As Sawiye harvesting
cathi on November 13th, 2005As Sawiye is a wonderful village. We stayed with Jamalat and Hakim, whose hospitality was so generous - in between political meetings in the sitting room and womens’ gatherings in the TV room, they didn’t mind hosting 8-10 internationals at all! Jamalat is hard at work on writing a proposal for rural women’s IT education, and she introduced me to a woman from the from the PA who is also reponsible for womens’ development. When the proposals are translated I will send them out to women’s groups in the UK in the hope that we can find some funding for these excellent projects.
We were treated to a dabke dance show put on by the boys in the village, too! Afterwards, JAne, our harvest team member who is in her 70s, gamely agreed to a game of billiards with the local youth in the games room in the community centre. She looked as if she was giving them good competition!
The days spent harvesting were relatively peaceful. Permission had been granted from the Israeli army to pick above the “security line” around the Israeli settlement of Ely, which stretches all the way along the ridge of hills opposite As Sawiye, on their lands. The farmers shouldn’t need permission from anyone to pick their own olivees from their own trees. On top of the hill, next to the settlement, the land was barren and trees were dead, the ground covered in thistly weeds - evidence of the inability of the farmers to reach their lands to tend the trees and plough the soil -they are simply too scared of the militant Ely settlers to go up there. When we got to the groves up the hill, a settler security guard turned up along with two soldiers, who told us the farmers could not pick there. Some of the famlies left straight away, intimidated by the jeeps and guns and orders. The family I was picking with wanted to stay - they reckoned they had another couple of hours’ picking to complete. So Sam and I went to talk to the settler guard, whose first action was to pick up his gun before he got out of the car. We told him we had permission from the army to pick. The soldiers turned up and we had a long conversation with them, telling them how many trees were still to be harvested, how important it was to finish them. At last they indicated they had understood and walked away. We didn’t have confirmation of permission, but I think they decided they would turn a blind eye. Rabbis for Human Rights turned up, in a while, and made phone calls to the army commander. We were allowed, officially, another hour, and then R4HR started getting pressure from the army to finish and go down the hill, to pick under the “security line”.
It’s a difficult situation, this. I don’t feel right about following army orders and hurrying the Palestinians up to leave their trees, when they shouldn’t need permission in the first place. R4HR obviously do a good job liaising with the army and working in the fields with the villagers, but at the end of the day if the Palestinians decide they want to stay and finish their harvest then we internationals should stay and support them.
Anyway, we managed to pick most of the families’ olives that day. The following days were spent picking around Eli and REvalim settlements, with minimal hassle. That’s a success - although some of our team may have felt our presence was unnecessary, as we weren’t involved in any serious confrontations, who knows how the army or settlers would have behaved had we not been there. Villagers from Marda and Yasuf, where we picked last year, told us they were sure our presence prevented settlers coming into their groves and shooting.
In terms of Zaytoun oil - As Sawiye sends its olives to Qabalan village, where they are pressed. Qabalan, according to the Palestinian Standards Institute, has one of the best presses. PARC buys some of the oil. As is the case with other West Bank villages, the oil is a major source of income for the residents.
