You threaten some one until you manage that they do not go to their lands because of the risk to get killed, and then you take possession of their lands with the excuse that they are not visiting them. This is what is being done in Palestine.
Some of us are than asked to go to Bi'Lin. There is a demonstration every Friday against the wall, which has been declared illegal by the international community. However, demonstrations against it, when done from the inside, are considered illegal, or not acceptable for the army. These demonstrations are usually attacked by settlers, so internationals' presence is usually required so that attacks are not so violent.
We are told that settlers have the habit of smashing internationals' cameras and that if we complain they will say we attacked first, so the advice is not to approach them, avoid them getting close to our cameras, be careful when filming. What the soldiers have been also doing has been to arrest demonstrators, usually very young children, some children. But the international presence makes it easier to prove the unfairness of the detentions and the system.
Now we learn they have sent a letter where they say they will allow the demonstration as long as they do not throw stones (I can't remember if there was some more conditions). The response has reportedly been that a permission has never been asked for.
What has been lately happening, apparently, is that the army has done incursions during the night, forcing their way into the homes and arresting mainly children, getting them out from their beds. The function of the internationals is then to get out, film and photography these actions so that the arrests are at least not so violent.
More on
http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/11/palestine-21.html
Today we go and help out with the olive harvest. The people we are helping had permission to pick up their olives – yes, we are talking about their own lands. If they do not have an official permission for each day they want or need to enter their own land, soldiers or settlers can shoot and kill them, they would not be found guilty because it would be considered that the land owners were looking for it, for entering 'certain lands' near a Jewish settlement without permission.
Of course, no one takes the risk, and many families spend years not going to their own lands. If they go, they should do so when they have permission, not necessarily when the olives are ready to be harvested; they go and pick them as they are, if they are, and if they are not they will just have to put up with the situation and wait until next year, because permissions are not given automatically.
There is a law dating from the Otoman Empire according to which if some one does not visit their lands during a specific number of years, it is understood that he is not interested in those lands and therefore anyone else can take possession of them.
In other words: you threaten some one until you manage that they do not go to their lands because of the risk to get killed, and then you take possession of their lands with the excuse that they are not visiting them. This is what is being done in Palestine.
More on http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/11/palestine-22.html
Today we come back to the place where we were yesterday. They explain their economical situation and the price of the oil. Some farmers were better off just saving and using the oil, because with that price they would loose money on the transaction. They are at the mercy of the fluctuations in the international markets and they can sell very little to Israel because Israel is blocking the entry of
Palestinian products into Israel; it is also another way to squeeze and oppress them further.
We come back to the refugee camp where we are staying. It actually looks more like any poor neighbourhood of any city. People can already recognise our faces and we can already recognise some of the kids that shout and follow us, saying “hello!” and “what's your name!”. Some times they say “shalom” because, not knowing any other foreigners than the Jews, they assume that
every foreigner is a Jew.
In the internet cafe, the manager asks us what we are doing here and we explain. He then gives us a special price, in solidarity.
More on http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/11/palestine-23.html
Today we go to a different place to pick up olives. When we arrive we follow a Palestinian peasant who will take us directly to the grove where we have to pick up olives.
The Palestinian makes a few phone calls on his mobile and receives as many, all in Arabic. I comment to my colleagues how curious it is that there is so good coverage here in the mountains, while in the village is a lot worse, and their answer is that it is not surprising, since there is a settlement near us.
Everything possible is done to ensure that the settlers have a pleasant life – good coverage is one of the things. This contrasts with the null coverage that there is in the Palestinian refuge and villages.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian talks to an Israeli activist who, from Jerusalem, is trying to get the permission so that our man and his family can go and pick up olives.
We join this family in the picking of the olives and lunchtime arrives. We all sit in a circle but the plates, instead of being put in the centre of the circle for every one, are all next to us foreigners, and as the meal goes on, the plates come closer and closer to us, with the whole family encouraging us
to eat more.
We help out another family in the afternoon. To reach their land we need to cross a foetid river with brownish water, almost black. Signalling the barracks we had assumed were military, they explain that it is a factory built a few years ago, that is dischargingthese waters that are damaging the land. Indeed, they prefer not to pick up olives from trees that are too close to the water.
Their situation is more precarious than that of the people we have been helping out so far. They do not have any blankets, or ladders, or a donkey. We have to put the olives directly into the sacks, as they are, with branches and all, and they are all obviously very nervous and in a hurry, eager to finish. It is also obvious that they have not come round here for a long time, because it is all covered with bushes and stings that make walking quite difficult, and the olive trees are full of useless branches that make climbing to them impossible. After a good while picking up olives in quite precarious conditions the grandfather, 65, tells us his story: his own grandfather bought this land in the time of the Ottoman Empire. When he was five he inherited the terrain and now it is his sons who have the responsibility over it, although their task is more and more difficult. No one of the family has been able to enter this land in the last five years. The result is wilderness and weed every where, even in the trees. They have parasites and dry branches that prevent one from climbing them, they almost look more like bushes than like trees. We also notice that some one must have come to steal olives - the only ones that can enter this land freely are the settlers, from the top of the hill - because many trees have hardly any olives in the parts easily accessible from the ground, and yet they are full towards the top. There are also many trees burnt off. The old man tells us that the putrid water had already killed many trees, and is now drying others off. He also tells us that in the year 2000 the settlers stole all they had harvested, their whole harvest, after all that it costs to gather it.
This year they got permission to get to their lands for just one day – and they got it thanks to our international presence. Had it not been for our presence here today, and the intervention of the Israeli activist that helped from Jerusalem, this permit would have never arrived.
At about two in the afternoon two from our group begin to say goodbye to every one and the peasants mis-understand that we are all leaving. They all look at each other and they beg us, they supplicate us that we do not leave yet, please stay just one more hour, ok, just half an hour.
Desperation shows on their faces. We explain that it is only two people leaving and the rest stay and they calm down, and we go on frantically picking up olives, between bushes, bending branches in order to reach the higher ones, getting stings from the dried branches that no one can get to prune, passing over bushes, stings and uprooted and burnt trees.
More on http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/11/palestine-24.html
Today we go to place that is much harder to reach. In total, we take two different taxis and walk for half an hour in the wilderness. The reason why this journey takes two hours is not the distance. In fact the place where we are going must be about twenty minutes away by car. But there is a military checkpoint on that road, and it seems that the traffic jam it produces delays the journey for about four hours, if not more.
The second taxi leaves us at the door of a public building that could be the town hall or a school. We are invited into an office and more and more men come in and talk in Arabic. Suddenly they stop talking and one of them tells us in English that he is the Mayor. He asks us where we are from. "From the USA", one responds. The man smiles and says in a basic English, "with the people from America... very good, but with Bush..." and he makes a funny face, and we all smile. He goes on asking us our origins. He knows the names of all our presidents.
