Our Zaytoun/International Womens’ Peace Service team is so big this year that we split into three groups of around 5 people.
One team went to Az-Zawiyya village in the Salfit district, where there have
been problems with land access and illegal Israeli settlers, another went to
Marda, a village we have been to three years running now, which is slowly being
surrounded on all sides by the Israeli separation wall through its land and a
road fence on the other side of the village. And our team went to the Nablus
district, where I haven’t ever explored before.

My first night of the week was spent in Marda though - where the night was
disturbed by the army who entered the village around midnight and let off
’sound bombs’. These are deafening close up, and certainly disturbing in the
middle of the night. Marda is regularly visited by the army in this way, and it seems to be pure harrassment. Two of us went out that night to see what was going on, afraid that perhaps the soldiers were raiding a house or arresting someone. But when we got to the village centre they had left, and were sitting at the village entrance in their jeep instead, still setting off sound bombs and the odd tracer flare. Didn’t seem to be any point to it, but it sure woke the residents up.

Next day, some of the group went to a presentation about the new permaculture project in Marda, and others of us set off towards Nablus. We went to three villages, high up
in the hills with beautiful views over the land, even to the sea. Which is heartbreaking as the PAlestinians can see it but not get to it. So many of them have never ever seen the sea, since they are forbidden to enter the state of Israel.

Mostly, it was peaceful, though the last two days we had to deal with army presence as we
picked olives. We were with a family who has been too scared to go to their
land for 6 years because a local university student was shot dead there, and
there is a military watchtower built on it now. They have been threatened there
before and told to leave. This time, we managed to get all the olives in - a
really big deal for the family as the money from the crop will make a big
difference to their capacity to send their daughters to university, and also
because it gave them back a little bit of confidence and pride in their ability
to face up to soldiers who would have had them off their land soon as they
turned up. There was never any legal order to make their land a “closed
military zone” so the family were perfectly within their rights to continue
harvesting. But faced with guns and orders barked to leave straight away, and children running around, I’m not surprised at all that they were scared to stay. One of the things internationals can do here is negotiate with the army - we can phone peace activists both Palestinian and Israeli, and this time we were able to give the soldiers a copy of the Israeli High Court ruling in July of this year, stating clearly the rights of hte Palestinians to farm their own land and have army protection rather than harrassment. The soldiers seem never to have learnt of this ruling. And although we phoned the District Liaison office (coordinates between the Israeli military and the Palestinian civil adminstration) to be sure of our right to be in the groves, still the soldiers insisted for quite a while that we should all leave immediately.

All the families we stayed with have been generous and hospitable to a fault,
and we have had some real laughs with them all. The children are absolutely
cute, and a lot of them come up to the groves with the rest of the extended
family, to play in the trees, to help (a bit) and to enjoy lots of picnics!

I think the most disturbing evening I have had in a long while was Weds night,
in the aftermath of the Israeli attack on GAza. News footage here isn’t
censored for good taste like it is in the UK. There was a lot of blood, a lot
of distraught grieving and disbelieving relatives and sheer outrage. The family
we were staying with were horrified. At one point one of the sons really lost it
- he had to walk out of the room. If the Israeli politicians call these attacks
“anti-terrorism measures” then they have it seriously, seriously wrong. There
are, I am sure, suicide bombers in the making every time something happens like
this. In a world where the young men often have nothing left to lose, I can at
least understand if not condone, the urge to make something of their death.

YEsterday I went to a demo at the Erez crossing into Gaza, with some Israeli and
Palestinian peace activists. It was a very small, very quiet gathering
considering the amount of bloodshed and loss of life caused by a rocket fired
into one of the most densely populated areas on the face of the Earth. But at
least it happened.

A Zaytoun team member has just had her laptop and olive oil samples confiscated by Israeli customs in a deliberate attempt to harass peaceful non-violent individuals who are working towards peace in the region. The freedom to earn a dignified living is the most basic of human rights, one which Israel has made every attempt to deny to the Palestinians.

