The below segment chronicles the early years of actions by Ta’ayush and Ezra Nawi in the South Hebron Hills. One can see that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The beginning of the clip shows life in the contested city of Hebron in 2004-2005.

The new generations of Ta’ayush activists are motivated and ready to use their privilege as Israelis in order to change the facts on the ground in the South West Bank. Their experiences in Shiekh Jarrah have had the positive effect of showing them how much can be done as an Israeli. How easy it is too make a real difference on the ground and not just vote for Hadash or Meretz. I worry about the longevity of these new activists but I tend to view the left in Israel with strongly pessimistic eyes. Perhaps I will be proven wrong this time.

These days our focus in Ta’ayush has been the farm lands of Um Zetuyan which sit uncomfortably close to the settlement of Maon and its illegal sister outpost of Havat Maon. Below is a video of settler children of Havat Maon attacking us last summer with stones as their parents watch adoringly.

Um Zatuyan has always been an important place for Ta’ayush. Throughout the past year, we have paid a regular weekly visit to the farmers in the area in order to ensure that they had access to their farmlands. The Supreme Court of the State of Israel ruled in 2006 that the farmers of this area were to be given full access to their farmlands without threat or intimidation by the Israeli armed forces. In reality, the IDF operates at the request of the settlers and right elements in the government with little regard for Supreme Court rulings. The Anat Kam documents are ready proof of this reality.

It is the intention of the settlers (and their workers, the IDF) that the farmers will give up their farmlands and then their modest homes because of the intimidation. This will provide the settlement the opportunity to take over the land and grow. As sad as it sounds, this model has been very successful in the South West Bank and many farmers have given up their lands and moved to the major Palestinian city of Yatta .

Our response to this model of colonization is clear: as Israelis we refuse to let this happen. We respect the decision of the Supreme Court and because no one else is willing to protect/enforce it, we intervene directly as citizens and exercise our democratic rights. Thus, the situation in Um Zetuyan is straightforward. The Palestinian farmers invite us to join them while they farm. Within fifteen minutes, two or three army jeeps show up. The soldiers emerge and proclaim the army a closed military zone. We respond by showing the soldiers a copy of the 2006 Supreme Court ruling stating that they do not have the authority to use a closed military order in order to intimidate farmers from carrying out their work. The soldiers refuse to listen and call civilian police to arrest us for violating a military order (closed military zone). It is not that sexy but incredibly important that these actions continue if people are interested in continuing at least a semblance of democracy in this country.

This week, I am a not allowed to join the others at Um Zetuyan because I was arrested along with four other Ta’ayush members on the pervious Saturday. After six hours of detainment at the Kiryat Arba police station we were allowed to leave. The IDF was not interested in having us see a judge as the judge would have exposed the IDF’s violation of the Supreme Court ruling.The IDF did have us sign a document barring us from entering the area of Um Zeytuan for eight days. This is standard procedure. We are dealing with a truly Kafkaesque occupation.

Amiel, a Ta’ayush veteran, was arrested along with me. We plan to join farmers as they plant olive trees near the settlement of Susya. The settlers are attempting to take over their groves and so it is important that they, on a daily basis, document themselves farming the land. If they are not able to do this, then through the bureaucracy of Israeli occupation law, the settlers might be able to take over the land “legally”. Again, the work is not flashy but important as the success of the occupation lies in its straggling bureaucracy.

We were able to plant about ten olive trees near Susya. On this day, the army was slow to show up at the olive grove but they did arrive accompanied by a handful of settlers. One can cleary see the master/slave relationship when the settlers are dealing with the IDF. It always takes my breath away. The army did not force us off the land because the rest of our group was in Um Zetuyan, creating problems for the army there. We finished our work; the Palestinians were picked up by Ezra Nawi for a ride to their village. Amiel and I began to walk to the Palestinian Susya which serves as an unofficial meeting place for Ta’ayush activists in the South Hebron Hills. Within in five minutes, an army jeep showed up behind us, slowly following us on our walk to Susya.

The master and the worker. Settlers with the IDF in Susya.

On the walk, I asked Amiel how he felt about the protests in Nil’in and An Nabi Salih. I have been thinking about whether they can be called violent or not because of the rock throwing that the Palestinians engage in with the army. I believe that nonviolence is the only model of resistence that will bring about real change and so my relationship with the protests is complex. Amiel’s answer was clear. He recognized their legitimate right to protest even with rock throwing but he was unwilling to join them because his definition of non violence did not include rock throwing. Non violence is one of the only principles that the members can seem to agree on. Non violence and being against the occupation.

