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Rena Smith is a human rights activist from Boston. she is now participating to the International Solidarity Movement's Olive Harvest Campaign (see www.palsolidarity.org). She is a Palestine-born US citizen living in the Boston area. Much of her family now lives in a small village near Nablus in the northern West Bank.

*About the Olive Harvest
Dozens of internationals and Israeli peace activists are joining Palestinians to harvest olives in defiance of Israeli settlers and soldiers. Olives are the lifeblood of the rural Palestinian economy and the olive tree and the land are significant to the rural culture. But when Palestinians are prevented from harvesting their crops, the loss is more than symbolic: after three years their land can be declared "unused" and seized by Israel for more settlements under Israeli occupation law. read more

1)Oct 24th, 2003

The following is a phone interview with Rena Smith, of Boston.
*note - the following is not a word for word transcription

Bostontopalestine (B2P): How is your experience so far in the actual harvesting of olives?

Rena Smith: It's great. The first time I started picking olives with my own family on our own land in Burqa I just broke down because it was so emotional. It is very soothing, almost meditative work, but it gets ruined by the fact that you have to always be watching for the soldiers. Sometimes villagers don't bring their tarps up for collecting the olives because it delays their leaving if the soldiers come. It's hard to run down the hill with the tarp and it takes time to fold it up. You often just see farmers coming up the hill to harvest with a donkey and some bags so they can run down the hills more quckly and easly. So it's all very nerve wracking for the farmers. Also it is very very hard work and it's been very hot.

B2p: Have Palestinians been able to reach their land? Until we arrived, almost all of the families, especially in Awarta and Beit Fariq, said that they havenít been out to their land in three years. Some of the undergrowth had grown to chest level, which weakens the trees and increases the risk of brushfires.

B2P: You started out in Burqa, with your family. Where do you go from there?

Rena: I went to ISM training in Jerusalem over the last weekend. Then Sunday, with an affinity group of seven internationals, we made our way to Awarta, a village of 5,000 people in the Nablus area.

B2P: What happened when you arrived in the village?

Rena: ISM had already set up some contacts. When we arrived, local villagers took us on a tour. They showed us the fences of the settlements, where the olive groves were and so on. Then we met with one of the members of the village council. We asked them what they wanted, where they wanted us to be, what they wanted us to do, that kind of stuff. I guess the concern was the settlers as well as the soldiers: a good deal of the area that the farmers are harvesting is right along the fence to the settlement of Itamar. If you look a the map, the Itamar settlement area, that is the whole compound beyond just the built up settlement, is enormous.

[NOTE: Itamar has a website at : http://www.shechem.org/itamar/eindex.html Positioned deep in the West Bank, Itamar is one of them most violent and ideological settlements, with it's armed settlers committed to the removal of Palestinians from the land. In October 2002 Itamar settlers ethnically cleansed the nearby Palestinian village of Yanoun ( see previous BostontoPalestine reports: http://www.bcpr.org/b2p/Ben4.html . Itamar settlers have, needless to say, been the target of attacks themselves.)

B2P: I understand there is a deal this year between the occupation authorities, specifically, the District Coordinating Offices (DCOís), and local villagers in regard to the harvest.

Rena: The Awarta council told us that the DCO was coordinating with the local village, telling them what days they are allowed to harvest. For Awarta, it was Monday and Tuesday, the two days after we arrived.

B2P: So you were harvesting on the days the DCO, or Israeli military authorities, had approved. How did the harvesting go?

Rena: The first morning more than nine Palestinian extended families, or about 120 people, along with 19 internationals and 10 Israelis from "Rabbis for Human Rights" split up to go to two fields. But as soon as we arrived, soldiers came. They got out of their vehicles, approached us, and said we couldn't harvest. They were giving us a hard time, saying "yeah, this has been changed, there's been a change of plans".

We argued with them, and a village council member presented the letter from the DCO saying "look, we've got dates." When they saw the letter, the soldiers took it, scribbled out the dates and said "now it's been changed." Meanwhile the villagers continued harvesting. Eventually Rabbis for Human Rights called the DCO and after about half an hour they sent one of their white army jeeps to talk with us and the soldiers. We negotiated with them for about 45 minutes with them and finally they let us harvest. Then the DCO jeep drove up to the settlement [nearby] and said "it's ok for them to harvest." The soldiers and DCO eventually left and we harvested for several hours.

