Deir Istya: trees drowned in sewage and a land owner in his sorrow

Three days ago we received a call from an Israeli activist who asked us to accompany a farmer in the village of Deir Istiya for the olive harvest. She couldn't go with him that day and he desperately needed international presence, she said.

Deir Istya is a village that has suffered a lot of land and inhabitants loss. It has been reported by a local human rights organization that about 10000 people have left the village since the 1967 war. Since the beginning of the Occupation the village has lost most of its land to settlements: 20 000 out of 34 000 dunams (1 dunam = 1000m2). After 1967, many people started to work in Israel, because it was more remunerative and for some years did not use their land. Thus in other cases, the Israeli authorities expropriated land under the pretext of Ottoman law relating to uncultivated land, or land designated by the British as nature reserves.

Looking at the UN map is reminiscent of observing the spread of cancerous formations: all land north and south of Deir Istya is swallowed up by big settlements; there are eight of them nowadays. One of them, Revava, built on the land of Hares village, has expanded onto Deir Istya land. Land was expropriated by fraud by, for example, asking landowners to sign papers that they thought were for travel permits, but which in reality were contracts by which they gave up their land.

One more time I was not prepared at all that I was about to see. Settlements had remained an abstract notion for me up to that moment as long as I was seeing them either from a distance or in fragments. Now I realized we had to walk right under Revava and there was no separation fence between us and it at all, actually we were in it. “Soon the security will come”, warned me the head of the family and as soon as he said it, we saw a military jeep following us on the road.

the military jeep following us can be seen in the far background

Three soldiers got off the jeep. They were quite polite. I wondered if this was because of our presence, the internationals. The farmer could speak some Hebrew and he talked to the soldiers for what seemed forever to me as their huge weapons were making me feel really uneasy and I spent all my efforts on concentrating to look casual and to not give away my fear. While busy in this activity of mine, the four-year old made a gesture that surprised all sides in this little chit-chat“gathering”: soldiers, Palestinians and internationals alike. As if this was the most natural thing in the whole world, he just stretched his hand towards one of the soldiers, the one who seemed to be in charge, and smiled at him. The soldier shook the tiny hand in his turn and in that moment everyone present smiled at this child's innocent and spontaneous gesture. I believe that for a second right there we all left behind our roles in that absurd theater of Oppressors and Oppressed. Unlike myself this little boy was obviously accustomed to the sight of soldiers and their arms and yes, he was not afraid. It turned out that a Revava settler had called the soldiers worried that people were walking in such proximity to the settlement. Our farmer had a permission to pick that day from 8 to 16.00 o’clock (farmers whose land is in proximity to settlements need to obtain such a permission from the Israeli government in order to access their own land) so they had no ground to argue with us and left with shaloms, smiles and all.

I had hardly composed myself after all of this and another sight was already in store for me: the land we were about to harvest in was all drained in stinky water, the very water from the settlement’s sewage.

To sum up the list of humiliations experienced so far: first we had to take a very rough and bumpy road, an endeavor that took us about half an hour while the actual distance from the settlement's road (which we can't use) to the land was five minutes. Then we had to be questioned by

armed men what we were doing there when the family

had already gone through the ordeal of obtaining a permission from Israeli government to access the land. The next humiliation was that we had to pick olives reaching over someone's dirty shower waters or whatever waters, I prefer not to know. It was all stinky, sickening and beyond description.

the settlement as we saw it while walking to the land we were about to harvest

Now thanks God it was not their WC sewage (such cases have been reported in other villages as well), it was their waste water (supposedly shower) but it’s hard to thank any God for such a thing as well, it was stagnant and stinky and moreover, it was obviously killing those trees. Few of them had already died, one had just fallen on the ground and the others were in line awaiting their slow death as well.

the owner of the land trying to make the stagnant sewage water flow

The family we were accompanying worked this land for money, the actual owner was an old man about perhaps 80 (you never know here, people seem older than their age) whom we got to meet as well.