It is not uncommon for us & others involved in peace/justice work to be held and interrogated at Israeli customs for hours on end, I fail to see the logic behind supressing peaceful activity. Taking away such basic freedoms does nothing for Israel’s claim to be a peaceful democratic state & neither does it help the Palestinian & International community explore peaceful methods of resistance.

Under 17’s form over 50% of the population here & I’ve been quite disturbed by the many accounts of arrest and torture of Palestinian children whilst here.

My time spent in the village of Marda and elsewhere a tangible sense of restlesness, internalised anger & alienation was evident amongst children. This was new, harvest teams and internationals from previous years confirmed that the children in Marda and elsewhere were behaving noticably different this year. Further enquiry confirmed a new policy of arrests (often in the middle of the night), detention and torture directed at children by the Israeli millitary. The situation was bad enough in Marda for the harvest team to discuss finding ways of supporting Marda’s children.

I followed this up with some research on the Defence for Children International’s website & the emerging picture is brutal. They’ve produced an excellent report Surviving the Present: Facing the Future (Pdf file).

I’ve also been recommended the following book:
“Stolen Youth: The Politics of Israel’s Detention of Palestinian Children”
by Catherine Cook, Adam Hanieh, and Adah Kay
Pluto Press, London, 2004. 197 pages

It draws on information from B’Tselem, The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Physicians for Human Rights, the Gaza Community Mental Health Program & testomonials from children themselves, book review here.

Quotes from the Defence for children International Website

“The torture and psychological maltratment that children have reported includes humiliations, bieng subjected to cursing and threats of death, sexual abuse, attacks by dogs or exposure to electric shocks, bieng beaten, handcuffed, made to sit or stand for prolongd periods in excruciatingly painful positions and deprivation of food, sleep and access to the toilet.”

“These methods, which have a profound impact on the long term physical and psychological wellbieng of the child, are used to force juveniles into confessing and sometimes to coerce children into acting as collabrators for the Israeli authorities.”

“New repressive laws have paved the way for an escalation in arbitrary arrests and incidences of torture and mistreatment of Palestinian children.”

“A mounting number of children are being charged under the draconian administrative detention law which allows for detention without published charges or evidence for up to 6 months”

“The huge increase in arrests has overloaded the Israeli prison system meaning that children are held for long periods of time in temporary facilities, which are little more than medieval dungeons”

“Once the foreign protestors and camera crews have packed up and left, Israeli police and soldiers re-enter the villages to detain locals who they claim have been participating in the [peaceful] demonstrations. The children are taken together with the adults first to the nearest police station for interrogation, and then on to detention centres where they are held pending trial.”

“Children involved in peaceful protest against the Wall should never be subjected to tear gassing, violence or intimidation at the hands of soldiers, nor be arrested. These children should not receive especially severe sentences because of their involvement in protest against the wall.”

“The vast majority of children killed in 2004 were not partcipating in violent confrontations with israeli forces, but died while going about their daily lives”

“The Commitee on the Rights of the Child expressed grave concern of Israelis treatment of Palestinian children under arrest, during interrogation and in prison … the commitee called on Israel to investigate all cases of torture and inhumane and degrading treatment by Police officers & government officials and bring the perpetrators of these violations to justice. Two years on, it is as if these reccomendations, and this criticism of Israeli practices, had never been made.”

Source: Surviving the Present: Facing the Future (Pdf file)

One afternoon whilst the Zaytoun harvest team were picking olives high up on the steep rocky hills of Marda we were ordered to, by someone on a loudspeaker at the bottom, to move along 100 metres as they were about to blow up a section of the hill in 10 minutes ! In disbelief we moved along and settled down for an early lunch underneath an olive tree, moments later several explosives were detonated blowing up part of the hill, previously belonging to Palestinian farmers. We later learnt that roads were bieng built exclusivly for the settlers to use.