He told me that the uprising in Prague in 1968 was a perfect example of the limits of non violence for his generation. He felt solidarity with the protestors in Prague but had to deal with the issue of Molotov cocktails that were throw into Soviet tanks which literally burned Soviet troops to death. Definitions of non violent resistance tent to be somewhat fluid and placing the protests in Nil’in and An Nabi Salih into a category is proving to be a difficult task.

It is hard to think about Prague 68 in relationship to Nil’in. I want to make the connections and see the similarities with other résistance models but I find it difficult. To my knowledge, there were few Russians documenting the struggle of the Czechs in this episode of uprising. Because of the intimate connections that certain Israelis are making with Palestinians, I have a hard time making comparisons between the nonviolent resistance in Palestine and other movements. I am sure that there are some comparisons to be made. Sitting in the villages of the West Bank while having tea among a group of Israelis and Palestinians thinking of creative ways to resist the occupation together is truly unique in my eyes.

Eventually the army jeep leaves us and we arrive in Susya. It turns out that ten Ta’ayush activists were arrested for violating an (illegal) closed military zone order. Daniel, another veteran of Ta’ayush, was injured during all of the commotion. A soldier threw him to the ground and began to beat him. Later in the day, we find out that he will not be able to walk for one week and will have to receive medical treatment for his injury

Eventually, we receive calls from Sheikh Jarrah. Settlers are attacking some of the Palestinians in the neighborhood and our presence is needed. Our weekly visit to Um Zetuyan has gone as planned. Another direct action non violent day against the occupation complete with arrests and injuries.

As in every week of the year, we woke up at 07:00 on a Saturday morning to oppose injustice. We is a group of about 15 Israeli Ta’ayush activists.

The South of Hebron Hills is one of the most difficult regions in the West Bank. Much of the native population of this area is Bedouin, a minority in Palestinian society to begin with, and generally invisible to the Israeli occupation authorities.

We first arrived to a location which became a focus of attention in recent weeks – the lands of Umm Zaytouna, near the village of Tuba (not that you could know, since the road signs only name the Jewish settlements in this area – did we say invisible?). Tuba’s misfortune is its neighbours. About 1km the east and north lie two Israeli settlements – Ma’on and Carmel. We will talk about Carmel later on.

The story here is quite simple. The whole land area around Ma’on is either private Palestinian land or “state lands”. This means of the settlers have no ownership rights over them. But, of course this doesn’t concern those whose land ownership is god-given. They don’t want Palestinians damaging the view. But Tuba’s residents need to make a living, and their Sheppards want to feed their herds on the land. When they do, they are expelled by the army – normally by shouting, threatening and sometimes even by taking a goat hostage (yes, that’s right). If the sheppards demand their rights on their own, they would be imprisoned and harassed in the better scenario, or physically hurt in worse scenario. Needless to say that all of this is illegal, either by international law (the mere existence of Ma’on) or by the occupation laws (forbidding the sheppards). The Israeli supreme court and legal advisor ordered the army that an area can be closed for Palestinians only if one of two conditions applies: an immediate security threat or immediate negative interaction with settlers. None of these exist here.

That’s where the activists come into the picture. We accompany the sheppards, demand their rights be realized and confront the army and police if they are not. The goal is to allow the herds to feed.

We do not have official leaders, of course, but for them it doesn’t matter much. Three 20 year old soldiers began arresting a person whose age is equivalent to that of their parents’. Some of us held each other strongly and tried to prevent the arrest by passive resistance and kept saying: “if you take him, take all of us”. Others documented with film cameras. Eventually 5 were arrested in solidarity (“detained”), and were taken to the police station in Hebron. They were kept there for 8 hours and later received restriction orders.

The others went on. We stopped to rest and meet the Bedouins of Umm al-Kher. These people used to live in what is today in Israel, near Arad. In 1948 they moved to the West Bank and settled in Umm al-Kher in beginning of the 70s. In 1981 Israel chose the lands near Umm al-Kher as a perfect location to build the settlement of Carmel. The fence of the settlement is adjacent to Umm al-Khers last houses Bedouin-shacks. We already said Bedouin Palestinians are invisible. Since they’re Bedouins, they can’t always prove land ownership. But they also can’t be nomads anymore, since there’s less land and times have changed. But if they want to modernize and build permanent homes in their village, they need construction permits from the occupation authorities. They are always denied. It’s a policy whose goal is to encourage them to leave to the urban areas. Eventually, those who couldn’t or didn’t want to leave, built illegally. So nearly every single tent or shack in the village have a demolition order waiting, which could be executed at any day. Many shacks and tents have been destroyed here before.

