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The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil,    but because of the people who don't do anything about it

Occupation magazine - Life under occupation Home page  back Print  Send To friend Umm al-Ara’is and Umm al-Khair, July 13, 2013 David Shulman A man wants to walk on his land. He knows they won’t let him. The soldiers are already there, waiting for him. Still, he wants to walk on his land. Settlers have stolen it, and the soldiers are there for their sake. Still, he needs to go there, it’s his land, it’s like a part of his body. He’s not about to give up. Week after week, on Saturday morning, we follow him to the fields. Today, like every week, there are women and children—the wonderful, impish children of Umm al-Ara’is-- marching with him. His young daughter sits on his shoulders. We set off from the encampment of Simri, with its goat-pens and black tents, head over the hill and down into the wadi and straight into the fields, which the thieves have plowed. Since it’s a weekly ritual, the soldiers are ready. They come at us, they bark, threaten, order us to stop. We keep walking. I stay close to Sa’id, who is leading this motley crowd. Soldiers pick some of us from the procession and push us to the side, but Sa’id keeps walking until he has crossed the wadi and moved halfway up the next hill, with the ugly settlement—technically, it’s an illegal outpost—of Mitzpe Yair on the top. By now the soldiers have produced the inevitable order declaring the whole area a Closed Military Zone, and they have a little map attached to it, with the area crudely marked in purple. Anyone inside the CMZ will, they say, be arrested. To show they’re serious, they in fact arrest a young boy, one of Sa’id’s nephews; they handcuff him and prod him into one of the waiting jeeps. The people of Umm al-Ara’is have washed over the line of soldiers, but not for long. As happens every week, the soldiers finally force them to a stop and turn them around. Slowly, soldiers snapping at them from behind, threatening them with their guns, they make their way back across the plundered fields and climb a little ways uphill toward Simri, where we began. Kris, a young woman from German public radio, is with us; she’s making an hour-long documentary on the settlements. Being new to South Hebron, she naturally finds the whole scene surreal, unintelligible. “Why has this happened?” she asks me, aghast. “Why has Israel allowed this craziness to develop? The settlement is itself illegal, even in Israel’s terms; the Palestinians have proof that they own these fields; why are the soldiers driving them away? Why are they serving the settlers, helping them steal? What gives them the right to arrest that boy? What’s the point?” To be honest, I am having trouble explaining to her, or for that matter to myself, how it has happened. All I can say is that I’ll follow Sa’id wherever and whenever he wants me. He says to me now, “Either they release my nephew or all of us, men, women, and children, will get arrested with him.” I tell him I’ll be happy to join in. Sa’id is one of those impressive men, natural leaders, whom you meet these days in Palestine. He is gentle, soft-spoken, lucid, tough. Some two months ago the soldiers arrested him together with his wife, Rima, and their eighteen-month-old daughter—also seven other Palestinian farmers and five of our activists who were with them. It’s not every day that you get to see a baby, still nursing at the breast, under arrest in the Qiryat Arba police station. I wonder what the soldiers who made the arrest were thinking. But then they had their orders. Amir can’t resist addressing the squiggly line of soldiers—they’re young, regular army recruits, probably hot and bored-- who are now making sure we don’t try to return to the fields. “Is this what you joined the army for? To defend those lunatics up on the hill? You know that Mitzpe Yair is an illegal outpost, and that they have taken over these fields. Is this what the Israeli army is meant to do? You think this is some heroic achievement?” One of the soldiers, a young non-com, says, “Yes. This is what I came to do in the army.” That’s all he will say. Some of the others seem to me much less sure about today’s mission, and perhaps not entirely impervious to Amir’s questions. Or maybe this is just my wishful thinking. There’s been some good news, Sa’id tells me. The settlers of Mitzpe Yair had built two large hot-houses part way down the stolen hill. The Palestinians petitioned the army’s advocate general, who recognized their claim and ordered the two new buildings demolished. This constitutes a small victory, though some weeks have gone by and there’s been no sign whatsoever that the army intends to carry out the demolition order. Still, maybe we’ll somehow force them to do it. At least the principle was recognized. This same authority is supposed to pronounce on whether the fields stay with the settlers or revert to their rightful owner. If the verdict goes against the Palestinians, they’ll shift to the district court or the Supreme Court. I explain to Kris that this is how