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			BostontoPalestine Boston support group for the International Solidarity Movement

	Home About us News from Palestine Contact Email Subscribe Donate Current Delegation Summer 2006 Past Delegations Summer 2005 Olive Harvest 2004 Freedom Summer 2004 Past Campaigns Events Photos Videos (ISM) Rachel Corrie Links Speakers Be a Delegate Press faq Actions!		2004 OLIVE HARVEST DELEGATION'S REPORTS reports by date 12/9/04 The Slow Creep of Israel's annexation of Palestineby John 12/4/04 Funeral for Resistance Leader in Balata Campby Ahmed 12/3/04 Jhon from b2p arrested by the IDF 12/2-3/04 Nonviolent Demonstrations at Beit Ula by Ahmed 11/28/04 Internationals Block Army Jeeps at Balata Refugee Campby John 11/19/04 John in Balata refugee campby John 11/13/04 report from Ramallah by Ahmed 11/11/04 report from Nablus, Balata Refugee Campby Ahmed 11/11/04 East Jerusalem mourns Arafat by John 11/10/04 Israeli Maps, or the Hertz rental car forecast of future Israeli borders. by John inJerusalem, 11/9/04 report from Nablusby Ahmed 11/11/04 East Jerusalem mourns Arafat by John in Jerusalem. 11/10/04 Israeli Maps, or the Hertz rental car forecast of future Israeli borders. by John inJerusalem, 10-29-04 17 Moments in Palestine by Renae 10-24-04 A last report by Hannah 10/8-20/04 The Olive Industry under siege in Palestine by David 10/16/04Update on Jayyous Villageby Renae 10/16/04 The Fence and The Gate David in Jayyous, West Bank 10-15-04 "These Are My People" by Hannah 10/14/04 Daher's Vinyard by Renae 10/12/04 Villagers Become "Refugees" in their Own Homes by David 10/8/04 Report from Hannah by Hannah 10/4/04 Settlers offer family a glass of water...for stolen land Group report from Boston's Olive Harvest Delegation in Palestine 10/3/04 Second report by Moha Hares, Salfit region 9/30/04 First report by Moha East Jerusalem, Old City reports by delegate John 12/9/04 The Slow Creep of Israel's annexation of Palestineby John 12/3/04 Jhon from b2p arrested by the IDF 11/28/04 Internationals Block Army Jeeps at Balata Refugee Campby John 11/19/04 John in Balata refugee campby John 11/11/04 East Jerusalem mourns Arafat by John 11/10/04 Israeli Maps, or the Hertz rental car forecast of future Israeli borders. by John in Jerusalem, Ahmed 12/4/04 Funeral for Resistance Leader in Balata Campby Ahmed 12/2-3/04 Nonviolent Demonstrations at Beit Ula by Ahmed 11/13/04 report from Ramallah by Ahmed 11/11/04 report from Nablus, Balata Refugee Campby Ahmed 11/9/04 report from Nablusby Ahmed Renae 10/29/04 17 Moments in Palestine by Renae 10/16/04Update on Jayyous Villageby Renae 10/14/04 Daher's Vinyard by Renae Hannah 10/24/04 A last report by Hannah 10/15/04 "These Are My People" by Hannah 10/8/04 Report from Hannah by Hannah David 10/8-20/04 The Olive Industry under siege in Palestine by David 10/16/04 The Fence and The Gate David in Jayyous, West Bank 10/12/04 Villagers Become "Refugees" in their Own Homes by David Moha 10/3/04 Second report by Moha Hares, Salfit region 9/30/04 First report by Moha East Jerusalem, Old City 10/4/04 Settlers offer family a glass of water...for stolen land Group report from Boston's Olive Harvest Delegation in Palestine October 4th 2004 Settlers offer family a glass of water...for stolen land Group report from Boston's Olive Harvest Delegation in Palestine Dear Friends, Today brought us to the fruition of all the planning and work of the last few months of preparing (with all your help) for this Olive Harvest delegation trip. After several days of travel, two days of ISM training in Ramallah, West Bank, and a very social visit and overnight stay at the wonderful IWPS house in the village of Hares, we finally began today the work we came for - picking olives with Palestinian farmers alongside and even inside settlement fences. Hannah of IWPS and B2P, and who has done a fantastic job of organizing our schedule here, guided us at 6 o'clock this morning through the roadblock-fractured, taxi-switching journey from Hares to Mas-Ha, where we will be staying and working for at least the next two or three days. Mas-Ha is in the Salfit region of the West Bank, and gained fame about a year and a half ago as the home of the Mas-Ha Peace Camp which sprang up in protest against the Annexation Barrier being built through its land (it's called a 'security fence' by Israel, but it is clearly intended to also annex Palestinian land and water. It is a fence in Mas-Ha, but is a huge wall in other places). Unfortunately all the efforts made did not stop the fence from being completed, and the village lost access to over 90% of its land. It now only has access to 800 of its original 8800 dunums. For some of us this early morning presented us with our first