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.