Later we paid a visit to Otniel. This is another settlement, 13km to the west. We walked peacefully from the nearby village of Khirbat Karme, to take pictures of private Palestinian land to which access is denied. We had a small map, specifying where the land is private and who it belongs to. The maps clearly shows that all of the surrounding land is Palestinian, as well as some of the actual built up area of the settlement villas.

After making about halfway, we had company. Settlers have guns, and a security person. He followed us while 15 of his settler friends came down on foot with their loaded M-16 automatic weapons. They are the emergency squad – meant to deal with security threats, when the army is busy or far away. This authority is often abused and used to harass or expel Palestinians rather than protect Israelis. Meanwhile, we passed a lone watchtower from which a female soldier smiled and asked us “what are you doing here?”, to which we replied decently with “what are YOU doing here?”.

The armed settlers stood in our way and asked us to identify. Why should we identify? We do not pose a threat to anyone. We’re all civilians and so are they. Only that they have guns. We refused to identify and were denied entry to the settlement. So we decided to sit down and rest, in the shade of a privately owned Palestinian olive grove near the settlement’s last villas. It was uncomfortable to sit, with all the thorns which grew around us. Palestinians are denied of weeding and ploughing or even visiting their lands here, and it’s easy to see/feel the difference. Meanwhile the army and police joined in and about 8 jeeps came from here and there, to save the day from our little courtesy visit. Once again, it was declared a closed military zone and we had to leave. On the way out, soldiers walked with us to ensure that we don’t do anything funny. To make the most of our time, me and a friend walked slowly and told the soldiers why we came all the way over here. We explained to them about the legal situation in the territories and local injustices. We asked them to look up in their books or internet when they get home, about the history of the conflict. We also told them to ask their higher commander in his periodic talk, whose interests they’re promoting with their operations. Some listened. A young agressive officer tried to argue, but slowly lost his arguments when confronted with the facts. I’m not naive. But I want to make sure they are fully aware of what they are doing. Many times they are not, or at least say that, and avoid facing the moral and legal consequences of occupying.

These actions may seem sisyphic but over time do have an impact. In other locations, such as the nearby village of Mufakara, persistence proved victorious. Where herding was once completely impossible, after several similar actions, today goes on without any disturbance. Our hopes are that persistence in Tuba will bring similar results.

In terms of the work by groups like Ta’ayush, the new military order in Israel reflects the fact that the “closed military order” is not working for the IDF’s purposes.Yesterday, myself and four other Ta’ayush activists were arrested near the settlement of Maon for violating a “closed military zone” order. This order was not allowed to be used in this specific area as ruled by the Israeli High Court in 2006. Basically, the High Court ruled that the IDF was using the order to prohibit Palestinians from farming their land which would lead to the Palestinians abandoning their farmlands thus giving the settlers the ability to expand the settlement. The IDF detained us for several hours in jail but ultimately let us go with no charge because they were not allowed to use the order in the first place as specified by the Israeli High Court. This story is a weekly one for Ta’ayush and over the past years we have been able to make significant gains in fighting these “closed military zone” orders and showing that the intentions of the IDF are in contrast to that of the High Court.

With the new laws that are set to go into place, effectively the entire West Bank with be a closed military zone and Israeli civilian courts will not be able rule on decisions about the illegal use of the “closed military zone” by the IDF to harass Palestinians. This new ruling reflects the relative sucuess of groups like Ta’ayush and the Anarchists Against the Wall to prove that that the “closed military zone” order is illegal and used incorrectly by the IDF in many cases. The order will state that the IDF has the right to deport or remove anyone classified as an “infiltrator”. An “infiltrator” is defined as: “a person who entered the Area unlawfully following the effective date, or a person who is present in the Area and does not lawfully hold a permit.” This can easily be applied to any left wing activist engaged in activity with Palestinians either in protest or helping with agricultural work. We are now dealing with an entire new set of laws that are only subject to military courts. We can be arrested (foreign nationals deported) with no chance to visit a civilian court or appeal to the rulings of the Israeli High Court.

Portion of the New Laws

The future of the direct action Left in Israel is now in question. The decision to implement these laws shows that the state of Israel is interested in giving up on the rule of law in order to maintain its occupation of the West Bank.

Below is video from the arrest of Ta’ayush activists yesterday near Maon. The video is in Hebrew and the activists are explaining that the “closed military zone” order is illegal. With the new laws, this conversation will not be able to take place and these activists will simply be arrested on the spot. In a word, Scary.