We finished our picnic under the tree and went back to picking olives, life here can get very surreal at times.

Marda was one of the villages where the Zaytoun harvest team supported farmers harvesting their olives. It’s a beautiful village with a natural spring both dating back to Roman times.

The village lies in the shadow of West Banks largest Israeli settlement, Ariel, making it difficult & dangerous for farmers to tend to their trees & pick their olives. In 2005 3,000 olive trees have been destroyed, either burned to the ground by settlers or bulldozed & the olive wood stolen.

During our time in Marda we met and spoke to many people including the village council & local mayor. Marda is typical of Palestinian villages in that over 80% of families are dependent on their land and olive farming. Olive trees dot the landscape as far as one can see & the village is famous for its ancient olive trees, some dating as far back as 2,000 years.

40% of land belonging to the villagers in Marda have been confiscated to build the Ariel settlement & roads, exclusivly for settler use, with 10% of the land bieng confiscated in the last year alone.

The building of the aparthied wall has caused great anxiety in the village and a sense of despair as it further threatens to cut farmers off from their land & devide the village in half.

Their seems to be a sustained campaign of harrasment & theft against Palestinian farming communities. The harrasment has the singular purpose of discouraging farmers from tending their land, this makes land confiscation much easier under the ‘Government Property’ law. Responsible for some 40% of all land confiscation in the West Bank. This law states that land which has not been cultivated for some time becomes Israeli property.

The Village and the Salfit region as whole is rich in water (a precious commodity in the region). However, all water is ‘owned’ bythe Israeli company, Merkorot. In summer, Mekorot often cuts off the water to Marda for several days a week. In contrast the settlements are lush with greenery and swimming pools.

There are problems with obtaining building permits in Marda, and the village has a history of house demolitions. The end result is they cannot develop the village.

Currently unempoyment in Marda stands as high as 80% -95%.

Sources:

Applied Reseach Institute of Jerusalem (ARIJ); B?Tselem, ?Land Grab: Israel?s Settlement Policy in the West Bank?, May, 2002

“Palestine & the Palestinians”, published by the ATG, Beit Sahour, April 2005

International Womens Peace Service

Nablus is famous for its traditional olive soap industry which dates back many centuries. The soap is produced in stunning old buildings with exquisite architectural detail and the crumbling facade betraying its historical grandeur.

A disused Olive soap house in the centre of Nablus’s old city

Nablus’s olive soap contains over 70% olive oil and continues to be made, to this day, by hand employing centuries old skills handed down through generations.

Olive soap making in Nablus is an art, sadly an art which is slowly dying. The Occupation’s tightening stranglehold on the Palestinian economy combined with international free trade regulations have dealt a near fatal blow to the Palestinian economy.

The olive soap is laid out to solidify and then cut by hand.

The last four years have seen the closure of over 90% of the traditional olive soap industry here in Nablus. The impact has been devasting on the families whose livelihood depended on olive soap making including the sourrounding Palestinian villages who have traditionally relied on the olive soap industry for their livelihood.

Also, the traditional art of olive soap making is an essential part of Nablus’s identity and cultural heritage, this has spurred many within Nablus to find ways to restore the old olive soap buildings and find ways to market the soap to the outside world.

Whilst in Nablus I was kindly shown around one of its remaining soap making houses, it was impressive seeing the soap bieng made by hand & talking to the artisans whose families have passed down the art through the generations.

The soap is carefully arranged in towers with ventilation gaps & left to dry for a month

There was a great deal of pride & skill involved in their work, there was also much anxiety in what the future held for them.

Saleh

I’ve just returned from the Palestinian city of Nablus. A city which has suffered terribly under the intifada from arial bombardments, tanks and on the ground Israeli millitary. Nablus is one of the oldest cities in the world, dating as far back as 9,000 years. It is also one of the largest cities in the West Bank with archaeological and historical importance. The Old City is particularly amazing with buildings belonging to different historical periods from Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, Islamic and the Ottoman time

Whilst there the oppurtunity arose to talk to a Nablus’s city Police captain “Before the Intifada Nablus was a beautiful, bustling & lively city attracting people from all over. The Nablus you see now bears no resemblenceto its former self. It is a destroyed city .”