it works. We come here each week to establish a presence that will support their claim and to document the army’s illegal, indeed blatantly immoral acts. If we persist, together with Sa’id and the people of Umm al-Ara’is, there’s at least a chance that they’ll eventually get the land back. It’s a long, tedious business. In the past, we’ve sometimes managed to reverse the otherwise inexorable process of dispossession and expulsion that is the norm in South Hebron as elsewhere in the territories. Not merely the norm: it is the sole raison d’ętre of the Occupation. Kris remains incredulous. After an hour or so, they release the captive. He comes back to us, bounding over the rocks, rubbing his sore wrists, laughing. The ritual is over for today. We can leave. By now, around 11 AM, it’s hot. Hotter than I can describe. White shimmering fire singes every exposed millimeter of our bodies, burns its way into our eyes and ears and lungs. We walk the long road back to the highway. On the way, farmers working amidst the trees of a garden-cum-orchard greet us warmly, ask us where we’ve been. We tell them: Umm al-Ara’is, with Sa’id and the ‘Awad family. They smile. It’s Ramadan, they can’t eat or drink, but they insist on offering us the fruits of the earth: freshly grown tomatoes, green fakus, followed by ripe peaches and plums they pick from the trees. How can this waterless soil produce such miracles? We tell them “Enough, enough,” but they are joyful in giving and can’t be stopped. Loaded down with this cornucopia, we slowly wind our way to the highway. Ezra picks us up in his car and drives north toward Umm al-Khair and Carmel. Another group of activists spent the morning with the shepherds of Umm al-Khair, and our mission is to find them out on the hills. Last week the soldiers literally kidnapped one of the young shepherds who was grazing his goats on his own land; when the boy’s father came to rescue him, the soldiers beat him, threw him to the ground, and then proceeded to arrest another shepherd and four of our activists. You can read about it in Amitai Ben Abba’s graphic eye-witness account, and you can also watch the brutal clips: http://radicalmonkeyclown.wordpress.com/2013/07/09/the-false-arrests-umm-al-kheir/. True to his style, Ezra turns off the road and drops us at some seemingly random point in the middle of the desert. “Climb that hill,” he tells us; “they’ll be waiting for you.” Who? Which hill? He’s gone before we can ask. The heat’s gotten worse, if that’s possible. In the remote distance, on top of a steep rocky hill, or maybe it’s a mountain, we can see two dark figures. Are they the shepherds we’re looking for? Who can say? We start off up the hill, over the rocks; there’s nothing remotely like a path. I’m carrying a heavy pack, with rather a lot of water and some medical supplies. After some minutes of strenuous climbing, I begin to wonder if I’ll make it to the top. Maybe I’m getting too old for these adventures. Or maybe not. It’s hard to breathe. Eventually, we emerge onto a ridge and find two bored soldiers boiled in sunlight. In this treeless desert, someone has erected a small, shady trellis with a stone seat inside. Kris, clearly exhausted, tries to sit down, to find some relief from the tormenting sun, but of course that’s not allowed: the trellis belongs to the settlement of Carmel, the soldiers chase her out at once. Other than that, they show no particular interest in our presence, though they do tell us that we’re not allowed to step anywhere on the paths leading to Carmel or the lands belonging to the settlement. We can now see two shepherds on the next hill, still far off, and milling around them and spread out over the slope, right up to where the yellow villas of Carmel spill over the crest, is the largest concentration of armed soldiers and military vehicles I’ve seen since, I think, the first Lebanon war. They must have called out the whole battalion to make sure that no Palestinian shepherd sets foot on even the tiniest trace of the lands Carmel has taken. You know, I’m sure, who they took them from—these same shepherds of Umm al-Khair, the most impoverished people I’ve ever met. I guess a couple of shepherds and a few goats must constitute a serious threat to the Jews, or the state, or the army, or the occupation authorities, or the police, or the Bible, or maybe monotheism, or all of the above. Probably, by definition, an existential threat, the kind the Jews like best. Otherwise why bother with the jeeps and command cars and the guns and the helmets and the tear gas canisters and the stun grenades and the heavy boots and the officers making their hackneyed threats and the thirsty recruits and the handcuffs and the blindfolds and all the rest of this sinister charade? I’m drenched in sweat and still struggling to catch my breath, but you know what? I’m glad I came. Links to the latest articles in this section Occupation forces injure mourners following funeral of slain infant Mohammad Tamimi Nabi Saleh village assaulted - toddler shot in the head died in hospital Palestinians in the snow: thrown from home into the snow, throw snowballs and get arrested