A report from David Shulman about the South Hebron Hills:

January 30, 2010 Al-Tal’a, Um Zaituna

“The most desperate fights are often the most hopeful,” Istvan says to me as we stand on the hill looking down at the shepherds and their sheep. You can always rely on Istvan for the surprising Hungarian perspective on things—not usually an optimistic one, but humane and morally acute in a dark, perhaps ironic way. This is his fourth trip with us to South Hebron. He likes the Ta’ayush mode, which he thinks exemplifies the central Gandhian principle: what is inside shapes what is outside; if you can overcome your own weaknesses and fear, you will have an incalculable effect on the most recalcitrant situation. Besides, there’s another consideration of a totally non-instrumental nature. He cites an extreme example. Those Germans and Poles and others who saved the lives of Jews during the Nazi period didn’t do it to defeat Nazism; they did it because it was right, a moral act in need of no justification or corroboration outside itself.

This comes as a timely reminder, because yesterday afternoon I was harangued at some length by a former colleague, a Russian humanist of the old school, by now thoroughly disillusioned: in a struggle, he said, between those with principles, driven by moral concerns, and what he calls the “Hottentot” rule—”If I take your wife, that is good; if you take my wife, that is bad”—in such a struggle, the Hottentots will always win. [I hope my Hottentot readers will forgive him, and me.] Moral scruples, in short, always weaken you; it’s the thugs who come out on top. So here we are in the living laboratory of South Hebron, where we can perform an experiment, in real time, to test these two opposed hypotheses.

We’ve come to accompany the Palestinian shepherds, who have been harassed in recent days even more than usual by Israeli settlers. The settlers, backed up by the army and the police, are constantly driving the shepherds at gunpoint off their historic grazing grounds; sometimes they beat them or throw rocks at them or even shoot at them for good measure. We divide up into three groups, each one responsible for one large herd; I am entrusted with the Al-Tal’a/ Um Zaituna contingent. I find Jamil, together with some 80 or 90 sheep and four of his young sons and other boys, on the rocky slope just under the cow-barn of the Maon settlement. He gives me a radiant welcome, his face alight with pleasure; Jamil is a true bon vivant, odd as the term might sound in the harsh desert setting of South Hebron. (You can see him in the attached picture.) He’s also monolingual in Arabic, a great advantage for me. He tells me that this morning settlers have already pointed their guns at him and his sons and told him to go away—or they would shoot. I think the sheep and the children are still a little too close to the settlement, and together we decide they’ll move some ways down the hill.

So far so good. The sheep are also happy—these slopes, normally inaccessible to Palestinian shepherds, are thick with fresh green undergrowth and the delicious thorny leaves the sheep adore. It’s rained a bit this winter; the soil is reviving under wind and winter cloud, a ravishing pastiche of green and grey. Here the name of the game, as we know well, is somehow to gain time—an hour, two, three, long enough for the herd to graze to its fill before the soldiers and the settlers turn up, as they always do. I have instructions from Amiel to avoid confrontation this time: if we see them approaching, we are to get the shepherds out of danger as quickly as we can. No arrests, if possible, today.

We talk, we laugh, we play. Jamil wants me to mount his donkey, Humara. How is it? he asks after I’ve clambered up on top. Much better than driving a car, I say. The children, as always, want their picture taken; they solemnly introduce themselves and, one by one, come to shake our hands. “Are you afraid of the soldiers?” little Ibrahim asks me, and I say, “No, not afraid, but I don’t want any trouble for you.” An hour goes by, wind whipping at our faces. I dismount from Humara. There is dust in the air, a sign of coming storm.

First we see the police cars driving up to Maon, blue lights flashing. They sit there, waiting. I’m hoping they just came by to have a look and won’t come at us, especially since we’ve now opened up a substantial gap between the herd and the outer perimeter of the settlement. But of course the hope is quickly dashed. A large posse of soldiers and cops is soon marching toward us over the rocks [see attached photo]. They reach Zvi and the other Um Zaituna flock first. Even at a distance, I can see them performing the remorseless stages of their beloved ritual: there is a piece of paper being waved at Zvi and the shepherds, clearly the signed order declaring this little patch of desert a Closed Military Zone; the order is examined, photographed, there are the always Quixotic protests, followed by threats from the soldiers and, after a few minutes, a gradual withdrawal of our people eastwards, deeper into the desert. Maybe, I say to myself, the soldiers won’t bother Jamil and his Ta’ayush protectors. No such luck. Having heroically driven the Um Zaituna flock down toward the wadi, the soldiers and policemen pick their way over the rocks toward us.

“You are now in a Closed Military Zone. You have fifteen minutes to get out of here.”