Even now Israeli millitary enter the old city quarters of Nablus at night, making it unsafe for Palestinian police & residents. “In the last several years Palestinian Police have been unable to wear their uniform here.” Asked why he responded “The Israeli millitary would shoot, Palestinian police officers, on sight .”

Pre-Intifada Nablus had a thriving economy & a lively University, both were targetted by the system of Israeli closures and checkpoints. Goods and people were neither allowed in or out effectivly making the citizens of Nablus prisoners in their city & destroying all sources of income for its people.

As I joined the long queue at the Israeli checkpoint to leave the city I met a softly spoken & articulate Palestinian merchant, our conversation was brief but his words have stayed with me “The Intifada has destroyed us, no one in the world is is forced to live like we do”, the note of hopelessness in his voice & the sadness in his eyes is unforgettable

Even the museum in Nablus housing its ancient & valuable treasures was ransacked by the invading forces, we were shown the state it was left in by one of the administrators of a girls school who has been entrusted with its keys.

The purpose of my visit to Nablus was to find ways in which Zaytoun can support the cities regeneration through trade initiatives, more information on this soon.

Six settler girls from Benjamin, a settlement Northwest of the West Bank city of Ramallah, attacked Palestinian farmers while they were working in olive orchards in the nearby village of Sinjil.

Rabbi Arik Ascherman, of the organization, Rabbis for Human Rights (which assists Palestinian residents in the region with the annual olive harvest) said that “This is not the first time those girls have caused trouble there. For years there have been problems of all sorts with crop theft.?

Reports such as these are common place, the vast majority go undocumented as the judicial system ignores Arabs. The farmers are powerless even to defend themselves against such attacks, for to do so would result in the full force of the Israeli millitary decending upon them.

Zaytoun 2005 harvest report
by
Dave Owen

On Sunday, 6th November a group of volunteers set off from Jerusalem for a West Bank village in the Salfit region to pick olives with Palestinian farmers. The core group of ten (eight British, one Irish, one German) was joined by others over the following two weeks, including a photographer and a journalist. We stayed for five days each in two villages and participated in meetings and cultural visits. This is what we witnessed.

Zaytoun is the arabic word for olive, and is a British-based organisation distributing and selling Palestinian olive oil on fair trade principles The olive harvest is a time for volunteers to help directly with picking the crop, monitoring conditions and trying to protect the farmers from harassment and attack. To see for ourselves what is happening today in the West Bank. A disturbing and frightful sight.

It is hard for anyone who hasn’t visited Palestine to appreciate the difficulties involved in the simplest journey. Roads are blocked by permanent checkpoints mounted by armed Israeli soldiers. From Jerusalem we had to get out of our bus after a few kilometres, carry belongings across a nightmarish landscape of concrete barriers, walls and fences, and find other transport to continue the journey. This process continued throughout the West Bank, so that a journey the distance from London to Brighton could involve four changes and five separate payments.

There are also ‘flying checkpoints’, set up at a moment’s notice across roads; earth mounds and fences blocking off access to villages; restricted movement on many roads for non-Israeli vehicles; and endless delays, harassment and questioning, much worse for Palestinians than for foreigners.

The people who live here are treated as worse than strangers in their own country. To the indignity is added the suffering of economic stagnation and massive unemployment as work grinds to a halt; teachers are unable to travel to school; medical staff cannot reach villages. More than 30 cases of mothers dying in childbirth while waiting at checkpoints have been recorded.