We were told he had another land in Wadi Qana (that’s another village whose land has been completely polluted by settlement’s sewage) of 400 dunams that has been confiscated from him. Revava settlers have asked him to sell them his land but as he put it: “Even if all my olive trees were uprooted and this land was covered by nothing but rocks, I would still never sell my land to them!”. Therefore deviating the course of their dirty water further down to his land (before it used to run on the road above) was their next step. If you don’t sell us your land, everything on it will die, is basically the obvious message. The owner filed a case with the Israeli court and he actually won it but the water just continued being there nevertheless. It was heart-breaking to even look at him. We were told he would come here every day riding his donkey taking a way off the beaten path as to not be troubled by the settlers and then just look at his trees all of which were drowning in the swampy-like waters. His children were afraid of the nearby settlement and no one would come pick the olives so he had the family we came with harvest them instead. He did not respond to our invites to eat throughout the whole day and just sat there drowning in sorrow along with his trees.

the olive trees drowning in sewage waters; the Revava settlement is visible above it

above on the left: going back home passing by the settlement. a bit afterwards the old man swerved off the beaten path being afraid of the settlement security and the army;

above on the right: we found this little bird dead close to the water; it's not only a land dispute, it's an ecological crisis as well

the old man looking at his trees

That night we stayed over at the family’s house in order to save travel expenses as we were staying with them the next day as well. This meant of course a lot of good food, a lot of people to meet and talk to, children to play with and royal treatment altogether. That evening a twenty year old shabab (as they call the youngsters here) who was sitting next to me at that time in our circle of chairs told me out of nowhere the following: “You know, we Palestinians have had  everything taken from us. We get beaten, our land and olives get stolen. All that we still have left is the air we breathe. We are very thankful when someone like you comes to help us, even a tiny bit at a time. What matters is that you are here and that gives us hope, thank you.” This is how I have dared to summarize for myself why I am here and secretly hoped this was the case indeed. Hoping that even though what we were doing was  so tiny in proportion, it was at least appreciated. Hearing it from a Palestinian made me feel verified, acknowledged and incomparably happy.

The next day as we walked the thin line between the settlement and the Palestinian land we were followed not by a military jeep but by the settlement security, a white van with a Hebrew inscription on it. It followed us for a while, then after we passed the caravans of the settlement and perhaps our distance was reckoned “safe”, the car turned around. They came later for a check though. The man in the van addressed our farmer by name and asked him if he has seen some man on a donkey. Not our old man on the donkey, someone else. We said we haven’t seen anything of the kind. This became the subject for joking around during the rest of the day among us each time we would see that car again. “He must be having mirages of donkeys again”, we liked to guess. This was most probably the settler's way to demonstrate who was the boss there, making their presence known and constantly reminded of. We wished such a man on a donkey existed indeed as he would be of much use for us at the end of the harvest when all the olives had to be loaded on donkeys and walked on that rough road out of the land. All of this while the settler's road was right next to us but Palestinians could not use it...

That day we were joined by the Israeli activist who had made the call asking us to come in the first place. She told us she was born in Jerusalem and grew up there and served in the army. Today she was an activist. She told me that part of what she does is arranging meetings with settlers and trying to convince them to decrease their violence usage. This girl really makes a good use of her access to both worlds, I thought. I have talked with a number of Israeli activists by now. They were all disgusted by the policies their government conducted but what they were doing was exactly the same thing organizations like ours do: be with the Palestinians. They have chosen to live in Arab land or have surrounded themselves with left-minded Israeli friends only, denying the other reality existed. I have asked each one of them if any dialogue with the right Israeli was possible and the answer was invariably no. And this young woman was not just talking to any regular Israelis trying to change their minds, she was talking to the settlers: the very ones everyone writes off as “coo-coos” immediately and it all ends there. Many Israelis would admit that the settlers do ruin Israel’s image in front of the world’s eyes and while the government closes their eyes and continues to

support the settlement's growth in the West Bank and provides their inhabitants with guns and loads of protection, dialogue with settlers is being dismissed as impossible from all sides. I was blown away by her courage. She said that a lot of times she just listens and there’s no basis for dialogue. There are some of them though who are opposed to the individual settler attacks on Palestinians but support the organized oppression of the Occupation (checkpoints and army control) as the lesser evil, as a way for them to be safe. These are the ones that could be talked to. Theirs is still a dead-end way of thinking though as it would imply the Occupation should continue to exist to protect them everlastingly. The Palestinians

are not going to change their minds and accept their land being stolen from them one day just like this either.

