The website has now been updated.. finally. So there will be less details sent
out in emails- for news from Jenin see www.soundslikefreedom.org

CALL TO ACTION FOR STRANDED AND ATTACKED FAMILY:Please do everything you can for
these forgotton people:

We could still smell the gunpowder as we walked up the narrow winding road to
the five-house community of Kharba Ghanam, near Suetat outside of Jenin
yesterday. Rather, there used to be five houses, but since 10 o'clock yesterday
morning, there are only three. The other two have been reduced to smoldering
piles of rubble by a joint force of Israeli soldiers and settlers, come from the
21 year-old settlement of Kadim situated some 100 meters away.
While picking among the salvaged furniture, Fadme, one of the 36 people formerly
living in one of the houses calmly explains that the settlers want them to move
away and shoot at them every night. She has neatly folded all her blankets
beside the remains of the demolished home, and on top tapers a flower basket
looking out of place, its pink petals a sudden flash of colour against the
sombre background of worried faces.
A second, younger woman sits away from the others, who have gathered in the
shade of a tree to drink tea. She bites her lip and angrily turns away when her
sisters encourage me to film the ruins of what was once their home, now just the
hot vengeful dust that remains their birthplace. Only a couple of hours before,
the soldiers had eternalised the same images on film. They also took pictures of
the three houses still standing, perhaps planning to return at a later date in
order to finalise this family tragedy and facilitate the expansion of the still
small and seemingly remarkably unprotected Israeli settlement neighbouring it.
The sad story of Kharba Ghanam is set in a beautiful part of the Jenin
countryside, surrounded by green trees, a red earth valley and Biblical craggy
expanses of grey. Yet tanks roam these lonesome roads, at times shooting
indiscriminately at those who need to brave them on their way to and from the
city. Driving on these roads, made for the wanderings of fellahin and their
sheep, light buses and the occasional tractor, is virtually impossible as army
vehicles have compressed and worn them down. The children living in the various
little communities framing the road must travel to Jenin every day to go to
school, straining their ears toward the city before starting on their journey in
order to possibly discern whether there is curfew or not.
36 people are now forced to share the three remaining houses, which were built
in -68. However, the families have lived on and tended the land since fleeing
from Haifa in 1948, and have legal papers from the Israeli Civilian
Administration Office in Ramallah, Beit Eil, (the primary administration before
the establishment of the Palestinian Authority) proving their rights to the
land. Yet the Israeli army seem to have as little respect for the legal
arguments used by themselves to defend their own settlers, as they do for basic
human rights, human dignity, human life.
The women ask us to accompany them while they collect the hay that they have put
out to dry in the sun, as a jeep had shortly before scared them away. They own a
substantial quantity of land, including grazing ground, olive orchards and
fields of wheat, but this has been largely rendered useless and inaccessible
since the 100-house large Kadim settlement, that also borders onto the Old City
of Jenin and the terrorised village of Aba', has seriously begun to threaten
them. In the past they have cut down much of the olive trees and the families
now fear that the three year-old saplings will not be allowed to grow in peace.
About two months ago, the settlers started a fire on the plot closest to their
outer perimeter fence, devastating yet more of the farmers' many hours of work,
made even more difficult by the fact that they are constantly afraid of being
shot at. It is difficult to hide in the middle of a field and the houses are
situated on top of a small slope, isolated and
extremely vulnerable to attack.
A chainsaw is turned on somewhere among the trees in the settlement and one of
the women walking beside us is startled. I am so afraid, she admits a moment
later, but shrugs off the fear at the sight of her beloved olive trees, hurrying
forward to stroke their delicate boughs and turning her head up to thank Allah
for this beautiful gift to his people. Suddenly we hear a suspicious sound from
out on the crumbling main road and hurry up to the houses. It turns out to be a
false alarm, a bulldozer has arrived to continue the laborious and ungrateful
work of mending the potholes in the road in between army harassment. We go into
the barn, where two calves quietly stand eating out of the same bucket. There
are erratic hens running around everywhere, the occasional sheep and a horse.
The families do not have proper access to either water or electricity and are
forced to buy both of these things from a friend in order to somehow maintain
their livelihood, now reduced to selling del
icious fresh milk and wheat.
The daily routines of a farmer are difficult to keep up in this hostile
environment. The safe haven ideally provided by a family is even harder to
conjure up in a world where the only thing keeping people sane is their love,
their fury and their pride, their knowledge of being in the right. All that is
certain and slightly comforting is that even if the three remaining houses
should be destroyed tomorrow, the magically smiley and open people inhabiting
them will do their utmost to build ten new ones in their place.
For "Whatever Sharon does, be it by his hand or his ass, let it be!" (mother of
twelve, made homeless yesterday).

Film and radio on website in the next day (en shala).

Please take direct action and pressure the Israeli authorities in everyway you
can.
embassy details from: www.embassyworld.com/embassy/israel.htm

Israeli Occupation Forces Spokesman: 00972 3608339
Press Office: 00972 256245789

Please try to call these numbers as much as you can and do anything else you can
think of to help this family!

Sounds Like Freedom