commentary from Israel & the West Bank
Posts tagged kiryat arba
Palestinian Water Access in the South West Bank
Nov 14th
Near the illegal outpost hilltop 18 just away from the uber settlement of Kiryat Arba is the Palestinian village of Al-Baqa. Israeli officials have begun cutting off water to the farmlands of this village in, yet another, bid to create difficulties for local residents in the hopes that they will leave the land for life in one of the major cities in the area. Al Jazeera has filed this report which includes some Ta’ayush footage.
update from hilltop 18: Rebuilding an illegal outpost
May 31st
Ta’ayush has been tracking the illegal outpost of hilltop 18 (26) over the past two months. Last week it was ‘dismantled’ by the IDF at the directive of the Israeli government. This is an important step but, if history is any guide, not a long lasting one. The day the outpost was ‘dismantled’ Ta’ayush activists were on the ground protecting local Palestinian residents from settler attacks of reprisal. We were not able to reach the actual outpost because of the IDF presence and certain arrest waiting for us there. Our goal was to document the reconstruction of the outpost. Today the settlers of Kiryat Arba have done us a favor and posted photos of their rebuilding. You can visit their forum here if you read Hebrew otherwise here are the photos. Does the Israeli government think that the public is stupid? Why don’t they declare the area a closed military zone and not let any settlers return? I am taken aback by this insanity.
hilltop 18 after the IDF dismantled the outpost
the rebuilding
an outpost is reborn
Update: Army is Dismantling Hilltop 26, Settlers Building it Up
May 27th
I am waking up to news that the Army is dismantling hilltop 26. According to initial reports, the Army arrived at hilltop 26 and began to dismantle the outpost because the settlers had connected electric to the structure. The army, finally, issued a closed military zone on the settlers and began to tear down the structure. According to Ynet, the IDF dismantled parts of the structure but all ready it has been fixed up by the settlers. The settlers are rallying around this outpost and Itamar Ben Gvir has been quoted that this destruction only gives the settlers more vigour to build more outposts.
It is great that the IDF is removing this outpost but everything has a price. We fear that settler violence will escalate in the coming days. It is a high price to pay for the native population especially considering this hilltop 26 will be there next week. Let’s hope that it is a quiet day in the southern West Bank. Hazon David is on the list of those that will be destroyed. If this happens, violence is assured. Stay tuned for updates.
Hebron, Friday Morning
May 22nd
We arrived at the Jabari family home just outside of Kiryat Arba at about nine this morning. On our way there we could not help but notice that since last week, electrical poles have been added to Hilltop 26, the illegal settlement outpost we wrote about in our op-ed piece that appeared in the Haaretz English edition newspaper today.
Initially we had planned on helping the Jabaris farm their land, as we had done last week, but today Abu Enan, the patron of the family, was feeling under the weather. We decided to go meet with our friend and partner Issa Amro, who wrote an article in YNET about the restriction on Palestinian movement on the “Zion” route in Hebron.
Hebron is a ghost town, but one full of scattered pockets of Jewish life actively engaged in the oppression of Palestinian life. All of the Palestinians shops that once comprised a bustling market area are boarded up. Driving through the “Zion” route, one encounters checkpoint after checkpoint, soldier after wanton soldier, and since not a single Palestinian car is allowed on the road, one cannot help but feel that this city has essentially become a prison.
Hebron - Friday Morning
After parking the car, we were immediately flooded with threatening questions and comments from the soldiers, who are scattered throughout every corner of the city center: Where are you going? Why are you here? You can’t be here. Where do you live? We kept walking, well aware of our legal right to be there, but the soldiers stopped us, demanding to see our IDs, which would be a regular occurrence throughout the day. Since we don’t reside in Hebron, the soldiers wanted to see an order permitting us to be there, however we insisted that we, like other Jews there, were completely within our legal right and continued on our way. After meeting with Issa for a while undisturbed, a policeman approached us, asked for our IDs and informed us that the whole area was a closed military zone and that at any moment he was authorized to evacuate us. We were made to feel that it was a crime just being there to meet with a friend, although the policeman did allow us to conclude our meeting. It is clear that the IDF does not want Israelis and Palestinians meeting and uses any means at their disposal for preventing the maintenance of these relations.
As we were leaving Hebron, accompanied by police escorts both in back and in front of us, another policeman decided to stop us, gratuitously, right at the exit. Ezra got very angry about being stopped by this specific police officer, who has been known to repeatedly verbally abuse him. Today, Ezra’s frustration got the best of him and told the officer that he was “stupid.” This led to him and another Ta’ayush member (who defended Ezra) to be detained. Clearly it is extreme to be arrested for calling a police ‘stupid’. The remainder of the group was forced to leave the entire area of Hebron and Kiryat Arba under the authority of, you guessed it, a closed military zone order. The police escorted us out of the area under penalty of arrest. That was the end of our day.