My First Demonstration

Olive trees burned by the tear gas used by the soldiers at the demonstrators during every Friday demonstration (the 17th one just took place this Friday); under this tree a villager was killed in 1988 by a settler from the nearby Qadumim settlement

                                                                                                                                   21st of Oct

Throughout my daily encounters of other international or local activists I keep on becoming more and more humbled by how much more experienced and knowledgeable they are about the situation here.  Today I realize that for one thing my innocence and lack of experience are precious and maybe even worth writing about: I am still at the stage where what I see here affects me emotionally, I am not used to it. Today was for me my First Demo while for everyone else present it was probably just another Friday. Another Friday of resisting in the village of Kufr al Qaddum. Here's its story:

In 2003 the Israeli government closed the road east of the village that connects it to Nablus and started building settlements all around. What used to be 13 kilometers of a distance to Nablus is now 26 kms one as villagers need to use an alternative road that at first used to be not even a road but a rough two-track.

Demonstrations against the closing of the road started in July this year and have taken place every Friday after the prayer ever since. We met with the organizer to learn more. He told us that three children from the village have passed away during the last three years after they had been refused passage at the Gate to the closed road and thus failed to receive urgent medical care in Nablus soon enough. Since July until now six youngsters have been arrested and are still imprisoned for taking part in the demonstrations. We were told about this while taking a walk to where the demonstration takes place and from where we could see the gate to the closed road and the settlement right behind it. We came as close as 300 meters away from the settlement Qadumim and could clearly see its red-roofed neat houses, its new roads, greenhouses and not to be forgotten, a camera aimed at us standing on a high pole. “Smile for the camera, we are been watched as we are walking here right now”, we were told.

Qadumim settlement

The road for the demonstration was right where those two worlds seemed to collide and the outcomes from that were quite visible. First we saw the many olive trees along the road that were burned from the tear gas used by the army at the demonstrators. About 150 trees have been burned that way so far, as we were told. The tear gas hadn’t taken mercy on the lives of the 400 chicken that happened to live in the chicken shed right at the road as well. We were shown the olive tree under which an inhabitant from the village was killed by settlers in 1988. His name was Abd al Basit al Jama’a. 

We passed by the last house of the village standing few meters away right from where all the tear gas shooting would soon take place. The family living there takes in a lot of tear gas through their windows. The land the house was built on falls in Area B as does the rest of the village. The family tried to build a second house on its land just one meter away from the original house but it turned out that the border between Area B and C is right somewhere where this one meter is. The construction of their new home turned out to be in Area C and therefore they were not allowed to continue building. Area C is the land in proximity to all the settlements and it falls under full Israeli jurisdiction and control so that the State of Israel actually needs to give a permission to build in Area C to anyone whose land happens to be in that zone.

But this is not where all the troubles end. Farmers whose olive trees are in that area need a permission to pick their olives as well. 58 farmers from Kafr al Qaddum had to obtain such permission from the State of Israel. This means they are given twenty days to finish the olive harvesting and are not allowed attending or setting foot on their land during the rest of the year. They can’t plow or prune their olive trees which could do serious damage to the trees. While harvesting this year people have been approached by the army and told that if the demonstrations in the village didn’t come to an end, they would be not allowed to finish harvesting this year at all and they were to pass this message to the organizer of the demonstrations. Basically every building or tree on this road between the village and the settlement with the closed road had a story behind it, a story of suffering.