“And just where are we supposed to go?”

“Down into the wadi, past that curve in the hills.” The soldier points vaguely in an easterly direction. He’s also unrolled the map for our benefit, with a poorly defined area outlined in yellow marker.
“And why are you doing this?”

“I work for the Brigade Commander, ask him.”

“I’ll be glad to ask him, but he doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“You now have 14 minutes.”

“You know what you are doing is illegal,” we say, “the Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that the Army cannot declare a Closed Military Zone arbitrarily, and it is expressly forbidden to do so if this means denying Palestinian shepherds and farmers access to their lands.”
“Doesn’t interest me.”

“And you know that the Army’s own legal adviser in the Territories backed up the Supreme Court’s ruling with a directive issued to all soldiers serving here.”

“Twelve minutes.”

“So why are you here? Taking orders, as usual, from the settlers?” Zvi has joined us, and he’s wonderfully eloquent at such moments.
The lieutenant in charge has had enough words. He stands, features locked, impassive, eyes unseeing. But then why would one want eyes if all they could see was the one thing he doesn’t want to see?
“Or maybe it’s just that you happen to enjoy lording it over those who are weak and helpless, as you enjoy tormenting them?” I don’t remember who said this—one of the women, I think.

No answer. Glassy stare. Arms folded on his chest. He looks mean to me. Then I start to wonder if, after all, something akin to thought might not be happening in some recess of his mind. Maybe he’s even capable of feeling inner conflict. That would be a distinct improvement. “Whoever the Brigade Commander is,” I say, “I hope someday you will look at the world and begin to think for yourself.” But I know it’s all a useless gesture, and I, too, am going through my usual paces in a game whose rules have been determined by others. I hate the fact that I continue to play by their rules. We are going to have to think up some better way.

Maybe we should just stop arguing, refuse to move, and get arrested, as we have many times in the past. Does that do any good? It will mean Jamil will also probably be arrested, and then there’s the devil to pay. Believe it or not, he’s never spent a night in prison— which makes him a rather rare species in South Hebron. I’m not about to shatter his luck today.

So I nod to Jamil and we slowly start to move off. The policemen follow us down the hill. We cross over the bed of the wadi and begin to ascend the next slope in line. Here the police, I am happy to see, turn around and go away. But this isn’t good enough. The dour lieutenant and one of his men have stayed behind to watch us, and soon they decide we haven’t yet reached the particular curve in the hills they had in mind, so they come marching rapidly toward us, and they kick at the sheep and throw a few stones at them, and they threaten us again and we protest again, and we film them and record the whole sordid scene, and so it goes, on and on, until after nearly an hour they have driven us into a distant part of the wadi—past three or four or five curves in the path—and then they finally turn away. We end up, as Istvan observes, in a dry, barren stretch of sandy soil, overgrazed, grazed to death, utterly devoid of the juicy green thorns that the sheep had been enjoying higher up. I ask Jamil: “Did they at least manage to eat a little?” “Not enough,” he says. “They’re far from full.”

And he breaks into a tirade, utterly familiar in its tenor: every day the soldiers come and drive us away, the settlers call them and they come, they won’t let us live, it’s not just, it’s not fair, these are our own lands, they’ve taken everything, they leave us nothing, we can’t survive like this, we don’t have the power to resist them, even you couldn’t stop them, tomorrow it will happen again, we are defenseless….I listen, I know it is true, I am appalled that we couldn’t prevent this crime. We failed as we have before and certainly will again.

So who, dear reader, is right, Gandhi/Istvan or my Russian colleague? You can decide for yourself. Here’s what I can say by way of background—nothing new, I’m afraid. The ramified system in place in South Hebron, like everywhere else in the Occupied Territories, exists for one and only one purpose—to steal land and to make the owners of this land disappear. Everything, and everybody, on the Israeli side is fully mortgaged to this single aim. How this monstrous thing developed, how it gradually took over the central institutions of the state and bent them to its will—these are questions for some future historian. So far, surprisingly, the system has not managed to rid itself of the unwanted population of shepherds and small-scale farmers—a few thousand impoverished innocents—who have been eeking out an existence here for the last many centuries. These shepherds and farmers have proven to be astonishingly resilient; their needs are rather minimal, they are tenacious and brave, and maybe we, too, have had some small part to play in their survival. But, as Amiel says, the only thing that successfully grows in South Hebron is sheep and goats, and if the settlers and the government manage to starve the herds by chasing them off their grazing grounds, in the end our friends will be forced to leave. Every soldier who does what we saw the soldiers do today, and worse, blindly following orders, is complicit in a great human evil that cannot be justified or rationalized in any intelligible human terms.

