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10/8-20/04 The Olive Industry under siege in PalestineDavid in the West Bank

10-16-04 The Fence and The Gate David in Jayyous, West Bank

10-12-04 Villagers Become "Refugees" in their Own Homes David in the West Bank

Oct 8th - 20th The Olive Industry under siege in Palestine
By David,


OLIVE GROVES IN DISREPAIR
October 8th

Today we worked in the olive groves of the village of Hares. It was a revelation to find out what well-tended olive groves look like. All the groves I had seen before today belonged to the farmers of Mas-Ha and were beyond the Annexation Fence (a "Security Fence" if you're Israeli!). They were overgrown with thistles and weeds, and the terrace walls and boundary walls were in a poor state of repair. It made the work of picking the olives much more arduous and dangerous.

In my ignorance I had just assumed that Palestinians don't pay a great deal of attention to these things, after all it's not unusual for farmers anywhere in the world to allow groves and orchards to grow quite wild. It seemed a little strange though, since at some point in the past they had obviously taken the trouble of building the walls, but having no way to find out more I was left with my assumptions.

The olive groves of Hares revealed not only my ignorance of how much the farmers care for their land, but also my lack of understanding of the impact of the Annexation Boundary Fence on the farmers of Mas-Ha. The groves of Hares are those classically beautiful terraced groves, rambling down the hillside, with lovely sandstone terrace and boundary walls, and ploughed and weeded dry earth. They look so tidy in a very organic and ancient way. They have been here, looking like this since antiquity. Omar, the man we were working with today, said that his fields had been in his family for generations, and the trees we were picking were at least one hundred years old.

The farmers of Hares do not have to contend with the Annexation Fence, so they can access and tend their land more often than the farmers of Mas-Ha, who before this week hadn't been allowed to get to their land for nine months. The farmers of Hares who have land near the settlement of Revava still cannot get to it as often as they would like. Omar, the farmer we worked with today, said that he had only been on his land twice this year, once to plough and repair walls, and the second time was now - to harvest. His land abuts the settlement boundary fence. Well, actually the settlement has been built on his land and the land of other farmers of Hares - stolen from them by the settlers with the complicity and assistance of the Israeli government.

Now the farmers are not allowed to access their own land except by permission of the settlement security and/or the army. If Omar even goes on the part of his land which is close to where the settlers have currently placed their boundary fence (and I say currently because it will more than likely move again, swallowing more of Omar's land) he will be accosted, or, he claims, he may even be shot at by the security guards of the settlement. Even animals which stray near the fence are sometimes shot by the security guards he told me.


ISRAEL'S PICKET LINE FENCE

The farmers of Jayyous who have olive groves which lie beyond the Annexation Boundary are faced with an overwhelming task. They have a crop of Olives which is waiting to be picked (it will not wait for long), but nobody to pick it. Traditionally the farmers would normally employ people from the village and temporary agricultural labor to help with the harvest. Some farmers have two hundred trees or more. With a crew of four people it will take between thirty minutes and an hour to pick an average tree. So a farmer will need about six hundred man-hours to pick two hundred trees. That's about three to four weeks work for a work crew of four.
However the Israeli Occupation Force will only grant permits to pass through the gates and onto the land to a very limited number of people. In one case we heard of, only one son from a large family has a permit to access the family land. The rest of the family has been refused permits.
No farmer can get permits for temporary laborers, so he cannot hire help to harvest the olive crop.

The farmers are determined to do their best anyway , what choice do they have?! We have seen several sad instances of just a husband and wife facing the daunting task of harvesting their large olive crop. They will not be able to do it all in time. To make things worse Ramadan this year has fallen at the time of the harvest, so farmers are not able to work full days as they are fasting and not drinking water.

Unfortunately we are not enough to help all or even many of these farmers, so using a kind of triage method, we work with the local coordinator to select and help the those who have land bordering a settlement or the annexation barrier. Here their safety is at risk as well as their livelihood. It is a painful process and as we wend our way to the groves of our farmer for the day, it is sad to see so few people out working this rich and plentiful land. Before last year it was a harvest festival out here.


THE PRICE OF THE OTHER OIL IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Oct. 20th

Sherif Omar of Jayyous advised us that this year many farmers are not even bothering to pick their olives. There is no point they say. It is not economically feasible. Along with most of the economy of Palestine, the market for olive oil has also collapsed. It is next to impossible for farmers to get their oil to local markets, when towns and cities such as Nablus are "closed" by the Israeli Occupation Force, and they cannot drive in with trucks or tractors.