We have the image of this people being ignorant and knowing just what is happening to them, living isolated from the world, without communications, with their thick moustaches and their dark skins, and then it turns out they know the names of the presidents of all the countries we come from.
After a few minutes of waiting another man turns up on the door and we all get up. This is the peasant we are to help out today. He will take us up to wherever he can manage with an old 4x4 and from there we will continue on foot.
Once up in the mountain, we see down there at the bottom of the hill a kind of road with a fence on one side and a jeep parked. A uniformed and armed soldier is next to it. The soldier calls us as loud as he can and the Palestinian answers him, in English, that we have permission to pick up olives for three days. Two soldiers advance towards us with their weapons. Two guys from the foreigners team tell them that we do have a permit. They make them wait near the jeep while they make phone calls to check whether they are saying the truth.
When they are satisfied, our comrades come back with us and we go on working, advancing towards the most 'dangerous' part of the grove, next to a fence. that separates Palestinian lands from the lands that now belong to the Jewish settlement that is on the top of the hill, about eight hundred metres from when we stand. Within that distance, there are two other fences separating both zones - three fences in total to protect the settlers from the Palestinians.
Ten minutes after climbing the closes tree to it a military jeep comes up the path that is on the other side of the fence, then a white one. Several men come out of the vehicles, some in military uniforms, others in plain clothes, all with machine guns. One of those in plain clothes tells a comrade of us to get close. She hesitates – this is unwanted harassment - but the man in plain clothes has a weapon and repeats his order, so my comrade walks towards him.
The man then says he's coming in a friendly way. What I don't quite understand is how a man armed with a machine gun with live ammunition can say this to a woman who is not armed and who is here precisely as a consequence of the crimed committed by armed men against disarmed men.
One of our group goes to speak with the Palestinian couple we are helping. They have long ago walked away from the fence in panic of the settlers. The Palestinian man can only manage to say "you, here", and we understand that he wants us to walk away from the armed men and gather with him. We leave the tree where we are with regret because it is truly full of olives - although it is pretty impossible to climb to the highest branches due to the lack or pruning because of the years they could not come, probably because of harassments like today's - who knows what this settler would have done if the ones climbing the trees had been Palestinians instead of internationals from the rich world. So we start to gather our backpacks to leave.
Suddenly a bunch of children appear on the scene, next to the cars. With very aggressive faces, they start to scream at us: "I'm gonna kick your ass!", "aaahhh ha haha ha, you are all leaving now, you have to leave, we've won, you're gone"!
As I walk away, the last thing I hear before they throw the first stone is "I hope you die!!". The friend who wanted a friendly conversation is nowhere to be seen. The children continue to throw us big stones, reaching pretty long distances. I take out my camera and they start moving, getting out of my field of vision, hiding behind trees standing between them and me. It shows they are very experience in this. While walk away and further from the fence, the children are still heard laughing and the stones are still raining towards us, but we are no longer within a reaching distance.
We get back to the town on foot and then we get a taxi that comes our way loaded with more people from our neighbourhood. We accommodate ourselves in the taxi guessing that this time we will have to use the length of the road, going through the checkpoint that can take between two and four hours of waiting in the queue.
However, in a given moment, one of the passengers gives some money to the driver and tells him
to stop. The taxi driver stops. The man tells us that it is better for us to get off here and he opens the door for us. We get off and I realise that we are in the very same place where the last taxi took us on before, so we only have to go back the same way we cam this morning. So this is what has happened: this man, who looks more humble than us, has paid our fare and has put us in a safe place so that we can go on without going through the unpleasant moment in the checkpoint, giving us the very privilege he can not afford himself. So there they going, to the checkpoint, where they will stay, who knows, two hours, three hours while they wait to be allowed to pass – if they are allowed. I look at the man full of thankfulness without words, and the man looks back at me with a smile; we all say goodbye with a last nod and, feeling a knot in my throat, I throw my bag to my back and start to walk with my friends.
More on http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/11/palestine-25.html
Today there is no olive picking so we take the day off and we decide to go shopping in the main street to support the local economy. There have been children waiting at our door every day so far, shouting "what's your name!" all the time. Most faces changed every day, but there is a child that comes every day to wish us a good morning in his own way. Today the children are not waiting - we are going out of the house at mid morning so it is to be expected that they are all in school. But the child that is there every day is here today too, this time with a school bag on his back. With our ultra basic Arabic we ask him why he is not in school.
He says "school" making a face of disgust. Then he spits. Then he steps strongly on the spit. Then he points at himself with the first finger and then, with the same finger, he points at the pictures of the dead fighters.
Back home, we tell this to a Palestinian comrade who says to us that the Palestinian people, at the end of the day, is not that much different from any other people; he says that every one wants to have a normal life, raise a family, go to work to support it, and come back from work and hug their children. He says they are not violent people, and that if the children want to be fighters, and then martyrs, it does not come out from within them, that is not their way of being; it comes from desperation, from the occupation and from the unbearable conditions of such occupation. We respond to this with silence, as we did with the child this morning.
Then a friend comes to visit. She is very upset because she has heard about the boy we found dead in the news. She has also learnt more things from the acquaintances of the victim and she is seeing the manipulation of the media and/or the Israeli authorities, for the n-th time. It seems that the other two victims, who have survived, have said that they had gone to the mountain to explore a derelict building that they had seen one day. I remember seeing that building on the night we found the buy; it looked like a mosque. What they are saying in the news is that they were trying to plant a bomb. They have also changed the age of the victim, adding years, and the way in which he did. E. has been thinking about the way we found him and these are some of her conclusions..
She saw blood, but not only in his head, where he had a huge wound. The army is saying that they didn't shoot to kill, they always say that they shoot to the legs, but there is no shot on the head when you are aiming the legs; besides the size of the wound in his head makes one think that he was short at short distance. They also say that the boy was running away, and that is why he fell down on the stones where we found him, on one side of the road. However E. says that he also had blood on his trousers, although he was not bleeding from any of his legs. Her conclusion is that the boy was executed in such a position that the blood fell on his trousers - probably on his knees, and he bent over his stomach as he fell? And then they took him to where we found him to make it look like he was running away. Which they didn't do very well because the body fell on its back. When you are running you do not fall on your back, specially not against a road towards which you are supposed to be running. Well. These are her conclusions and here they are.
More on http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/11/palestine-26.html
There is no olive harvest today either. At mid morning Y tells us there is a new martyr today, a man who was killed this morning and had his house destroyed. We gather our cameras to document the result of the destruction and we head to the house.