We asked the two organizers of the demonstration if they were afraid of being arrested. One of them had already spent nine months in prison and those weren’t just any nine months in prison but a ceaseless interrogating. The other one said that he doesn’t feel a criminal for demonstrating peacefully for his rights but he knew they would get him someday, sooner or later. While we were talking, two of his children, not older than 2-3 years rushed in the room. They were talking over each other and completing each other sentences and apparently looked scared from something. It turned out that they had seen an army jeep passing by and were talking about a scary soldier with his gun.

Children pretend- playing to be demonstrating 
before the actual demonstration begins

After the noon prayer the demonstration started. Palestinians and internationals, all about 80 or so, walked on the road going out of the village chanting and holding posters while about ten soldiers were lined up towards the exit of the village across the road with their guns ready to shoot tear gas. It didn’t take a long time before that happened, probably only five minutes and all the demonstrators started running back towards the village. I couldn’t have been prepared by how violent it felt though, how absurd still.

 

I hadn’t expected the tear gas to feel as bad as it did: throat and eyes, all burning, I took in a lot. For a while everyone was leaning on the houses and choking, then started walking back to the soldiers again. After a while the Palestinians who were ahead of me and could see better seemed to be scared from the sight of something coming from the olive trees down the road we were on, apparently there were other soldiers there I did not even know existed who were coming in our direction. Everyone started backing off and running in panic and so did we, of course. I heard the tear gas canisters whistling above our heads, then saw a couple of Palestinians getting off the road and running in a side street and I just felt like getting off that damned road as well and following them. Luckily my teammate Fred saw I was taking off to a different direction than everyone else and followed me so we didn’t lose each other. While we were standing in the house of the Palestinian who had ran ahead of us and had taken us in his house we saw the soldiers coming inside the village this time. Tear gas was shot and some sound bombs. Our unexpected host offered us some water and then we went to his neighbor’s house that was closer to the road. He seemed at ease, he offered us some coffee, and then he brought his baby in with us. We saw the soldiers retreating out of the village, and then they came in again. Our host was playing with his kid few meters away and we were just chatting. I felt a bit guilty for feeling like we were on the safe side. And then if we forgot for a moment what was happening on the street few meters away from us, this could have been a normal hanging out with a Palestinian at his house, the way he was playing with his baby and us sitting there and chatting over the coffee.

The military entering the village in order to fire 
tear gas and sound bombs at the demonstrators

The demonstration was over, the soldiers filed out finally. We went back to the road. Kids were already playing football in the street with an adult who asked us to join in. A tear gas canister was lying on the ground close to them but life had already been back to normal for them. It had never ceased to actually.

What is scary is that what had happened just shortly before was part of the “normal” as well. The tear gas (and a bullet a bit further actually) on the ground, the football play, the demonstration, the violence, it was all part of the same thing: normality. For now I am still holding on to how I felt today: how senseless it all seemed, the aggression of it, the how-could-the-world-let-this-happen and etc. feelings that I may experience in lesser amount next time having become a bit more insensitive myself.

During the first tear gas shooting the canister hit the leg of a Palestinian teenager. He had his knee bandaged and was walking supported by his friends. His friend talked about his exams next day: yes, life did have to continue and it already had…

The demonstration in a nutshell: this Friday the soldiers were more violent than any time before, they shot the tear gas right in the beginning in the demonstration and came inside the village to shoot some more for the first time. They tried to arrest one of the internationals we know but he managed to escape. Farmers were told they were not to stop harvesting from tomorrow on. They will still try to. We are going to a village south of us where farmers were attacked by settlers yesterday to accompany them.

Olive Harvesting in Jamma'in

Jamma'in

Simply being here is so very educational for someone like me who feels no connection to any land or place, no sense of belonging anywhere. I never had to feel any as I have been privileged with the opportunity to travel and explore while my home awaited me in Bulgaria or wherever I considered it to be at the time. Staying home for people here is already a form of resistance, a statement of not giving in and simply going abroad. Generations grow up one after the other for whom the simply daily activities are a form of resistance and what is scary, this is what they learn is the only possible life.