Oil Press in Mas-HA
click on image to enlarge

Israel vindictively no longer allows the import of Palestinian oil (the Israeli Palestinian community was a good market for the oil before), and Jordan, in a show of astonishing non-solidarity with their Palestinian neighbors, and in true western free-market style, has banned the import of Palestinian olive oil in order to protect it's own newly developing olive oil business.

Consequently, the price of olive oil has plummeted from 25-30 Shekels per kilo before the Al Aqsa Intifada, to 8-10 shekels per kilo now.


How can one not imagine that Israel is trying to drive these people off their land completely?

photo1. "Permits but no Access": Permits from the Israeli occupation
authorities allow this Palestinian farmer to enter Israel but not to
visit his own land in the West Bank! (photo by David)

photo2: "Fence Snaking...": The path of the "Separation Barrier" snakes
through Jayyous land (photo by David)

--------------------------------
October 16th, 2004 The Fence and The Gate

David in Jayyous, Palestinian West Bank

(photo1. "Permits but no Access": Permits from the Israeli occupation authorities allow this Palestinian farmer to enter Israel but not to visit his own land in the West Bank!
photo2: "Fence Snaking...": The path of the "Separation Barrier" snakes through Jayyous land (photo by David)

The Palestinians of Jayyous seem quietly resigned to their situation. We asked Hassan, the farmer some of us were working with yesterday, how the village feel about the Annexation Fence now that over a year has passed since it was completed, cutting the villagers off from over 60% of their land. His reply was to ask us how we would feel if it had happened to us. One of us said that we would probably be crying. Hassan replied: "OK, so when nobody from outside is looking, you cry, and you cry. But what do you do when you have finished crying? What do you do when you finish crying?"

I am constantly amazed at the good nature of the people of Jayyous and
of all the Palestinian people we have met, and at the positive outlook
they express in the face of what seems to me at least to be an
overwhelmingly negative situation. They seemed to have finished crying
and to have somehow decided en masse that they will not despair, but
will face their bleak communal future with optimism and a smile. At
first I wondered if it was based on some naïve religious belief, but I
was soon convinced otherwise by the obvious depth and warmth of their
sincerity. Now I think that their perspective is much bigger than mine,
and that they think in trans-generational terms. I think about wanting
to resolve this Israel/Palestine situation next year, or at least in the
next few years, but they seem to be thinking in tens or even hundreds of
years. As a man said to me yesterday, the strong will not be strong
forever, and the weak will not always be weak.

Even as they wait at the Villages South Gate of the fence (the village
has two gates through the fence) for the soldiers to show up and let
them pass onto their own land (or refuse them passage as they often do),
the farmers of Jayyous sit around, talking and joking as if they were
waiting for a coffee shop to open. I have even seen them treating the
whole situation as a kind of comedy routine - making jokes when people
get turned away by the soldiers. The rejected farmers shrugging their
shoulders as if to say 'well, what did you expect?', and walking back
toward the village to find some other work to do for the day. Or maybe
to come back when the gate is opened later, hoping that the soldiers
will have changed shift and will let him pass - this often happens.

The soldiers often swagger around with their guns and adopt very
arrogant stances as they wave and shout at the farmers to approach them
up the ramp to the gate, or to move back. Sometimes farmers are sent 'to
the back of the line' as it were, simply for approaching too quickly.
Often the men are made to lift their shirts to demonstrate that they are
not wearing suicide bomb belts - in the process revealing their bodies
to the women folk - an act considered irreligious and humiliating.

The villagers are sometimes horribly humiliated by the soldiers. Hassan
related a story to us of having been spat on three times by a soldier at
the gate, in front of his wife and children. He said that if his family
had not been there he would have 'boxed the soldier in the face', but
this would have put his family at risk, so he retrained himself.

We talked to one man this morning who tried twice to pass through the
gate, but was turned back both times. To our amazement he had a permit
to not only pass through the gate, but he also had a permit to enter
Israel proper. The soldier told the man that his permit for the gate was
incorrect as it said he was allowed to pass through the Qalqilya gate,
not the not the Jayyous gate. The man pointed out that the gate number
indicated on the permit was that of the Jayyous gate, and that the error
had been made by an Israeli bureaucrat and was not his fault. The
soldier did not deny this, but said that the man had to go and get it
fixed before he could pass. This would involve traveling to an office
about 40km away. So here was a man who could freely enter Israel, but
could not get to his own land 5km east of the Green Line! This is the
completely irrational and punitive way that the army asserts its control
and authority over Palestine, and safeguards the security of Israel!