At the villages we were treated to wonderful hospitality, lavish meals and heartfelt words of welcome. Most of all, the request : please tell the rest of the World what is happening to us! Israeli settlers from hilltop encampments invading schools with sticks, frightening the children. Setting dogs on farmers who pick on their own land too close to settlement fences, attacking them and brandishing guns with inpunity as the Israeli army looks away or tells the farmers they must leave.

Olive trees, the mainstay of 80% of Palestianian agriculture, are burnt down and uprooted for more settlements, barriers, roads and fences, or simply out of spite. A people terrorised on a daily basis at every turn.

We were lucky as our visit did not involve any direct physical confrontation. We were told to leave the olive fields by armed soldiers and saw settlers with guns staring at us behind their fences. Our success was to pick in some places where the farmers had been fearful to go without international volunteers. Those trees they did not pick would not bear fruit again, so they would lose more trees and land by default. In the second village we visited 50% of all the land and tress has been lost over a 25 year period, by a series of confiscations and wantom destruction.

A new hazard is the building of a continuous barrier between Israel and the West Bank, known as the ‘Apartheid Wall’. This structure does not follow the Green Line dividing Israel from Palestine, but snakes deep into Palestinian land, stealing more territory, dividing communinites and isolating farmers from their land. At our second village constructrion work on the barrier had started on the hill above, laying waste to a wide strip of land and destroying more olive trees. The barrier is said to be for security. In fact it only impoverishes and hems in ordinary Palestinians; anyone who is determined and resourceful can find a way around it.

Our visit did contain many charming and delightful moments, in amongst the horrors. Simple lunches on blankets in the olive groves, with bread, homous, cheese, fruits and tea; games of football and frisbee with charming children; evening meals and conversation with farmers and their wives; a folk music and dabka dance performance in the village community centre; self-help and resilience using minimal resources. The beautiful scenery of gently rolling hills, interspersed with curving olive groves and dotted with arab villages, each displaying the distinctive minaret of a mosque from where the haunting call to prayer of the meuzzin issues five times a day. A land of potential plenty and paradise.

The Palestinians are often portrayed as dangerous terrorists, hell-bent on violence and destruction. The reality is they are a peaceful and greatly suffering people, terrorised by a brutal neighbour who is armed to the teeth by the richest nation on earth. The only land they have remaining that has not been directly stolen by this neighbour is occupied by him. The only hope they have for survival, other than their own heroic resistance in surviving, is understanding and help from the international community. They need your help now.

What can you do? :

- get information from Zeytoun, other websites and books;
- write letters to your Council, MP, local press, organisations;
- raise the issue and invite speakers to your meetings;
- buy Palestinian olive oil and other products;
- boycott products from Israel;
- come on the olive harvest in October next year!

A brief note for those interested in the workings of fair trade and olive oil standards in Palestine. While we were here we attended and gave a couple of presentations to Palestinian farmers and exporters on the requirements of fair trade in Europe. It’s part of the series of fair trade seminars organised by Oxfam here. It was a long chaotic day, but at the end of it a steering committee for fair trade in Palestine was established. We talked about IFAT membership for co-ops as well as olive oil quality standards.

The Palestine Standards Institute has produced a document, modelled on a French document, which sets out guidelines and standards for olive oil production. It should be translated in the next fortnight, and will be the basis for a system of checks and monitors on the whole process from harvesting to pressing through to bottling - similar to the Hazard Analysis Control Path in the UK.

We are still waiting for final prices for olive oil - but this year the harvest has been so scarce that prices will rise dramatically, and good quality oil may be harder for us to find.

Organic inspections of some of Al Zaytouna’s co-ops will be completed within the next week or so - soon as we have the feedback we can start estimating how much organic oil we can buy from them. A French taste tester is visiting some of the Al Zaytouna co-ops next week to conduct some trainings on organoleptic testing - I’ll be going along to find out more!

The walk around Qira’s groves was inspiring - we were shown the composting around the trees, and new planting as well as grafting of new trees. - I am collecting a somewhat strange vocabulary here - I now know the Arabic for grafting!