Tappuah outpost or what could be seen from it from the family's land

We went olive harvesting last week with a family in the village of Jamma’in, 16 kms south from Nablus, a village very close to the one we live in. Jamma’in is largely located in the B zone. The C zone is 2km west of Jamma’in. Today, there are only trees in the C zone. Area C is approximately 60% of the West Bank today and its land falls under full Israeli control; this is the land all around the settlements and it also comprises all the border with Jordan, the Jordan river. Jamma’in’s land borders with two settlements: the first one is Ari’el, the largest settlement in the West Bank, and Kfar Tappuah which is small in number but consists of ideological religious settlers, the one that tend to cause the most troubles. Every year, settlers attack Jamma’in villagers. They tend to burn Jamma’in farmer’s fields, threaten them with weapons, steal their crops, and use their grazing land.

The ancient house where the family's ancestors lived. This house is at the edge

of their land and the closest to the. settlement now. Settlers have been going in

the house to hang out and the family is afraid to even enter it now.

Fred and I accompanied a family from Jamma’in to their land that lays the furthest away from the village and the closest to the outpost of Tappuah. They seem a very traditional and religious family and speak in rural Palestinian dialect which is difficult for me to understand so the dive inside the culture feels complete. This family works very hard and it’s interesting to observe their work style which is different from the one of the families we worked with before. The members of this family often don’t put any tarps on the ground and let the olives fall straight to the ground and then pick them one by one in a bucket. This seems to be mainly women’s task so I join in with them most of the time. I feel like there’s something almost sacred in this process, giving each olive its due attention by picking it by hand, not leaving any on the ground, dry or fresh one. They work so meticulously that in the end there’s not a single olive left under those trees and not a single leaf in the buckets. Their trees are more than hundred years old as the family tells us and we can see they are bigger and older than any of the trees we happened to pick from before indeed. This adds to the feeling of sacredness in their specific harvesting ritual. At branch time the family lays some bread on the ground in the middle of the circle of people and we eat with our dusty hands passing or throwing some cucumbers or eggs around. I thought I haven’t been closer to the earth before.

The next day we picked with the same family again. That meant getting up at 6:00a.m., meeting them at 6:30a.m. and staying with them till work was finished at about 4:30 in the afternoon. That day they had taken some of their kids along who were much more open to talking. I became friends with a 15-year old boy. He spoke in perfect Fusha (the classical language) with me and told me the story of how his family was attacked by settlers last year. During their first day of harvesting a settler from the Tappuah outpost came down with two dogs and started the dogs on them. The following day around ten settler men came, all armed. They started yelling at the family to stop picking and leave their land. Luckily that day they had internationals (or `ajanib, foreigners, as they call us) and they called the Israeli army who actually came after about ten minutes and drove the settlers away. I asked him what the settlers did during those ten minutes. They were yelling at them, he said, they spoke some Arabic but they couldn’t understand each other, and they also stole the olive bags his family had picked so far during the day. Then he looked at me and said: “The Israeli army came to help us because there was a foreigner like you with us to call them. If it was us calling, they might not have done anything. That’s why we want you to come with us and if something like this happens again, make that important call.” This boy had just summed up why I was here for me and had managed to communicate through to me what his family hadn't.

That second day we were already accepted and felt like part from the family. Even a bit too much as one of the women had brought in one of her sons whom she asked me to marry.I knew she was just trying to save me from what looked like misery to them: my being an old maid at the age of 27. When am I going to have kids, it’s already late for me, said the grandpa, a father of thirteen children and he did seem concerned. I explained that if I had married and had children I would have stayed with my family wherever it was and not be with them today. That seemed to convince them and they welcomed me again and thanked me for being there and my marriage ceased to bother them… at least during that day.

