Olive Harvest Update Nov 06
cathi on November 12th, 2006Our 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.