We can still notice the smell of the smoke. There are bullet holes everywhere, a television set broken because of a bullet, broken glass everywhere, smashed lamps, windows that are no longer windows but mere holes in the wall... and other holes in internal walls caused by explosinos. Y. explains what he knows and then lets the man of the house speak, as he can also speak English. We are informed that the man killed did not actually live in this house, he was just visiting when the army came, making them think that they were following him. Although it looks very much like the army was inside the flats destroying everything, we are told they weren't: had they been, the telly, for instance, would not just have a bullet hole; it would be completely smashed, as with all the furniture. All the destruction seen here is bullet-made. So the man tried to escape from one flat to another trying to avoid the bullets, and finally went into the garden. Once there, he was shot dead and then run over by a bulldozer, which also destroyed a wall in the garden.
The soldiers then ordered all the neighbours to get out of their flats.
The neighbours, of course complied, and, to make sure there was no one remaining in the flats, the soldiers opened fire against the walls and windows. Probably this is when all the destruction happened.
Then they ordered every one to take off their clothes. A neighbour tells us that they were left in the outside, in a cold night, with absolutely no clothes for about four hours. This neighbour complains that this man, of whatever he was guilty, had nothing to do with them, he was visiting another family and they, just for the fact of being neighbours of the visited family, were punished too. He asks us "who are the victims?" in reference to the official Israeli discourse according to which the Jews are the victims of the Arabs.
When the men finish their explanations, I concentrate in the eyes of the women and the children who have been following us through the house, in silence. Then I wander around the rooms. An elderly woman is sitting on a bed, covering her face with her hands. She is sobbing. I leave her there, alone in her desperation, and I go to meet my colleagues.
Once in the city we get another bus and J. joins us. He tells us that a couple of nights ago the Israeli army made yet another incursion in the village where I spent my first night, precisely to avoid a bit of the violence that often goes with these incursions if no foreigners are present. For them it has been simply another raid to make arrests. The aim is to arrest Palestinian children that had taken part in non-violent demonstrations. It is curious, the wall has been declared illegal by the international community – the same international community that created the Israeli state in the first place. Peaceful demonstrations are held against that wall and they are declared illegal by the Israeli state, which is mocking the same international community that created and supports it. As the demonstrations go ahead anyway, the army forces or kick open people's homes doors, with impunity. And now I learn that, to prevent these people from claiming compensations for these destructions, they call them "war actions".
Says J that the presence of about twenty activists between Israelis and internationals in the village seems to have made the soldiers think about it twice. However sixteen boys from the village were put in custody of the Israeli authorities. Some Palestinians came out of their houses to resist the detention and the invasion. After an hour, the army left.
It seems there is a non-violent continuous campaign, lasting for ten months now, against the "annexation barrier". Although this "barrier" consists of a fence (I have seen barriers consisting of three fences) of three to six metres high, with barbed wire on the top and razor wire on the ground (barbed wire in a mess). The first fence is usually either electrified or, preferably, electronically provided with sensors that will advise about any contact made with it to the control tower. The duty of the control tower when there there is any contact with this fence is to shoot to kill. In theory these barriers or fences have a function of providing the Jewish settlements with security against Palestinian terrorists (let's remember that for the Israeli authorities all Palestinians are potential terrorists). In reality I no longer think that
the Israeli government even bothers to hide the fact that the settlements have the function of annexing more and more land to Israeli domain.
Says J that the campaign against this barrier in particular has the
support of hundreds of Israeli and international activists and has met a fierce violence by the Israeli army. Also says D that Israel has designed the route of this barrier in order to annex sixty per cent of the cultivated land of this village and expand the local settlement –all Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory have been declared illegal by at least one international institution: Palestine has been declared an occupation by the UN, and the Geneva Conventions prohibits the establishment of civil population settlements on occupied territories by the occupying force.
More on http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/11/palestine-27.html
It is already dark night when we arrive to the house of the land owner that has asked for international help, known as "Abu A", "Father of A". A receives us with a copious dinner that we all needed, and we ask him what the situation is like in here. He shows us pictures of bulldozers uprooting his centenary olive trees, and maps of his lands with the local annexation wall, isolating the village from its lands.
He explains to us that his lands, and those of other peasants, are right at the other side of the wall, between that annexation barrier and the line I don't stop hear being referred to as "Green Line", established by the United Nations as the frontier between the current state of Israel and the future state of Palestine. There are several gates, all numbered, on this fence, guarded by soldiers of the Israeli army. No inhabitant from the village can use the gate that stands on the shortest way to their land. The soldiers do not say the reason, but there are already terrains excavation works, preparing for the construction of new houses, expanding the Jewish settlement, which should not be there in the first place. This is why they uprooted A's trees. Later they have been re-planted in the Israeli settlement.
The fact is, up until a few years ago, A and other farmers did have permission to use this gate, although not with tractors - so people had to go back to using donkeys, that is, to go a step backwards in rural development. Now they have to use the next gate down the fence. Which means a twenty seven kilometres journey to that gate, plus the twenty seven kilometres to come back once on the other side. An hour and a half journey just to go round the fence and not use the gate that will be right next to the illegal expansion of the illegal settlement, once it is built.
The result is that those who have to walk or ride that distance on their donkeys can hardly ever go to their own lands. Then there are the more fortunate cases. A has a tractor that is allowed to go through the gate, and various sons, who are not allowed to go through the gate. Formerly he also had employees. But now whoever wants to see to those lands from the Palestinian side needs a special permission from the Israeli authority that is only conceded to those who can prove that they are the owners of the land and have never been arrested. This leaves out all the sons of A and all his employees. It also keeps him away from any political demonstration, because they usually arrest people there and if he is arrested just once he will loose the permission to work on his lands, and with it, his land itself, and with his land, part of the territory that the United Nations has 'guaranteed' his country, once it exists.
In this context, the Israeli government is using a law created during the Ottoman Empire according to which if a land owner does not tender his land in three years, that land can be confiscated - the Israeli government interpret this as "becomes Israeli property". I guess this is where we international come to play; at least we turn up form time to time on these lands, using our privilege as Israelis or foreigners, helping out in the olive harvest and other fruits, to at least avoid confiscation of land using this law.
In a normal country if some one has his land confiscated by the state it is a personal and economical drama. But here, when the Israeli state confiscates land to a Palestinian in the territory under the occupation, that land goes to Israeli territory, that is, to another country. Before the confiscation of the land, every one can access it, although in theory only the owner can enjoy the fruits of the harvest (in reality settlers steal it with impunity, even cut and burn trees in front of the troops while these simply look on - I have not been witness of these acts but I have no reason not to trust the Palestinian peasants and so many other internationals). After the confiscation, the land belongs just to the elite, only settlers and Israelis can access it, and the Palestinians can not even get close to it, even though it has been illegally appropriated (in the West we call this theft).