B2P: How did day two in Awarta go?

Rena: Well, in the morning the soldiers came and told us to stay increasingly long distances from the settlement. The olive trees are in groves right up to the settlement fence. The first time they said stay 2 rows of olive trees away from the fence, then 50 meters, the 100 meters. The ISM people went to the army jeeps and argued with them saying "You can't change the rules" but they said "we can." Eventually even the police showed up, and finally the DCO came and we reached an agreement that 50 meters was ok. It actually seemed like the police came to make sure nothing happened between us and the settlers. Having the police there seemed like a good thing. It seemed like having Rabbis for Human rights there really helped, and we had some media there to.

B2P: And from there you traveled to Beit Farik on Wednesday?

Rena: Yes and the trip was quite an episode of its own. We arrived at Huwara checkpoint, the first of two checkpoints we needed to cross, just before 6:30 am.

The soldiers on duty weren't letting anyone through. We played dumb, saying that we were tourists and they said "why would you want to visit the Arabs? Don't you read the news?" We negotiated for a while and finally stood aside. We didn't know whether to give up but some of the locals waiting there said ìyou might want to wait there is a shift change soon.î

So we had a coffee and waited until after the shift change, and luckily one of our people had this amazing made up story. She had a letterhead from a made up mental health research instituteís letterhead and the real name of a mental health center in Nablus. The letter was recommending that we contact so and so and the institute. It worked like a dream. When the new shift of soldiers arrived we approached them and tried to pass. This time they just looked at the letter and the womanís passport and let us all through.

B2P: And then you reached the second checkpoint.

Rena: At the second checkpoint we tried using the letter again and they told us to go back. Again we played dumb, asking "then why did the first checkpoint let us through, don't you coordinate, and so on." But suddenly, they seemed to recognize one of our groups' members, a British international. They told us to wait. They put is in a shady place and gave us a bottle of water.

Eventually the soldiers came back and said to the British man, "we have a picture of you touching the settlement fence, we're going to call the police and have you arrested." We asked to see picture but they wouldn't show us. They asked the rest of us to go but we wouldn't leave without him. Finally a soldier grabbed the British guy by the wrist and said "we're taking you.î" We insisted to go along. They said, sure, yeah, come. They put the man in a jeep and internationals started piling in behind him. But with the soldiers there too they couldn't even get the door closed. Finally they only let one of us go with him. The jeep drove off through the checkpoint, but about a kilometer down the road they stopped the jeep and kicked the second international out. They took the British guy back to the Huwara checkpoint and then to Ariel police station. We found out later that about 4 in the afternoon the Ariel Police finally came up with the photo and lo and behold it was someone else who sort of looked like the British guy but it wasn't him. He was set free and joined internationals elsewhere.

Meanwhile, we to continue trying to get to Beit Farik, only we obviously had to avoid checkpoints. The only other way to get into Beit Farik was to literally run across a settler road. One of the ISM coordinators told us that the settlers shoot at anyone they see on this road without firing warning shots. Maybe this was a little exaggerated but we were really scared. Nothing happened, though, but we really ran across the road.

B2P: Did you have contacts set up in Beit Farik like you did in Awarta?

Rena: Yes. One man, Yassir, is involved with education and empowerment in the community, especially for women, about their rights as women and leadership, political awareness of the situation. We met with villagers the first day, they gave us a little presentation. Yassir drew on a map of Beit Fariq on a white board. It's a village of 12,000 people, pretty much surrounded on all sides by either settlements and settler roads or main roads. There is also an area the army calls a ìmilitary areaî where they have flattened out a whole area all along the settler road.

B2P: Have they lost a lot of land and trees?

Rena: Yes, but I'm not sure how much. One family lost, as an example, 150 trees to that area alone and it's quite a long road. They will probably lose more to the wall as it passes through the Jordan Valley.

B2P: What was the situation for harvesting?