This highly specific, irreducible wickedness has nothing to do with the big questions about making peace, or not, about negotiations with this one or that one or no one (the government’s preferred option), about Realpolitik and the Jews’ endless anxieties and the self-righteousness that may be the surface expression of those anxieties, about anti-Semitism and the bad memories we love to carry around with us, indulging our passion for self-pity. Or second thought, maybe it does have something to do with this last item. Self-pity is pregnant with its own malignant variety of aggression. In any case, wickedness, like goodness, really shouldn’t be explained away—indeed, at bottom, if you look closely, it cannot be explained away. It just is.

Jamil says they’re going home; there’s no chance of grazing again today. He thanks us, takes my hand, and the bedrock bonhomie of his nature flares up once more. They have a long walk ahead, over the hills, to al-Tal’a. There are more goodbyes to be said; I am leaving on sabbatical for the next four months. Sad, a bit overwhelmed, I tell Amiel that I’ll miss this place. “Don’t worry,” he says, “when you come back it will be just like this, or maybe a little worse.” The more desperate things get, the more bemused he seems to be, and the brighter his flashes of wit. As we approach the roadblock at al-Khadr at the outskirts of Jerusalem, the young Border Policewoman gestures our minibus to stop for inspection. Amiel calls out to her: “We’re all circumcised Jews—oh yes, a few circumcised Jewesses, too.” That, apparently, is what she wanted to hear; she waves us on.

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שבת 03.10.09

בבוקר יום שבת יצאנו לפעילות יחד עם תושבי טוואה שבדרום הר-חברון. מתנחלי מעון פלשו לתוך שטח הואדי המפריד בין טוואנה למעון ושתלו שם גפנים, למרות שזוהי אדמת העיר טוואנה. המנהל האזרחי קבע (לאחר שתילת הגפנים), שהשטח של מעון הוא עד סוף הגפנים, ושאר השטח הוא של טוואנה (זאת למרות שלפני כן ובעצם מאז ומתמיד כל השטח הוא של טוואנה), אבל למרות טענה זו המנהל קיבע גדר כמה מאות מטרים אחרי הגפנים, באופן שגזל עוד שטח מתושבי טוואנה.

לפיכך, יצאנו עם תושבי טוואנה לשתול סברסים ליד הגדר שקבע המנהל ופנימה לתוך השטח שלהם, על מנת לקבוע עובדות בשטח ולסמן את הגבול. תושבי טוואנה חוששים שהגדר פשוט תלך ותתרחק כל פעם עוד קצת אל תוך שטחם, דבר שייגמר בהפקעה גמורה של כל השטח. לאחר כשעה של חפירת בורות לשתילים והתחלת השתילה הגיעו הצבא והמשטרה. למרות נוכחותם, הם לא מנעו מאיתנו לעבוד, והעבודה הסתיימה כעבור שעתיים. כל השתילים שהיו במריצות נשתלו וסומנו במעגל אבנים סביבם, ואף הושקו.

מטוואנה המשכנו לסוסיא הפלשתינית, שם אורגן יום בניית והעפת עפיפונים לילדי האזור ולילדי פעילים. גם לשם לווינו על ידי הצבא, אך הוא לא מנע מבעדנו את הפעילות. הפעילות התנהלה על מי מנוחות ועפיפונים חגו בשמי סוסיא. מפתיע וגם משמח היה (למרות שלא אמור להיות שום דבר מפתיע בהעפת עפיפונים שאינה נחשבת מעשה פלילי, אבל במציאות שלנו כנראה לכל פעולה יש פוטנציאל כזה ) לראות את הילדים נהנים, למרות שנוכחות הצבא הרתיעה אחדים.

Saturday 03.10.09

On Saturday morning we went to work with the residents of Twane in south Mount Hebron. The settlers from neighboring Ma’on invaded the valley which lies between them and Twane and planted grape vines in the land owned by the Palestinians. After the settlers took over the land de facto, the military Civil Administration declared all the land which they planted as belonging to them and the remaining land as belonging to Twane (even though all of the land in the area is owned by Twane). However, when the Civil Administration erected a fence between the two areas it was put up, not immediately after the vines but several hundred meters inside the Palestinian land, in such a way as to take over a larger part of their land.

We went with the residents of Twane to plant sabra cactuses near the new fence on the Palestinian side in order to mark the border and show the Palestinian ownership of the area. The Palestinians are worried that the fence will be inched forward as time goes on, slowly taking over the whole of their land in the area. After working the land for about an hour, and just as we were beginning to place the plants in the ground the police and army arrived. However there was no attempt to stop us from working and after two hours the work was done. All the seedlings in the wheelbarrows were planted, marked with a circle of stones and watered.