This had not been done in this area when I was there, but four weeks later, another international told me that they were already building in A's land – illegally.
More on http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/11/palestine-28.html
It is customary for some Palestinians to sit outside their houses and light fires on special plates, with legs, as if they were tables. A sings songs against the occupation that, he says, are older than this occupation.
how come?
Look: My father was born under the Ottoman Empire occupation. I was born under the British Empire occupation. And now my sons are born under the Israeli occupation. Such is life.
He says that our mere presence is the most important thing here, not how hard we work, picking olives or whatever. That is not that important. The important thing is how we show our support - our governments are the ones who should do something but lacking that, at least they feel not alone in their plight.
But, why are your governments - asks A without expecting an answer -, why are they not doing anything for us, and against Israel, they have declared the wall illegal, the settlements illegal, the occupation illegal, why are they not doing anything.
Doing something would mean to stand against the most powerful country in the world. And no government can afford to do that, or would dare to do that.
He also says that, all this being a lot, he would ask us to do something else. He reminds us that a global boycott ended with the apartheid regime in South Africa, so it should work here. He would like us to carry this message, boycott Israeli products so that its human rights abuses end, like boycott ended apartheid in South Africa.
More on http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/12/palestine-29.html
The next day we try to get through the gate where the peasants are allowed – some times they allow internationals, some times they don't; we try our luck.
While some of my comrades discuss with the soldiers about the reasons why we are not allowed to pass, a lady with an eappi waistcoat ( http://www.eappi.org) comes back from the gate (she has not been allowed to pass either) and sits down on a stone by the road. When we speak to her, she says that the system is not consistent at all, that she has been allowed to pass other days and that “every soldier is an official”.
So we go on a tour that takes us three hours to get to a piece of land where we could have easily walked. During a good part of this journey, we border a road of exclusive use for the Israelis. There are also access gates to the road, which is completely flat and perfectly asphalted and lit; nothing to do with the goats' path we have come jumping. This road has been constructed over a previously existing one, which was used by every one, including the family we are with. It used to take them ten minutes to cover the distance that is taking us half hour to cover now. The good road also has a shoulder on each side, double the width of the road, made of soil and sand. It will be later explained to us that the function of it is to record any footsteps of intruders on it, and that it is checked and kept in the best of conditions at least twice a day.
Indeed, this road, having a fence on each side, acts as a wall, in addition to the 'official' one. Up to where we can see, there is a double fence with razor wire on the ground, in such a way that, if you try to cross it, first you get electrocuted with the first fence (or the electronic sensors detect you so that the soldiers can shoot you), then you get wounded with the razor wire, and if you manage to jump the second fence with the barbed wire on it, your steps on the road shoulder give you away.
So in theory all these barriers act as protection against Palestinian terrorists; in practice what is meant is to make life quite impossible for peasants like F, who has to travel for two or three hours each time he wants to go to his own land for the whim of some one else's 'security'.
When we finally get to our destination, we are in the land between the "Green Line" and the illegal wall, a band of about six kilometres wide. The lands belong to Palestinians and the United Nations say that this is Palestinian territory, what should become the Palestinian Country, but the Israeli government says it is Israeli territory, and that is why Palestinians need a special permission from the Israeli authorities to access them. In the Israeli territories where the property of the land is no longer discussed (it was either bought more or less legally or simply stolen, so long ago the United Nations recognises it as Israeli land) streets and roads are more than sufficiently lit. But not these lands, so it is only possible to work while the sun is up.
During dinner A tells us about the water and its administration in this area. Palestinians have such strict limits in the amount of water they can use from their own wells, that they have to irrigate some fields one years and the rest the second year, while the Jewish settlers use water from these same wells. Plus, Palestinians are not even allowed to drill more wells in their own land. A sees it from his land and he thinks the Jews waste water, or at least that they use it without control.
Needless to say, they 'do' irrigate all their allotments every year. We ask him what would happen if he once decided to not respect the limit in water usage, and he answers that the soldiers would cut off all the pipes that conduct the water to the lands that are still in Palestinian hands.
The Israeli army regularly checks the water consumption by the Palestinians, and have threatened with not allowing them to use any of their own water if they go over the limit they have established. So while the Jewish settlement grows and expands (right now an expansion is being built), no more wells can be drilled, and the whole area, more than six square kilometres plus the agricultural and domestic consumption by about a hundred houses in the Jewish settlement, operates off just five wells.
Certainly, it is estimated that about a hundred houses are inhabited in the settlement. But there are about five hundred built houses, says A. It is difficult for me to understand this part but I think he talks about a certain very rich Jewish man who finances houses in future Jewish settlements, no matter how small demand there is for such houses. So most of these houses stay empty until some one decides to move in, like the case of the settlement near this land, where only a hundred of the houses are for now inhabited.
As if four hundred empty houses were not enough, now there is the plan to build fifteen hundred (1500) new houses. All this, in land that stands on the Palestinian side of the Green Line. It is for the construction of these houses that A's trees were uprooted, and it is for them that the Palestinians are not allowed to use the shortest routes to get into their own land. And we are talking about a settlement that is illegal right from its conception. Personally this seems to me like an exercise of harassment and effective expulsion of Palestinians from their own lands in order to expand the Israeli state without having to buy the new territories, they simply make their lives impossible during several decades and they wait for them to leave. A tells us that last week the settlers put up flags around the confiscated land (which is not even officially confiscated because A is contesting this in the court), in order to mark the expansion of the settlement. Says J that this is a method also used in the United States (he keeps calling them simply America) to indicate areas in new construction.
More on http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/12/palestine-29.html
Before the fence was erected F could take paved roads most of the way and it took him only ten minutes to get to his land. Today he has to cross the fence and then travel over this goats' rocks (J calls it politely rocky path), which actually follows the path of the fence (and the nice road built next to it) for quite a long time, and it now takes more than an hour to travel to his land, forced as he is to drive the entire distance over the rocks even though there are paved roads and other gates from which one can see his land.
So even if we forgot the fact that the wall and the fences are illegal, and we believed that they are there in place for security purposes, we could expect the Israeli authorities to be fair to the farmers and allow to cross the fence through the shortest way. But no; they establish what gates they can use and then they open those gates only at certain times a day, and they change those times and give no notice, and if the farmer can not go back to his house because they have closed the gate, he sleeps rough that night.
Making their lives so difficult so that it is hard for them even to get to their farms, and then claiming that they may not be interested in their own land since they are not visiting it - I am more inclined to think they just want to make the Palestinian farmers' lives so impossible they will eventually leave the land empty. And the fact they are actively encouraging this tells me that this is what they have always wanted, and this is just a blatant exercise of ethnic cleansing without genocide.
