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.