Ezra after being arrested
Although we had planned on visiting Hilltop 26 to document the new additions constructed by the settlers, this was made impossible because the closed military zone order applied to this hilltop as well. As we drove out, beside the series of two-meter high electrical poles, we also saw an IDF jeep parked next to the outpost, clearly protecting the area. Issa informed me that the electric poles were put up within the last two days and that the settlers have been moving rocks making way for a mobile home. This is a major escalation in construction and exactly what we describe in our op-ed piece. The fact that the army has now stationed a jeep at the outpost is clear evidence of their intention to continue working together to create new facts on the ground in the southern west bank.
Joseph Dana and Mairav Zonszein
More Questions at Hilltop 26
May 16th
Posted by Joseph Dana in Southern Hebron Hills
5 comments
Safa and Hilltop 26 16 May 2009
We met at the usual place. We split up our group and set off to the southern West Bank. My group was going to meet with farmers in the village of Safa. The other half of Ta’ayush was off to Um Zetuna. We arrived at Safa and met with the farmers that had been working since the early morning with a group of Israeli and international peace activists. The army had been quiet and since the farm land was in a deep wadi, it usually takes time for the settlers to understand that the farmers are working. After about an hour, a group of settlers appeared on the horizon and began chanting ‘death to Arabs’. This is predictable settler behavior and we continued working.
Eventually the Army arrived on the scene with a closed military zone order for the farm land that we were working. The normal conversations began but this time Amiel came with a print out of this Supreme Court decision. Amiel began reading aloud from the decision which states that the farmers must have access to their lands without the threat of closed military zone orders and harassment by the settlers. Amiel’s final plea was directly to the commander and he informed him that if the army evacuates us from the area it will be his personal decision and Ta’ayush will sue him directly for his illegal conduct. After that, the commander went back to his jeep. Apparently, Amiel had struck a nerve and the commander took some pause at the thought that he could be held personally accountable for breaking the law. Seldom have I witnessed a soldier ponder the ramifications of his decision to enforce a closed military zone.
The army did not bother us any longer after Amiel’s talk. The sun grew hotter and hotter as the day wore on. Eventually we sat and talked about the situation in the West Bank. Today, a journalist from the United States, Max Blumenthal, joined Ta’ayush. He is working on a number of web videos about the reality of the Israeli occupation in the West Bank. We spoke with him about the work of Ta’ayush and the situation in south Hebron. I asked him if he planned on traveling to Gaza. Max reported that in to get press permission to travel in Gaza, one has to sign military censor permission. Journalists are not allowed to publish the names of any generals or commanders that are involved in war crimes in Gaza. Sounds like an interesting story in itself.
Doing some interviews in Safa
Everyone jumped on tractors for a lift out of the wadi, which was the scariest part of the day and went back to the village. We had a brief rest in Safa en route to hilltop 26 with the rest of Ta’ayush. I have written about hilltop 26 here and here.
Our goal today at hilltop 26 was simple: check the situation, view the almost certain ‘closed military zone’ order that the army would greet us with and document the fact that the army does not remove the settlers. Today, however, things took a slightly different course.
We arrived at hilltop 26 and were greeted by the same group of teenage settlers. There was an IDF jeep parked right on the dirt road leading to the outpost which was a new development. Upon our arrival, the settlers reacted with normal barrage of petty insults and provocations. Often their dogs come over to us for attention and love, something I am sure they do not receive from the settlers. The settlers were enraged when we would pet the dogs and immediately removed them and then yelled at us for touching them. One dog went to an Italian woman from the International Solidarity Movement for attention. The settlers proclaimed that a bitch was petting a bitch. This is the normal rhetoric that comes out of their mouths.
The army unit slowly grew over the course of half an hour and finally they imposed a closed military zone on the area as we had expected. We protested the fact that the settlers were not being removed. For some reason, still unclear at this point, the IDF removed the settlers. Removed is too strong a word. The IDF ‘removes’ peace activists and today they asked the settlers to leave, at their own pace and in their own time.
Why did the IDF honor the law today? You can see in the video that one settler informs the commander that we (Ta’ayush) want the army not to remove the settlers so that we can record it. His source for this information….this very blog. Thanks for the support!
Ta’ayush was not able to see whether the settlers were fully and permanently removed from the area because we were threatened with arrest and had to leave in a hurry. I can guarantee that the settlers returned to the outpost shortly after we left the area. Today was the first time that the IDF enforced the closed military zone on the settlers. What can this mean for the legality of the land? Can we expect the army to remove the settlers every time we show up at the outpost? Are we merely in a lull of intensity there because of the Prime Minister traveling to Washington in a couple of days? Are our actions contributing towards the ultimate removal of this outpost? Are the settlers going to continue to read my writing even if they cannot understand English?
Ta'ayush activsts standing where our protest tent was constructed last week
There are many questions and not many answers right now. We have had some successful actions over the past days but many questions have arisen out of them. Being a peace activist takes time, patience and now that the summer is close, sunscreen.