Rena: On the southwest side of town, again, is the Itamar settlement. This is the main problem area for harvesting. Again there was a deal with the DCO and we got a copy of the letter. It was for the 21,22,23rd of October. And sure enough, when we went out to harvest the next morning we had people in olive groves on the west and south side of the village. Surprisingly we had problems on the east side going up a hill toward a settlement road leading into Itamar and beyond. I was on the east side with another international and an elderly Palestinian farmer with donkey. It was just the three of us. Further below there was another family and three more internationals.

B2P: Iíve read in another report that there was an incident with soldiers on the hill.

Rena: First of all, we saw a settler driving around on a quad in our area. Within maybe 10 or 15 minutes the army came. It was around 10:30 or 11am, weíd been with the elderly farmer harvesting for about four hours. The army jeep stopped on the road at the top of the hill above us. We continued picking until two soldiers came to us. First of all they went to the villager and asked for his ID, saying "You can't be here, you have to leave." I was doing the talking because the other international recognized the soldiers: he'd had a run in with them before and was afraid they would recognize him. I showed the soldiers a copy of the letter from the DCO. The army said, "Look I'm just taking orders. You have to leave. These dates have been changed. Today and tomorrow are only for Yanoun (a nearby Palesiniana village)."

We continued to argue, and finally the soldier went and made a phone call. I called Yassir and he asked to speak with the soldiers. The soldiers said "who is this, is it the mayor? No? Well we're not interested in talking with him."

By now three more soldiers had come. Everything was very calm and one of the soldiers was even sitting down smoking a cigarette. But eventually a soldier started getting upset that we wouldnít leave grabbed the old man's bag of olives and threw it over the cliff. He then put his hand on his chest and looked at me, and said, "Sorry." I said "why did you have to do this? These olives are all that this guy has?" He said nothing and finally said, "look, you have to leave." Then he went over and began lecturing the elderly Palestinian about his ID being too old because the plastic on one side was wearing out, and generally being very disrespectful and adding insult to injury.

B2P: Did he yell at him?

Rena: He didn't had to yell at him, he'd already broken the guy's heart by throwing his olives down the cliff.

Eventually the soldier told me,"You take him," pointing to the other international, "and those other internationals" pointing to the internationals below, "away from here." So we went down and met up with the other family on a path where they told us we could be. We asked the old man what he wanted to do and he seemed like heíd given up, he didnít want to go back up the hill even with our escort.

We sat there a while. The family started making tea and a father said, "it's not really about the olives, we're not making enough to make any money, we just want to be on our land, it's about the gesture." One of the young family members, a 14 or 15 year old boy, decided he wanted to go back up to retrieve the olives that had been thrown. The family didn't want him to go. Just at that point Rabbis for Human rights showed up, about 10 of them in a van. We told them what had happened and they didn't even hesitate. They all scurried up the hill and started collecting olives that were scattered down the cliff when the soldier threw the bag. When the old man on the donkey saw this busload of Israelis going up the hill we asked him again if he'd go up and he said "hell yeah, if these guys are going up I'm going up!" Together they were able to collect about 2/3rds of the lost olives, amounting to a portion of one of those white 60 kilo bags the farmers carry.

So we picked olives for another 1 or so until 1pm, but the family had really had it with the settlers and soldiers so we decided to leave it until the following day.

B2P: Did you go out again today?

Rena: Two Palestinian families here tried to pick olives again today even though we didnít have permission from the DCO. One family was a mother of around 40, a son of about 12, and some teenagers. The area we were in was smack in front of Itamar. We could see the back yards of some of the houses. It looks so surreal, so out of place. Every hour and a half or there is some kind of nursery rhyme song is played on loudspeakers. I donít know if it was from a school or what, but it was just so weird. So we had a good view of the settlement and its surroundings.

The person who is in charge of the settlement apparently has a green car. They came out periodically and watched us. A big jeep parked above us and watched us too. Then four or five settlers came out and started watching us from the top of the hill. Then some soldiers came and started approaching us on foot. This finally spooked the families. We said, "look if you want to stay we'll stay with you." But they said, "no we want to go."

NOTE: At this point Rena had to stop the interview as she learned that two internationals in Nablus had just been shot by soldiers in the legs with live ammunition. Please see the press release sent to this list for details and we will keep you informed as we hear more.