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more reports by John click here>>
July 29th, 2003 The Trees are also Victims
by John in Jayyous, the West Bank.
A short story about everyday violence for those who reside next to the "security fence" and the meaning of Olive trees to Palestinians.
On Friday July 25th, a few of us with the Boston delegation visited the newly constructed fence on the southern tip of the village of Jayyous. The road that leads out of the village has been barricaded with massive tunnels of razor wire making it impossible to continue on the road. Unfortunately for one family, the barricade means that they are no longer able to travel to and from their village. The family on the other side of the fence is effectively in a "no-man's land" as they live on the Israeli side and are not, and never will be, Israeli citizens. (See other recent detailed reports about this particular situation on the B2p website: bcpr.org/b2p).
As we surveyed the scene, we were approached by a couple of young men who wanted to show us their home. We walked to their family's land, which sits immediately next to the new barbed wire fence and which has cut them off from accessing most of their property. The family, along with other families who live next to the newly constructed wall, also suffer from late night military incursions. The military would arrive at their home late at night, bang on the doors and walls of the house, force the men out into the yard and then interrogate them. They took me over to the exact spot on the property where two of the teenage boys were beaten last month. They pointed to the ground to show where they had been brought to by the soldiers. They recounted the story of when they were pulled from their beds and brought there to be beaten by the soldiers rifles in front of their father (a common form of intimidation targeted toward all young men in Palestine). Such occurrences are all too common for Palestinians, guilty of nothing more than being an "Arab", in the hands of the Israeli military.
They next brought us to dead olive trees lying on the ground. They pointed at them and told us "the Israelis cut off the branches and uprooted these trees. They threw them on the side of the road". One could see that this was incomprehensible to them. Every tree has a history to Palestinians. They can draw a genealogy of when the trees were planted and by whom. Most often it was planted and cared for over many generations and is seen as contributing to their individual and family's lives and thus a continuation of a family's connection to the land. So when the family found the uprooted trees tossed like trash on the side of the road, they retrieved them and brought them to their land. Though the trees are dead and cannot be replanted, the family seemed to bring them to their home out of respect for them. It seems that if they required a proper burial. As we looked at these dead trees trying to understand the families' attachment and concern for them, M. R. made the comment that perhaps the reasons for them bringing them here is that they see the "trees as victims of the Occupation as well". It seems entirely plausible that this is indeed the case: the people identify with the trees as suffering from and victims of the occupation in much the same way as they have been.