Land confiscation has already happened in many areas; F's uncle points out to us the plot of land that used to be his family's property, and is now being used as farmland by the nearby Israeli settlement. Even the nephew, young as he is, has a story to tell. He signals all the land that we can see from here and says it all used to be his father's.
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We are told that settlers have the habit of smashing internationals' cameras and that if we complain they will say we attacked first, so the advice is not to approach them, avoid them getting close to our cameras, be careful when filming. What the soldiers have been also doing has been to arrest demonstrators, usually very young children, some children. But the international presence makes it easier to prove the unfairness of the detentions and the system.
Now we learn they have sent a letter where they say they will allow the demonstration as long as they do not throw stones (I can't remember if there was some more conditions). The response has reportedly been that a permission has never been asked for.
What has been lately happening, apparently, is that the army has done incursions during the night, forcing their way into the homes and arresting mainly children, getting them out from their beds. The function of the internationals is then to get out, film and photography these actions so that the arrests are at least not so violent.
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http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/11/palestine-21.html Today we go and help out with the olive harvest. The people we are helping had permission to pick up their olives – yes, we are talking about their own lands. If they do not have an official permission for each day they want or need to enter their own land, soldiers or settlers can shoot and kill them, they would not be found guilty because it would be considered that the land owners were looking for it, for entering 'certain lands' near a Jewish settlement without permission.
Of course, no one takes the risk, and many families spend years not going to their own lands. If they go, they should do so when they have permission, not necessarily when the olives are ready to be harvested; they go and pick them as they are, if they are, and if they are not they will just have to put up with the situation and wait until next year, because permissions are not given automatically.
There is a law dating from the Otoman Empire according to which if some one does not visit their lands during a specific number of years, it is understood that he is not interested in those lands and therefore anyone else can take possession of them.
In other words: you threaten some one until you manage that they do not go to their lands because of the risk to get killed, and then you take possession of their lands with the excuse that they are not visiting them. This is what is being done in Palestine.
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http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/11/palestine-22.html Today we come back to the place where we were yesterday. They explain their economical situation and the price of the oil. Some farmers were better off just saving and using the oil, because with that price they would loose money on the transaction. They are at the mercy of the fluctuations in the international markets and they can sell very little to Israel because Israel is blocking the entry of
Palestinian products into Israel; it is also another way to squeeze and oppress them further.
We come back to the refugee camp where we are staying. It actually looks more like any poor neighbourhood of any city. People can already recognise our faces and we can already recognise some of the kids that shout and follow us, saying “hello!” and “what's your name!”. Some times they say “shalom” because, not knowing any other foreigners than the Jews, they assume that
every foreigner is a Jew.
In the internet cafe, the manager asks us what we are doing here and we explain. He then gives us a special price, in solidarity.
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http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/11/palestine-23.html Today we go to a different place to pick up olives. When we arrive we follow a Palestinian peasant who will take us directly to the grove where we have to pick up olives.
The Palestinian makes a few phone calls on his mobile and receives as many, all in Arabic. I comment to my colleagues how curious it is that there is so good coverage here in the mountains, while in the village is a lot worse, and their answer is that it is not surprising, since there is a settlement near us.
Everything possible is done to ensure that the settlers have a pleasant life – good coverage is one of the things. This contrasts with the null coverage that there is in the Palestinian refuge and villages.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian talks to an Israeli activist who, from Jerusalem, is trying to get the permission so that our man and his family can go and pick up olives.
We join this family in the picking of the olives and lunchtime arrives. We all sit in a circle but the plates, instead of being put in the centre of the circle for every one, are all next to us foreigners, and as the meal goes on, the plates come closer and closer to us, with the whole family encouraging us
to eat more.
We help out another family in the afternoon. To reach their land we need to cross a foetid river with brownish water, almost black. Signalling the barracks we had assumed were military, they explain that it is a factory built a few years ago, that is dischargingthese waters that are damaging the land. Indeed, they prefer not to pick up olives from trees that are too close to the water.
Their situation is more precarious than that of the people we have been helping out so far. They do not have any blankets, or ladders, or a donkey. We have to put the olives directly into the sacks, as they are, with branches and all, and they are all obviously very nervous and in a hurry, eager to finish. It is also obvious that they have not come round here for a long time, because it is all covered with bushes and stings that make walking quite difficult, and the olive trees are full of useless branches that make climbing to them impossible. After a good while picking up olives in quite precarious conditions the grandfather, 65, tells us his story: his own grandfather bought this land in the time of the Ottoman Empire. When he was five he inherited the terrain and now it is his sons who have the responsibility over it, although their task is more and more difficult. No one of the family has been able to enter this land in the last five years. The result is wilderness and weed every where, even in the trees. They have parasites and dry branches that prevent one from climbing them, they almost look more like bushes than like trees. We also notice that some one must have come to steal olives - the only ones that can enter this land freely are the settlers, from the top of the hill - because many trees have hardly any olives in the parts easily accessible from the ground, and yet they are full towards the top. There are also many trees burnt off. The old man tells us that the putrid water had already killed many trees, and is now drying others off. He also tells us that in the year 2000 the settlers stole all they had harvested, their whole harvest, after all that it costs to gather it.
This year they got permission to get to their lands for just one day – and they got it thanks to our international presence. Had it not been for our presence here today, and the intervention of the Israeli activist that helped from Jerusalem, this permit would have never arrived.
At about two in the afternoon two from our group begin to say goodbye to every one and the peasants mis-understand that we are all leaving. They all look at each other and they beg us, they supplicate us that we do not leave yet, please stay just one more hour, ok, just half an hour.
Desperation shows on their faces. We explain that it is only two people leaving and the rest stay and they calm down, and we go on frantically picking up olives, between bushes, bending branches in order to reach the higher ones, getting stings from the dried branches that no one can get to prune, passing over bushes, stings and uprooted and burnt trees.
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http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/11/palestine-24.html Today we go to place that is much harder to reach. In total, we take two different taxis and walk for half an hour in the wilderness. The reason why this journey takes two hours is not the distance. In fact the place where we are going must be about twenty minutes away by car. But there is a military checkpoint on that road, and it seems that the traffic jam it produces delays the journey for about four hours, if not more.
The second taxi leaves us at the door of a public building that could be the town hall or a school. We are invited into an office and more and more men come in and talk in Arabic. Suddenly they stop talking and one of them tells us in English that he is the Mayor. He asks us where we are from. "From the USA", one responds. The man smiles and says in a basic English, "with the people from America... very good, but with Bush..." and he makes a funny face, and we all smile. He goes on asking us our origins. He knows the names of all our presidents.
We have the image of this people being ignorant and knowing just what is happening to them, living isolated from the world, without communications, with their thick moustaches and their dark skins, and then it turns out they know the names of the presidents of all the countries we come from.