From Twane we continued to Chirbet Susya, where there was a kite building and flying day for the children of the area and the children of the activists. We were followed by the army but they did not interfere with the activity which took place without any problems. It was nice and surprising to see the children having fun despite military presence which frightened some of them (there of course should be nothing surprising in the success of the activity, as kite flying is in no way illegal and yet it seems that in our reality even this is not to be taken for granted).

Dining at a hamburger joint on the weekend in Jerusalem with a few members of Israeli peace group Ta’ayush,including Joseph Dana, we were struck by the people eating around us. They were mostly young, American Jews laughing and enjoying the atmosphere. They were living the dream. A short stay in Israel for them is a blast. Parties, some history, Zionist indoctrination and mission accomplished. Palestine and Palestinians don’t exist. The occupation is invisible. The West Bank is “dangerous”, their parents and guides tell them. It is a false Israel, an illusion that is carefully crafted and maintained. Without it, the Zionist entity would collapse but there’s no evidence that’s happening any time soon.

A day with Ta’ayush activists on Saturday was a necessary counter-point to this other Israel. We met in central Jerusalem at 7 am and soon around 15 Israeli Jews and a few internationals arrived. One Ta’ayush member, Daniel, born in Russia but now an Israeli citizen, told me that he had no hope that Israeli society would change without outside pressure. Some others gathered, ranging in age from 20s to 50s and from students to academics, and they thought similarly. Sadly, the Israeli Left is dead. Now only a handful of groups actively pursue human rights in Palestine and challenge Israeli military policies. They feel utterly alone in this pursuit.

Dana has written about the difficulties experienced by our mini-bus at a checkpoint near Jerusalem. Our IDs were taken – humorously, the soldiers were unable to find the number on my passport, despite it being clearly marked – and we were unable to leave for over an hour. It was simply a case of ritual humiliation. The IDF had no right to hold us or refuse entry into the West Bank, but arbitrary rules are the name of the game under occupation. The soldiers were young, under 20 like most of them, and clearly bored. They wanted to show who was boss and what better way than annoying a handful of mouthy Israelis? We eventually turned back, found another checkpoint and sailed past. So much for being a security threat.

It’s hard to convey the sparseness of the West Bank. Palestinian villages are scattered here and there with groaning settlements sitting above or near them, often shadowing their daily rituals. The first action of the day was eating a picnic at an illegal outpost next to the settlement of Susya in the southern West Bank.

There has been a great deal of discussion in the Western press recently about the nature of outposts and the apparent clash over them between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu. Amos Harel wrote in Haaretz a few days ago that this debate is a convenient distraction:

“The outposts are a continuation of the settlements by other means. The sharp distinction Israel makes between them is artificial. Every outpost is established with a direct connection to a mother settlement, with the clear aim of expanding the takeover of the territory and ensuring an Israeli hold on a wider tract of land. Construction in the outposts is integrated into the overall plan of the settlement project and is carried out in parallel to the seizure of lands within and close to the settlements.”
The reality of outposts is deception on a mammoth scale, a price paid principally by Palestinians whose private land is being stolen.

photo by Laura Weisman

Ta’ayush activist Jesse Hochheiser visited the same outpost near Susya in June and blogged about his experiences. The photographs on the post clearly show the early stages of a concrete house. On Saturday, that house had progressed and looked nearly finished. A makeshift synagogue was erected nearby, a collection of branches and sticks. The outpost is illegal under both Israeli and international law.

We were invited by the Palestinian owner of the land to ascent “Flag Hill” and have the picnic. We had passed through a few Palestinian villages on the way, quiet baking in the hot, morning sun. A few children stood and stared while the men looked happy to have company. Women were largely absent.

The groups of activists, from Ta’ayush and the International Solidarity Movement, spread out and began walking up the small, rocky hill. A number of IDF soldiers saw and approached us but had no authority to stop our journey. We continued, a hot breeze blowing, and many of us carried frozen drinks and food for the picnic.

It was a surreal sight. Around 25 Israelis and internationals walking on Palestinian land, accompanied by IDF soldiers, simply wanted to enjoy a meal on a hilltop. It was a provocation, of course, but a legal one. I was constantly told during the day that it was important to bear witness and document the insidious ways in which the IDF protects the religious settlers and refuses to offer the same courtesy to the Palestinians. The Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that Palestinians should not be blocked from accessing their agricultural lands but this is rarely, if ever, enforced. American tax-dollars at work.