experiences of roadblocks, the Annexation Barrier and the Israeli army, but it was the fence and the gates that really got our attention (PHOTO#1/click to enlarge). The hideous ugliness of this instrument of separation is multi-dimensional. The still-raw gash stretching across the landscape as far as the eye can see, the coiled razor-wire and steel mesh fence, and the yellow gates which hardly merit the term 'gates' as they are almost never opened (they hadn't been opened for nine months prior to this morning). To add insult to injury, houses of the Elkana settlement sit only a few hundred yards away, staring blindly out at this awful scene of apartheid-in-action as if it were just a neighboring piece of suburbia. The Israeli soldiers arrived to open the gate later than the farmers had been told, thus cutting into their precious permitted harvesting time (the farmers are only allowed to harvest olives if they are granted a permit, and even then are only given very few days to do it). After finally letting the farmers through, checking their IDs and permits one-by-one, they told us that they had orders not to let 'Internationals' through the gate, saying that it had been declared a closed military zone. Wow - we were getting the full treatment on our first morning! We discussed our options sitting in the strange no-mans land between the two gates as the soldiers watched us from their jeep. Hannah made a phone call to the local army office and twenty minutes later we were allowed to pass through the second gate, and didn't even get our passports checked! Welcome to Alice in Wonderland - Occupied Palestine style! The rest of the day was spent picking olives with our new Palestinian friends under the hot sun (it's about 85-90F here in the middle of the day). We split up into three groups and accompanied three families as they harvested their olives in groves lying alongside settlement fences (Elkana settlement), or in one case completely inside a settlement (Sha'arei Tikvah). In keeping with the theme of the day, Olive picking also was a new experience for most of us, and we all struggled to keep up with these hard-working farmers. By noon we were all wondering how on earth we were going to make it until 4pm when work would end and we would all head back to the dreaded gates to see if we would be allowed to get home. Somehow we all did make it, and without any incidents with settlers. Everyone, the farmers and ourselves, also got safely back through the gates. However one family we joined arrived at their olive grove this morning to find that a large piece of it had been turned into a dirt parking lot and a settler road - another piece of Palestine stolen for Israel (PHOTO #2, click on it to enlarge). It was amazing how calmly they seemed to take this shock. They seem quite resigned to these kind of personal disasters, and if they are bitter they do not show it. In the middle of the morning one of the settlers came to the fence at the edge of his yard where the family was picking olives, and offered to let them pick the three olive trees in 'his' yard. The farmer politely declined, and they had a brief conversation which was friendly - the settler even spoke Arabic. The settlers wife then came out and offered us all some iced water, which the farmer accepted and we all appreciated, but as we drank the farmers wife said "see, they take our land and then they offer us water". We arrived exhausted and filthy back at the apartment kindly provided to us by the village, only to find out that the mayor of Mas-Ha was coming over to meet us all soon. This was a honor we would have happily forsaken at that moment, but we rose to the occasion and even managed to produce a decent Arabic coffee for him! The mayor it turned out, was quite keen to discuss the American socio-political scene with us, and did so quite knowledgeably for a couple of hours. He also filled out for us some of the story of Mas-Ha and the effect on the village of the occupation and the apartheid fence. Aside from losing the great majority of their land, the village also lost a great deal of annual business (many millions of dollars according to the mayor) when its market area was destroyed by settlers at the beginning of the second Intifada.This village has really suffered staggering losses. It is astonishing that the people can even remember how to smile, let alone be as cheerful and welcoming as they are. When the mayor left we would have happily fallen into our beds, but we had to have yet another meeting amongst ourselves to plan for tomorrow and the coming days. Activist work is never done! We will be writing more soon. Thank you all for your support. Salaam! From the Boston Olive Harvest Delegation in Mas-ha, Occupied Palestine.