After a few minutes of waiting another man turns up on the door and we all get up. This is the peasant we are to help out today. He will take us up to wherever he can manage with an old 4x4 and from there we will continue on foot.
Once up in the mountain, we see down there at the bottom of the hill a kind of road with a fence on one side and a jeep parked. A uniformed and armed soldier is next to it. The soldier calls us as loud as he can and the Palestinian answers him, in English, that we have permission to pick up olives for three days. Two soldiers advance towards us with their weapons. Two guys from the foreigners team tell them that we do have a permit. They make them wait near the jeep while they make phone calls to check whether they are saying the truth.
When they are satisfied, our comrades come back with us and we go on working, advancing towards the most 'dangerous' part of the grove, next to a fence. that separates Palestinian lands from the lands that now belong to the Jewish settlement that is on the top of the hill, about eight hundred metres from when we stand. Within that distance, there are two other fences separating both zones - three fences in total to protect the settlers from the Palestinians.
Ten minutes after climbing the closes tree to it a military jeep comes up the path that is on the other side of the fence, then a white one. Several men come out of the vehicles, some in military uniforms, others in plain clothes, all with machine guns. One of those in plain clothes tells a comrade of us to get close. She hesitates – this is unwanted harassment - but the man in plain clothes has a weapon and repeats his order, so my comrade walks towards him.
The man then says he's coming in a friendly way. What I don't quite understand is how a man armed with a machine gun with live ammunition can say this to a woman who is not armed and who is here precisely as a consequence of the crimed committed by armed men against disarmed men.
One of our group goes to speak with the Palestinian couple we are helping. They have long ago walked away from the fence in panic of the settlers. The Palestinian man can only manage to say "you, here", and we understand that he wants us to walk away from the armed men and gather with him. We leave the tree where we are with regret because it is truly full of olives - although it is pretty impossible to climb to the highest branches due to the lack or pruning because of the years they could not come, probably because of harassments like today's - who knows what this settler would have done if the ones climbing the trees had been Palestinians instead of internationals from the rich world. So we start to gather our backpacks to leave.
Suddenly a bunch of children appear on the scene, next to the cars. With very aggressive faces, they start to scream at us: "I'm gonna kick your ass!", "aaahhh ha haha ha, you are all leaving now, you have to leave, we've won, you're gone"!
As I walk away, the last thing I hear before they throw the first stone is "I hope you die!!". The friend who wanted a friendly conversation is nowhere to be seen. The children continue to throw us big stones, reaching pretty long distances. I take out my camera and they start moving, getting out of my field of vision, hiding behind trees standing between them and me. It shows they are very experience in this. While walk away and further from the fence, the children are still heard laughing and the stones are still raining towards us, but we are no longer within a reaching distance.
We get back to the town on foot and then we get a taxi that comes our way loaded with more people from our neighbourhood. We accommodate ourselves in the taxi guessing that this time we will have to use the length of the road, going through the checkpoint that can take between two and four hours of waiting in the queue.
However, in a given moment, one of the passengers gives some money to the driver and tells him
to stop. The taxi driver stops. The man tells us that it is better for us to get off here and he opens the door for us. We get off and I realise that we are in the very same place where the last taxi took us on before, so we only have to go back the same way we cam this morning. So this is what has happened: this man, who looks more humble than us, has paid our fare and has put us in a safe place so that we can go on without going through the unpleasant moment in the checkpoint, giving us the very privilege he can not afford himself. So there they going, to the checkpoint, where they will stay, who knows, two hours, three hours while they wait to be allowed to pass – if they are allowed. I look at the man full of thankfulness without words, and the man looks back at me with a smile; we all say goodbye with a last nod and, feeling a knot in my throat, I throw my bag to my back and start to walk with my friends.
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http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/11/palestine-25.html Today there is no olive picking so we take the day off and we decide to go shopping in the main street to support the local economy. There have been children waiting at our door every day so far, shouting "what's your name!" all the time. Most faces changed every day, but there is a child that comes every day to wish us a good morning in his own way. Today the children are not waiting - we are going out of the house at mid morning so it is to be expected that they are all in school. But the child that is there every day is here today too, this time with a school bag on his back. With our ultra basic Arabic we ask him why he is not in school.
He says "school" making a face of disgust. Then he spits. Then he steps strongly on the spit. Then he points at himself with the first finger and then, with the same finger, he points at the pictures of the dead fighters.
Back home, we tell this to a Palestinian comrade who says to us that the Palestinian people, at the end of the day, is not that much different from any other people; he says that every one wants to have a normal life, raise a family, go to work to support it, and come back from work and hug their children. He says they are not violent people, and that if the children want to be fighters, and then martyrs, it does not come out from within them, that is not their way of being; it comes from desperation, from the occupation and from the unbearable conditions of such occupation. We respond to this with silence, as we did with the child this morning.
Then a friend comes to visit. She is very upset because she has heard about the boy we found dead in the news. She has also learnt more things from the acquaintances of the victim and she is seeing the manipulation of the media and/or the Israeli authorities, for the n-th time. It seems that the other two victims, who have survived, have said that they had gone to the mountain to explore a derelict building that they had seen one day. I remember seeing that building on the night we found the buy; it looked like a mosque. What they are saying in the news is that they were trying to plant a bomb. They have also changed the age of the victim, adding years, and the way in which he did. E. has been thinking about the way we found him and these are some of her conclusions..
She saw blood, but not only in his head, where he had a huge wound. The army is saying that they didn't shoot to kill, they always say that they shoot to the legs, but there is no shot on the head when you are aiming the legs; besides the size of the wound in his head makes one think that he was short at short distance. They also say that the boy was running away, and that is why he fell down on the stones where we found him, on one side of the road. However E. says that he also had blood on his trousers, although he was not bleeding from any of his legs. Her conclusion is that the boy was executed in such a position that the blood fell on his trousers - probably on his knees, and he bent over his stomach as he fell? And then they took him to where we found him to make it look like he was running away. Which they didn't do very well because the body fell on its back. When you are running you do not fall on your back, specially not against a road towards which you are supposed to be running. Well. These are her conclusions and here they are.
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http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/11/palestine-26.html There is no olive harvest today either. At mid morning Y tells us there is a new martyr today, a man who was killed this morning and had his house destroyed. We gather our cameras to document the result of the destruction and we head to the house.