We reached the summit, plastic sheets were unfolded and watermelon, hummus and pita bread were laid on the ground. People began eating and singing. One of the activists was Ezra Nawi, currently facing prison for lawfully protesting. The Palestinian owner of the land explained in Arabic his right to be there and farm the area. A Ta’ayush activist said in English that they the IDF had no right to remove them.

But within a few minutes, many more soldiers arrived and a commander announced that we had five minutes to disperse or we would be arrested. It was a “closed military zone”, an oft-used term to suggest an emergency situation when, in fact, there is no emergency. There were no settlers to be seen, so the IDF’s motives were clear. The goal was to protect the nascent outpost and allow it to flourish. From little things, big things grow.

Nawi was soon dragged away, as were a few others (though released soon after, Nawi was hit some time later by soldiers.) Watermelon and pita bread lay strewn across the dirt. Many activists filmed the proceedings, including a German documentary maker who captured soldiers physically abusing one of the detained. An IDF soldier sprinted after him, clearly trying to obtain or blank the tape of evidence. He failed, not least because activists rushed to protect his camera.

Looking around from the hilltop, it was hard to imagine the religious significance of the place. Fundamentalist Jews regard all of the West Bank as granted by God, but what of many in the Diaspora? At the moment the IDF soldiers were dragging away non-violent activists, in clear breach of Israeli law, I wanted my Zionist colleagues to watch with their own eyes and tell me this was a Judaism of which they could be proud. Protecting settlers ensures a never-ending occupation. I was astounded to hear that the Israelis often used obscure British and Ottoman colonial laws to restrict access to particular West Bank areas.

Joseph Dana told me later in the day that, “Israel is a country directed by the military. A dictatorship with relative freedom of speech, but virtually no debate about the behaviour of the IDF.” Most Israelis either don’t want to know or know and don’t care.
The next visit of the day was Hilltop 26, a tiny outpost near the major settlement of Kiryat Arba (Dana and his partner Mairav Zonszein wrote about the saga for Haaretz recently and documented the IDF’s consistent protection of the settlers). The outpost itself has been destroyed a number of times by the Israeli state but magically re-appeared soon after. It’s political theatre of the most serious kind.

The outpost reminded me of a shantytown. Rubbish littered the area around the makeshift house. Tin, plastic and synagogue seats were seemingly thrown together to please God. A handful of teenage boys with light moustaches paced the hilltop, one videoing the activists who had arrived unannounced. A small bookshelf, dirty couches, a battered van, dogs without water tied in the beating sun and a sign of progress; electricity. When a Ta’ayush activist accused one of the religious fundamentalists of this fact, he accused her of being a “liar”. A light bulb gave the game away.

The IDF soon arrived. The activists were simply making their presence known to the settlers and letting them know that they were being watched. The outpost was illegal under Israeli and international law. Soon more soldiers appeared in trucks. Around 20 IDF officers for 30 activists. Some heated words were exchanged between the settler kids and activists in Hebrew. It was a standoff that legally should have ended only one way; the settlers would be removed and refused entry back to the land. Alas, the state’s response was predictable.

We were soon told that the area was a closed military zone and we would have to leave. A couple of Ta’ayush activists had decided to try and get arrested to keep their colleague Ezra company; they believed in never leaving anyone alone in custody. We stood our ground then pulled back. More IDF soldiers arrived. The settlers growled like rabid animals. One even remained seated in a crusty couch for most of the encounter, such was his confidence in remaining put. We moved forward, tried to engage some of the Ethiopian IDF officers, then withdraw. It was a highly co-ordinated dance.

Soon some of the officers approached the settlers and presented them with an order to leave. An intense discussion ensued, with squinted eyes checking out the court order. We were again ordered to leave the area. The settlers hesitated and complained. During this entire time, a dusty breeze and mosquitoes created an uncomfortable atmosphere.

Word had clearly emerged that the settlers were under watch. Some female friends of theirs arrived, and although I’d been warned that they often spat in the direction of the activists, this time they merely shot daggers in our direction. I wondered how God felt about extremist kids robbing other’s land in his name.

The theatre performance progressed. The activists were directed to move down the hill and the settlers followed soon after. We saw them joking with the soldiers, so we knew that their removal would be temporary, probably no more than 10-15 minutes.
Later in the day, Ta’ayush activist Mairav Zonszein told me that she wondered how Palestinians cope with their reality day in, day out. Human rights workers monitor, film, document and disseminate the reality of the occupation, but most of them live in relatively comfortable Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.
A day in the life of the West Bank.