In the evening we spoke with our contact from Rabbis for Human Rights who knew the family and confirmed the story the 15-year old had related to me about the settlers’ attack last year. I tried to remember the details from it so I can use it for a report or blog. It’s important that we don’t exaggerate anything and if we are not sure about something, be honest about it and say so. If the men were ten, write ten. If you are not sure, then write “as the villager said they were around --this and this-- number”. Now I started thinking about these settler men and their number. If they were not ten but less and appeared as a larger number in the boys’ eyes due to his fear, what is it that matters: the precise information for the actual situation or the precise information for the impact left on the boy by what happened, the actual trauma afflicted on him? Which one is it important to record?

I'm trying to balance this thing on my head (it was heavy!) along the example of women in the family

Next day my new friend told me about the situation in Jamma’in during the 2^nd Intifada that broke out after 28 Sep 2000. He told me he was arrested one day while working in a store for no apparent reason(he was 11 years old at the time) and he had the soldier pointing his gun at him, then they released him. I asked him if he had seen something during the army occupation of the village and he recalled an incident when he witnessed a man getting beaten up by the soldiers. I asked him if he was afraid during this whole time. He gave me this mature and calmlook and said he was used to all of this and one cannot be afraid from something he's gotten used to.

The kids from this family continued taking interest in me and Fred. I was asked one of the days if we had Jews in Bulgaria. I said we didn’t have many nowadays but even if we did, they were peaceful Jews and I tried to explain that not all of them were like the ones across from us on the hill. Then they asked me how was life in the US (they knew I had been there), if there was violence and fights in the streets. I said there was violence everywhere but perhaps less than here. “Their government wouldn’t allow that over there”, concluded one of the boys thoughtfully. I could see that they were simply trying to figure out what really was “the normal life” like.

The evening of the third day we spent with this family we were invited to the house of the grandparents, the one who have thirteen children who in their turn have many children of their own and all of them or most of them, go figure, were present at their house that night in honor of the olive harvesting. As we were walking the narrow street going to their house there were already children meeting us along the way and a lot more standing at the door waiting for us. We were given two chairs to sit on in the entrance room, served the obligatory coffee and surrounded by all these pairs of eyes belonging to their shy giggling owners. More than twenty children were present in the room and all of them were studying the unusual sight that we were to them. This is the son of my daughter, this is her daughter, this kid is the uncle to this kid and this is called such and such, I felt so very overwhelmed that for a while I could just smile awkwardly and look around around me with I felt must have been a silly expression. Then they put a cover on the floor in the other room and a huge plate with rice and fish was brought in by one of the women. We sat on the floor and all ate together in a circle. The sole idea that those grandmother and grandfather that we knew had started that entire house full of people and little children, just imagining what it took to feed all of them, all of this was quite overwhelming for me to grasp and picture. There was quite of a cultural experience for us.

Some of the shy giggles; they need to be multiplied by 5 at least for the real picture to be imagined :)

We worked four days with that same family and during that time I had to put up with a lot more of marriage talk which I learnt was to be taken jokingly and lightly. A 24-year old asked me to marry him the last day we picked in the presence of his mother who had just introduced him as a soon-to-be father. His mother came in to my rescue:”Tell him you are older than him”. I wonder whether this was all a joke or not. I still have a lot to learn about this culture with all my 5 years of study behind my back.

Settling In

a view to the village of Huwwara, West Bank or our home for these two months

We learnt that things in Huwwara – the village where Fred and I will be living during our stay in the West Bank – have been harsh recently. A mosque was burnt in the village last year by settlers and two girls were pushed by a settler’s car in the street, we were told by people living in the village.The first actual Palestinian house I found myself in was that of our landowners. The view from their balcony is unlike anything I’ve known so far and quite illustrative about the situation here. The red roofs from the edges of three separate settlements can be observed on the hills across. But what is just few meters away is a military camp. It has been there for generations to observe – it had been first Ottoman, then British, then Jordanian and now Israeli. The family’s olive grove is separated only by a road from it. Whoever gets near, on the other side of the road is considered a threat and could be shot at. This is what happened to a Bedouin shepherd whose sheep strayed that way and he went to get it years ago. He was shot dead by a patrolling soldier.