We can still notice the smell of the smoke. There are bullet holes everywhere, a television set broken because of a bullet, broken glass everywhere, smashed lamps, windows that are no longer windows but mere holes in the wall... and other holes in internal walls caused by explosinos. Y. explains what he knows and then lets the man of the house speak, as he can also speak English. We are informed that the man killed did not actually live in this house, he was just visiting when the army came, making them think that they were following him. Although it looks very much like the army was inside the flats destroying everything, we are told they weren't: had they been, the telly, for instance, would not just have a bullet hole; it would be completely smashed, as with all the furniture. All the destruction seen here is bullet-made. So the man tried to escape from one flat to another trying to avoid the bullets, and finally went into the garden. Once there, he was shot dead and then run over by a bulldozer, which also destroyed a wall in the garden.
The soldiers then ordered all the neighbours to get out of their flats.
The neighbours, of course complied, and, to make sure there was no one remaining in the flats, the soldiers opened fire against the walls and windows. Probably this is when all the destruction happened.
Then they ordered every one to take off their clothes. A neighbour tells us that they were left in the outside, in a cold night, with absolutely no clothes for about four hours. This neighbour complains that this man, of whatever he was guilty, had nothing to do with them, he was visiting another family and they, just for the fact of being neighbours of the visited family, were punished too. He asks us "who are the victims?" in reference to the official Israeli discourse according to which the Jews are the victims of the Arabs.
When the men finish their explanations, I concentrate in the eyes of the women and the children who have been following us through the house, in silence. Then I wander around the rooms. An elderly woman is sitting on a bed, covering her face with her hands. She is sobbing. I leave her there, alone in her desperation, and I go to meet my colleagues.
Once in the city we get another bus and J. joins us. He tells us that a couple of nights ago the Israeli army made yet another incursion in the village where I spent my first night, precisely to avoid a bit of the violence that often goes with these incursions if no foreigners are present. For them it has been simply another raid to make arrests. The aim is to arrest Palestinian children that had taken part in non-violent demonstrations. It is curious, the wall has been declared illegal by the international community – the same international community that created the Israeli state in the first place. Peaceful demonstrations are held against that wall and they are declared illegal by the Israeli state, which is mocking the same international community that created and supports it. As the demonstrations go ahead anyway, the army forces or kick open people's homes doors, with impunity. And now I learn that, to prevent these people from claiming compensations for these destructions, they call them "war actions".
Says J that the presence of about twenty activists between Israelis and internationals in the village seems to have made the soldiers think about it twice. However sixteen boys from the village were put in custody of the Israeli authorities. Some Palestinians came out of their houses to resist the detention and the invasion. After an hour, the army left.
It seems there is a non-violent continuous campaign, lasting for ten months now, against the "annexation barrier". Although this "barrier" consists of a fence (I have seen barriers consisting of three fences) of three to six metres high, with barbed wire on the top and razor wire on the ground (barbed wire in a mess). The first fence is usually either electrified or, preferably, electronically provided with sensors that will advise about any contact made with it to the control tower. The duty of the control tower when there there is any contact with this fence is to shoot to kill. In theory these barriers or fences have a function of providing the Jewish settlements with security against Palestinian terrorists (let's remember that for the Israeli authorities all Palestinians are potential terrorists). In reality I no longer think that
the Israeli government even bothers to hide the fact that the settlements have the function of annexing more and more land to Israeli domain.
Says J that the campaign against this barrier in particular has the
support of hundreds of Israeli and international activists and has met a fierce violence by the Israeli army. Also says D that Israel has designed the route of this barrier in order to annex sixty per cent of the cultivated land of this village and expand the local settlement –all Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory have been declared illegal by at least one international institution: Palestine has been declared an occupation by the UN, and the Geneva Conventions prohibits the establishment of civil population settlements on occupied territories by the occupying force.
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http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/11/palestine-27.html It is already dark night when we arrive to the house of the land owner that has asked for international help, known as "Abu A", "Father of A". A receives us with a copious dinner that we all needed, and we ask him what the situation is like in here. He shows us pictures of bulldozers uprooting his centenary olive trees, and maps of his lands with the local annexation wall, isolating the village from its lands.
He explains to us that his lands, and those of other peasants, are right at the other side of the wall, between that annexation barrier and the line I don't stop hear being referred to as "Green Line", established by the United Nations as the frontier between the current state of Israel and the future state of Palestine. There are several gates, all numbered, on this fence, guarded by soldiers of the Israeli army. No inhabitant from the village can use the gate that stands on the shortest way to their land. The soldiers do not say the reason, but there are already terrains excavation works, preparing for the construction of new houses, expanding the Jewish settlement, which should not be there in the first place. This is why they uprooted A's trees. Later they have been re-planted in the Israeli settlement.
The fact is, up until a few years ago, A and other farmers did have permission to use this gate, although not with tractors - so people had to go back to using donkeys, that is, to go a step backwards in rural development. Now they have to use the next gate down the fence. Which means a twenty seven kilometres journey to that gate, plus the twenty seven kilometres to come back once on the other side. An hour and a half journey just to go round the fence and not use the gate that will be right next to the illegal expansion of the illegal settlement, once it is built.
The result is that those who have to walk or ride that distance on their donkeys can hardly ever go to their own lands. Then there are the more fortunate cases. A has a tractor that is allowed to go through the gate, and various sons, who are not allowed to go through the gate. Formerly he also had employees. But now whoever wants to see to those lands from the Palestinian side needs a special permission from the Israeli authority that is only conceded to those who can prove that they are the owners of the land and have never been arrested. This leaves out all the sons of A and all his employees. It also keeps him away from any political demonstration, because they usually arrest people there and if he is arrested just once he will loose the permission to work on his lands, and with it, his land itself, and with his land, part of the territory that the United Nations has 'guaranteed' his country, once it exists.
In this context, the Israeli government is using a law created during the Ottoman Empire according to which if a land owner does not tender his land in three years, that land can be confiscated - the Israeli government interpret this as "becomes Israeli property". I guess this is where we international come to play; at least we turn up form time to time on these lands, using our privilege as Israelis or foreigners, helping out in the olive harvest and other fruits, to at least avoid confiscation of land using this law.
In a normal country if some one has his land confiscated by the state it is a personal and economical drama. But here, when the Israeli state confiscates land to a Palestinian in the territory under the occupation, that land goes to Israeli territory, that is, to another country. Before the confiscation of the land, every one can access it, although in theory only the owner can enjoy the fruits of the harvest (in reality settlers steal it with impunity, even cut and burn trees in front of the troops while these simply look on - I have not been witness of these acts but I have no reason not to trust the Palestinian peasants and so many other internationals). After the confiscation, the land belongs just to the elite, only settlers and Israelis can access it, and the Palestinians can not even get close to it, even though it has been illegally appropriated (in the West we call this theft).
This had not been done in this area when I was there, but four weeks later, another international told me that they were already building in A's land – illegally.
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http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/11/palestine-28.html It is customary for some Palestinians to sit outside their houses and light fires on special plates, with legs, as if they were tables. A sings songs against the occupation that, he says, are older than this occupation.
how come?
