, and detention. Advocacy agencies will often make the point that most Israeli military regulations consistently violate international laws. For example, Palestinian children are tried as adults when they reach the age of 16 and will be placed in adult prisons. They are denied the right to education, the right to congregate in prayer, and are subjected to both physical and psychological abuse on a daily basis. But what do all of these small arguments matter when they are merely tiny details in a much larger injustice?

I was interviewing an Israeli lawyer the other day on the differences in treatment between Israeli children and Palestinian children. He mentioned that Israeli children who are convicted are often sent to rehabilitation centers, and not to juvenile prisons. When I pointed out that this option has not been provided to Palestinian children he scoffed at the idea. “The help [a Palestinian child prisoner] might need is not the help that Israeli occupying system would be able or ready to supply,” he said. “What will be the rehabilitation? Education to Zionism? Or will Palestinian social workers, who identify with the Palestinian cause (and may be potential
prisoners themselves) be let inside to help the children?”

It is rare that I will see a lawyer make the argument at trial that this system, as a whole, is illegal. It is rare even to hear someone bring up international law in the proceedings. With the exception of administrative detention cases, or cases of torture, international standards have no place in these military courts. More often than not, there will be a plea bargain, and if they’re lucky they will get their client’s sentence down a few months. As no one is listening to the big arguments, they have to make these small arguments day in and day out: This child has never been arrested, so his sentence for throwing rocks should be reduced…This man has a family to take care of, so may he pay a fine for belonging to the PFLP party instead of serving time?

Last week, I was able to attend the appeal hearing for the members of the Palestinian Parliament that have been held in Israeli jails since June. A few days before, a military judge had ordered the release of these detainees, on bail, for the duration of the trial, but this was delayed in order to give the prosecutor time to appeal. Five minutes into the trial my translator had to abandon me, so I stood silently and did my best to pick up a few words.

All of the hearings are conducted in Hebrew, but a soldier will stand at the back of the room and translate in Arabic. Most of the time his words will be mumbled, so it’s nearly impossible for the detainee’s families to understand what is happening. The defense attorney went on at length, speaking for nearly half an hour straight. The court was definitely standing room only that day, as all of the seats were occupied by reporters. I wondered if the judge would have allowed the defense attorney to continue for this long if members of the media weren’t watching him like hawks. The members of the legislative council sat quietly, occasionally mumbling something to their lawyers and laughing. I had seen the faces of all of these men on posters plastered up around Ramallah. In their pictures, they looked dignified in their suits and ties, resembling every politician I have ever seen. Now, even in their brown jumpsuits and shackles, they still seemed determined to look stately.

The defense attorney was still presenting his case, and all I could think was, how could he possibly have that much to say? What more is there to say than, “This is completely illegal. You can’t arrest someone for being a democratically elected official.” Done. Case closed. But things do not work that way around here.

There have been moments in the history of this occupation when defense lawyers have decided to boycott the trials altogether. They will make a statement that they cannot participate in this instrument of the occupation. The organization I’m currently working with has often called for such boycotts, but will never follow through with them without the full support of the prisoners. After all, it is they who will bear the brunt. I was speaking to a good friend the other day about his time in prison. He said that these boycotts had occurred during his time, but it was always damaging to the prisoners. If a group of lawyers made a public statement about the illegality of the Israeli Military Courts, any prisoner associated with them would undoubtedly be sentenced to double the amount of time. This is a risk most lawyers are not willing to take, nor should they—unless their client is ready to take that risk with them.

So I sit back each day and watch the small battles being fought, but not often won. I’m still trying to figure out my role in all of this, but for now I’m satisfied in getting the stories of those I meet out to all of you. So here are the words of one client of ADDAMEER who is currently being held under administrative detention. This means that he is held without charges or trial, and his attorney is not permitted to see the secret file against him. Technically he may only be held like this for six months, but most administrative detainees have their sentences renewed indefinitely. His name is Yahir, and he is 18 years old:

“During the last 10 days of my Detention Order, I start to think about the outside world. About my family and friends, how things are outside, what all my friends are doing, how they are spending their time. When my Detention Order is renewed, I feel shattered. I am depressed and frustrated because in my mind the renewal means nofamily, no friends, no knowledge of the outside world.

“On the day of renewal, the prison authorities move 26 prisoners all together and put us in 3 cells. We leave our section at 8:30 in the morning and have to wait until the end of the day, when all the 26 prisoners have finished, before we are returned to our section.

“During the renewal hearings, I sit and wish I would hear the word ‘release’ and I wait for the judge to say ‘sha’rur’ (release). I don’t understand what the translator says as he speaks too quickly and sometimes I have to ask him to repeat.

“On the last hearing, when my detention was renewed, I told the judge that I am only 18 and that there is nothing against me and that I have never been in prison. I wanted to know what the secret file against me has in it. I told him I was from Qalqilya, which is literally a prison anyway due to the wall. I asked him to release me. My request was refused.

“The life of the Administrative Detainee is all about waiting. We don’t know when we will go home. When our detention order is about to end, all our thinking goes to the outside world. We daydream about our family and friends and what we will do when we are released.

“I have seen Detainees receive a renewal of their detention on the day they are supposed to be released, and they go mad. One Detainee, Nimmer Nazal in my section gave all his prison belongings away on the morning he was to be released. He was given a renewal on that day and he lost his temper.

“Then in the evening he had to ask to get all his belongings back again…”