A member of the family took us for a walk in their olive grove. Two beduins were guarding their sheep grazing around. We found about the death of one of the sheep that was drinking water from the field. The problem is that the nearby settlement’s sewage is going right through the valley, into the spring the sheep drink from. The Bedouin boy asked what we can do in regard to his troubles. Soldiers from the nearby camp seem to have different rules every new day about where his sheep can graze and where not. The answer that we can take pictures and try to get his story heard didn’t seem to comfort him much.

A sign containing the names of three settlements outside of Huwwara. Someone crossed out the Arabic text for the last one,

Below is a picture of our house:

Jerusalem and Ramallah; hunger strike

4th-7th of Oct

I was warned by my hosts that Jerusalem has much different air to it. I presume that this is how they define the air outside of the Tel Aviv bubble: different. Indeed I immediately felt the change which took place in between one street corner and the next one. I had simply cut through to another country: I was in Palestine. There was some shock ascribed to how quickly the landscape gave in to a different look.

It took me some time to get there though. Nobody would cooperate with telling me directions anymore. I was obviously looking as a lost tourist and I was asking around where I can get a bus from that goes to Damascus Gate. Of course it has another name in Hebrew and I was corrected by a mother with her kid a bit abruptly when I asked her about it. “Ask about “Shkhem” , that’s its name”, she said and then perhaps after realizing she had had a bit too harsh tone with the ignorant tourist, covered it all with an almost reconciling smile.

Jerusalem's Old City; worlds meeting

I met my teammate Fred in the Old City. He had had way more trouble getting inside the country this time: after being questioned for hours he was told to sign a form stating that he was not to set a foot in Area A, i.e. Palestinian-controlled territory. Otherwise he would not be allowed into Israel. After this warm welcoming he had signed the form and here we were one day later heading for Ramallah, the heart of area A…

We stayed there for two days to attend a training organized by ISM (International Solidarity Movement). Before leaving Ramallah we stopped by a central square where a hunger strike had just started in a tent few days

ago. Their protest was in solidarity with the one started on the 27th of Sep by imprisoned Palestinians in Ofer Prison, an Israeli incarceration facility located inside the West Bank. The prison holds Palestinians that have been sentenced or held under Israeli administrative detention. Continuous reports of human rights violations have come out of the prison, including reports of imprisoned children. The hunger strike is meant to denounce inmates living conditions such as solitary confinement, visitors ban and the lack of medical attention.These conditions have even worsened upon Palestinian prisoners since June, as a means to pressure Hamas into releasing the Israeli prisoner Gilad Shalit, who was captured just outside the Gaza Strip in 2006.

On one of the tents for the hunger strikers in the center of Rammalah was the portrait of Marwan Barghouti, a beloved Palestinian resistance leader. On 6^th June 2004, following what international observers and attending delegations unanimously described as a political show-trial, he was sentenced to 5 life sentences and 40 years in prison.

I took some pictures of the tents and the many pictures of imprisoned Palestinians hanging above the street and around the place.

There was an old man nearby from the hunger strikers who seemed to want to talk to us. We went and greeted him and right away he started telling us his story with an unseeing look in his eyes. He told us the names of his relatives who were imprisoned, then pointed to his lower jaw that was completely toothless and made the gesture of teeth being pulled out. I was trying to make out what he was saying with the little Arabic that I picked from his words but it didn’t seem to matter so much: he just needed someone to listen and was lost in his world. Whatever he was saying, it was intense with emotion and this needed no words to be conveyed, we clearly felt it. Then tears came out of his eyes. I felt like saying something comforting but couldn’t think of anything so I asked him whether I could take a picture of him, then we shook his hand again and left.

One of our ISM trainers had opened his presentation about legal issues jokingly saying he had been in prison only eight times and that’s why he needed no law studies to be knowledgeable about it all. He participated in a hunger strike in prison that actually managed to accomplish their demands which were better conditions. About thirty people had been kept in the same room before that, he said. One of his arrests happened while he was imprisoned: soldiers went to his house looking for him to arrest him and his family could not but reply: “But he already is in prison!” Here we all cracked up as our mind refused to grasp the absurdity of such a situation and therefore sought refuge in humor.