Look: My father was born under the Ottoman Empire occupation. I was born under the British Empire occupation. And now my sons are born under the Israeli occupation. Such is life.
He says that our mere presence is the most important thing here, not how hard we work, picking olives or whatever. That is not that important. The important thing is how we show our support - our governments are the ones who should do something but lacking that, at least they feel not alone in their plight.
But, why are your governments - asks A without expecting an answer -, why are they not doing anything for us, and against Israel, they have declared the wall illegal, the settlements illegal, the occupation illegal, why are they not doing anything.
Doing something would mean to stand against the most powerful country in the world. And no government can afford to do that, or would dare to do that.
He also says that, all this being a lot, he would ask us to do something else. He reminds us that a global boycott ended with the apartheid regime in South Africa, so it should work here. He would like us to carry this message, boycott Israeli products so that its human rights abuses end, like boycott ended apartheid in South Africa.
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http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/12/palestine-29.html The next day we try to get through the gate where the peasants are allowed – some times they allow internationals, some times they don't; we try our luck.
While some of my comrades discuss with the soldiers about the reasons why we are not allowed to pass, a lady with an eappi waistcoat (
http://www.eappi.org) comes back from the gate (she has not been allowed to pass either) and sits down on a stone by the road. When we speak to her, she says that the system is not consistent at all, that she has been allowed to pass other days and that “every soldier is an official”. So we go on a tour that takes us three hours to get to a piece of land where we could have easily walked. During a good part of this journey, we border a road of exclusive use for the Israelis. There are also access gates to the road, which is completely flat and perfectly asphalted and lit; nothing to do with the goats' path we have come jumping. This road has been constructed over a previously existing one, which was used by every one, including the family we are with. It used to take them ten minutes to cover the distance that is taking us half hour to cover now. The good road also has a shoulder on each side, double the width of the road, made of soil and sand. It will be later explained to us that the function of it is to record any footsteps of intruders on it, and that it is checked and kept in the best of conditions at least twice a day.
Indeed, this road, having a fence on each side, acts as a wall, in addition to the 'official' one. Up to where we can see, there is a double fence with razor wire on the ground, in such a way that, if you try to cross it, first you get electrocuted with the first fence (or the electronic sensors detect you so that the soldiers can shoot you), then you get wounded with the razor wire, and if you manage to jump the second fence with the barbed wire on it, your steps on the road shoulder give you away.
So in theory all these barriers act as protection against Palestinian terrorists; in practice what is meant is to make life quite impossible for peasants like F, who has to travel for two or three hours each time he wants to go to his own land for the whim of some one else's 'security'.
When we finally get to our destination, we are in the land between the "Green Line" and the illegal wall, a band of about six kilometres wide. The lands belong to Palestinians and the United Nations say that this is Palestinian territory, what should become the Palestinian Country, but the Israeli government says it is Israeli territory, and that is why Palestinians need a special permission from the Israeli authorities to access them. In the Israeli territories where the property of the land is no longer discussed (it was either bought more or less legally or simply stolen, so long ago the United Nations recognises it as Israeli land) streets and roads are more than sufficiently lit. But not these lands, so it is only possible to work while the sun is up.
During dinner A tells us about the water and its administration in this area. Palestinians have such strict limits in the amount of water they can use from their own wells, that they have to irrigate some fields one years and the rest the second year, while the Jewish settlers use water from these same wells. Plus, Palestinians are not even allowed to drill more wells in their own land. A sees it from his land and he thinks the Jews waste water, or at least that they use it without control.
Needless to say, they 'do' irrigate all their allotments every year. We ask him what would happen if he once decided to not respect the limit in water usage, and he answers that the soldiers would cut off all the pipes that conduct the water to the lands that are still in Palestinian hands.
The Israeli army regularly checks the water consumption by the Palestinians, and have threatened with not allowing them to use any of their own water if they go over the limit they have established. So while the Jewish settlement grows and expands (right now an expansion is being built), no more wells can be drilled, and the whole area, more than six square kilometres plus the agricultural and domestic consumption by about a hundred houses in the Jewish settlement, operates off just five wells.
Certainly, it is estimated that about a hundred houses are inhabited in the settlement. But there are about five hundred built houses, says A. It is difficult for me to understand this part but I think he talks about a certain very rich Jewish man who finances houses in future Jewish settlements, no matter how small demand there is for such houses. So most of these houses stay empty until some one decides to move in, like the case of the settlement near this land, where only a hundred of the houses are for now inhabited.
As if four hundred empty houses were not enough, now there is the plan to build fifteen hundred (1500) new houses. All this, in land that stands on the Palestinian side of the Green Line. It is for the construction of these houses that A's trees were uprooted, and it is for them that the Palestinians are not allowed to use the shortest routes to get into their own land. And we are talking about a settlement that is illegal right from its conception. Personally this seems to me like an exercise of harassment and effective expulsion of Palestinians from their own lands in order to expand the Israeli state without having to buy the new territories, they simply make their lives impossible during several decades and they wait for them to leave. A tells us that last week the settlers put up flags around the confiscated land (which is not even officially confiscated because A is contesting this in the court), in order to mark the expansion of the settlement. Says J that this is a method also used in the United States (he keeps calling them simply America) to indicate areas in new construction.
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http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/12/palestine-29.html Before the fence was erected F could take paved roads most of the way and it took him only ten minutes to get to his land. Today he has to cross the fence and then travel over this goats' rocks (J calls it politely rocky path), which actually follows the path of the fence (and the nice road built next to it) for quite a long time, and it now takes more than an hour to travel to his land, forced as he is to drive the entire distance over the rocks even though there are paved roads and other gates from which one can see his land.
So even if we forgot the fact that the wall and the fences are illegal, and we believed that they are there in place for security purposes, we could expect the Israeli authorities to be fair to the farmers and allow to cross the fence through the shortest way. But no; they establish what gates they can use and then they open those gates only at certain times a day, and they change those times and give no notice, and if the farmer can not go back to his house because they have closed the gate, he sleeps rough that night.
Making their lives so difficult so that it is hard for them even to get to their farms, and then claiming that they may not be interested in their own land since they are not visiting it - I am more inclined to think they just want to make the Palestinian farmers' lives so impossible they will eventually leave the land empty. And the fact they are actively encouraging this tells me that this is what they have always wanted, and this is just a blatant exercise of ethnic cleansing without genocide.
Land confiscation has already happened in many areas; F's uncle points out to us the plot of land that used to be his family's property, and is now being used as farmland by the nearby Israeli settlement. Even the nephew, young as he is, has a story to tell. He signals all the land that we can see from here and says it all used to be his father's.
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http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2005/12/palestine-210.html 
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