The soldiers control over the Palestinians at the gate is total and
completely arbitrary. It seems to depend largely on the mood of the
soldiers, but also on constantly changing orders they receive from
above. This morning the soldiers showed up for the second gate opening
of the day, and said that they would not open the gate. The villagers
were angry, so two of us tried to approach the soldiers who were
standing behind the closed gates to negotiate. We were immediately
shouted at to go back, and threatened with a brandished teargas
canister. We moved back, but still challenged the soldier about the gate
closure. He blithely announced that the opening hours had been changed.
When asked how the villagers are supposed to know this, he said that it
would be posted at the gate later in the day. This we knew, had all been
said many times before, but has never happened, and not surprisingly as
the soldiers arrive at different times almost every day! In the end they
did open the gate, and when all the Palestinians but one had been
allowed to pass through, the soldiers politely asked us if we would like
to go through now. This surprised us not only because fifteen minutes
earlier they had threatened us, but also because the previous evening
the border police had told us that we would not be allowed to pass
through again without permits, which we don't have and probably couldn't
get even if we tried.

The soldiers or border police simply make up the rules as they go along
and change them at will almost every day, deliberately leaving the
Palestinians with no certainty at all as to what they will happen
tomorrow, or even this afternoon.

Yesterday, the first day of Ramadan, the soldiers didn't open the gate
at all. Thy had given no warning whatsoever of this to the village, and
so about fifty farmers who were waiting at the gate in the early morning
had to turn around and go home. A precious day of olive harvesting was
completely lost, and perhaps more significantly (and more the
intention), the Palestinians were provoked and humiliated on an
important religious holy day. This is another tactic we have noticed the
Israelis specialize in.

Yesterday evening two farmers from Jayyous who have land down near the
fence were ambushed by five soldiers as they took water out to their
cows. The soldiers leaped out from the cover of trees in the dark,
dragged the men from their tractor, threw them to the ground handcuffed
them, slapped them about the face, put hoods on them, stepped on their
backs, beat them on the back and threatened them. The men were told that
they and their families must leave the land near the fence and not come
back.
There are several families with land near the fence. They did not put
their land near the fence, the Israelis built the fence on their land!
The two farmers fortunately did not suffer serious injury.

How do the farmers of Jayyous keep smiling?
It's beyond my comprehension, but it's infectious, and I can't help
loving them for it!

From David in occupied, fenced and gated Palestine

October 12th, 2004

Villagers Become "Refugees" in their Own Homes
David Reports from the West Bank

photo from David: Palestinian villagers harvesting olives, illegal Israeli Settlement "Revava" in the background.

click on it to enlarge

In the villages of Mas-Ha, As Suwiya, Hares and Jayyous, we have by now met many farmers who have lost land and olive trees to the occupation. This means that to some degree they have lost not only some greater or lesser part of their ability to sustain themselves and their families, but also their heritage and their future. In other words, a large part of who they are and how they know themselves as people - as Palestinian farmers - has been taken away, stolen from them.

What is a farmer without his land? What is a rural village without its land or its farmers?

The Israeli government is turning Palestinian villages into refugee camps without moving the people at all. It doesn't force them to leave, it simply takes away the very land they live on, either piecemeal by supporting settlement expansion, or in sudden sweeping confiscations using the so-called security barrier as a pretext. The villagers are turned into refugees on their own streets.

This is the 'clean' way to turn unwanted people into refugees. It's ingenious! There are no pitiful crowds of conspicuous refugees roaming the country seeking new homes, no crowded fields of internationally donated tents drawing unwanted media attention, no UN rescue missions provoking international concern. The refugees are still living in their own homes, at least for now. It remains to be seen how many of them will stay there, or for how long before they move away, one by one, family by family. Maybe this generation, maybe the next.

And no one will notice.

The *Nakhba goes on.

>From your sad witness in Occupied Palestine,
David

*ed's note: "Nakhba" means "catastrophe," and refers to the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages conducted by Zionists in 1948 as they seized Palestinian land to create what is now Israel. Those villagers became refugees and their descendants, who now number in the millions, still wait in camps to return home.