Well, Marwan Barghoti is certainly not the only one who has such a absurd of a sentence as that of five lifetimes and 40 years on top of it! One cannot but ask themselves how the hell they calculated that. But even this is not as far as the extent of the insanity stretches. If you are sentenced for that long, they --as a matter of fact -- do keep you that long. How? Last week for example there was a ceremony in Nablus commemorating the release of someone who had died in prison already 40 years ago. His body had been frozen all the rest of the time and now forty years later his family was able to retrieve it and bury it. The point is to punish the family by not being let bury their beloved ones. Apart from the bodies being frozen Israel has also the practice of keeping them in what the Palestinians call "cemetery of numbers". Only four of them have been identified to date. A mere metal plate with a number for identification, instead of a name, figures on top of each grave in such a cemetery and only the army is aware of the identity of the bodies in them. I was terrified to read more about it in:

http://www.asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=3&id=13373

On-arrival or an evening spent in Tel Aviv

За превод на тази публикация на български: http://dobrovolkavpalestina.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/6/

                                                                                                                          3rd - 4th of Oct

After a surprisingly smooth entry into Israel I am finally here, on my way to the West Bank. I have carried in so much “luggage” in terms of information and other people’s stories about this country that it feels weird to be seeing it with my own eyes now, knowing so much and so very little at the same time. Tel Aviv seems unreal, hollow and somehow lacking substance. I catch myself being saddened by the sight of its people. Here are Russian-speakers, soldiers, people with side curls or not and all of them are replying readily and politely to my ceaseless inquiries about directions. It takes me some time to realize the root cause of my feelings: life here seems way too normal. It feels too much like being inside a bubble. There’s no sign of Palestinian presence or even existence. All car registrations have the Israeli-indicating yellow color. Only the directions do contain Arabic script along with the Hebrew and English and this is the only reminder this land used to be Palestinian.

So here I am, completely immersed into what is Israel today. I had expected to be shocked by the constant sight of soldiers with their guns all over the place but even this seems like part of a ridiculous game now as they are here during their time off and are regular people that just happen to be in a soldier uniform. A soldier and his girlfriend walking hand in hand talking casually. The only detail that makes this sight different is the rifle hanging on his back.

During my one and only night in Tel Aviv I stayed with Israeli students. I had picked them almost randomly from a network for travelers (couchsurfing.org) I’m a member of. I thought it would be good to get to know the point of view on things from the regular Israelis. I had decided this would be good cover at the airport as well, staying with Israelis and had decided to not let them know I was coming to their country to be a peace activist in the West Bank. Soon after we started going into deeper conversation than small talk my host shared his avid disapproval of the occupation of the West Bank. During his interview meant to determine his placement for the army he had refused to serve in the West Bank. I feel relieved as I can now share openly what I am here for and leave behind the role of the tourist exploring Israel that didn’t suit me anyways. My host and his roommates (a couple) have already all served in the army. He and his roommate think that my being part of a peace team is great and call the settlements “the cancer of Israel”. The roommate said he served “close to Gaza”(as he put it). He appears to be very well informed about everything going on in the West Bank unlike his girlfriend who doesn’t seem to know much at all (she has done social service in the military). We talked quite a lot about how problematic it is for a soldier-to-be to refuse doing military service. They claimed that at the age of 18 one lacks the courage and the matureness for such a brave step, to stray away from the flock. I left for Jerusalem with a “Good Luck” note in my notebook from the ex soldiers. I found this ironic and in a way inspiring at the same time. They had job interviews to think about now, social reforms to discuss, government to complain from, beach to go to for fun and other concerns and pleasures.

A sense of oblivion was about to almost overwhelm me as well, I felt somehow led to forget it all as well after spending a day floating inside the bubbly mass.