28 October 2006

 
With the Rabbis for Human Rights

Normally when we come there're quite a few of us. We get stuck into the work, eventually three soldiers turn up, then later three policemen. I and someone else talk to the soldiers. It helps that I look like a naive seventeen-year-old. Yesterday was different, eventful. There were only four of us. Just after the village of Hawara we broke off into two groups of two. Liora, (who I'd brought for her first outing with the Rabbis) and I crossed Hawara checkpoint. It is a place of concrete and steel, lying in a valley of olive trees amongst rocky rolling hills. Palestinians line up, herded like cattle through a tight pass. Soldiers stand around, bark orders, pier through riffle scopes or down from the slits of the concrete tower. No-one wants to be there. We passed straight through.

We went to work with a family: husband, wife, their eighteen-year-old daughter, seventeen-year-old son and a couple of younger brothers. The father spoke Hebrew, the two older kids English. We picked the olives, raking our fingers down the branches, climbing into the bending trees. It was fun talking to my girlfriend in Tel-Aviv, perched in the middle of an olive tree under the West Bank sun. This continued for hours, taking breaks to eat chips and pita with labane and an Arab kind's tomato salsa, and olives from the orchard. Then we had to stop. Being with the Rabbis for Human Rights, we have to get back for Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath). Heading back through the checkpoint we were stopped.

The West Bank is divided into many zones. These are classified as being Area C, under full Israeli control; Area B, under Israeli security control but Palestinian civil administration; and Area A, under full Palestinian control. Crossing Hawara checkpoint we had entered Area A, which is illegal for Israelis. I should have realized this, but I never thought the organization would send us into Area A. It negates the whole raison detre of the Rabbis. There are no settlers in Area A, no soldiers. It explains why there were so few Palestinians working with us. Why they were in no hurry and didn't pack up and go when we left. They were not under threat.

We were being held. The officer read my id. number into his radio, and then waited. We hung around amid the concrete slabs. I got on the phone to Arik - Rabbi Arik Asherman, the beating heart of the organization. He got on the case, calling his contacts in the army. I chatted to a couple of soldiers about not wanting to be there, about Arabs, about Doc Martin Boots. The officer was replaced by another, tall and younger than I, enshrouded in green uniform and equipment. Half an hour passed and I must have been about to talk to him when he said, "Go, I don't want to chat to you. I don't want to get to know you. We'd just hold you for three or four hours and then they'd tell me to release you. Go." I said Shabbat Shalom, thanks and kol tuv (fare well) and went.

The other group had been attacked by settler children, throwing stones and shouting abuse at the Israeli women. The olive-picking party had hastily packed up and left. I'd have been more use there. Liora and I worked in idyllic surrounding and were well fed; the kids there had probably never seen an Israeli who wasn't a soldier or a settler. But the main purpose is to stand up to violent settler, to ensure that Palestinian civilians can reach their land in spite of the settlers. We're not there to get under the feet of the army.

25 October 2006

 
For the next year I’ll be posting here once a week, writing from an oft-forgotten front in the conflict in the Palestinian territories. I will be working with Yesh Din, an NGO made up of Israeli lawyers who travel into the territories to take testimonies of alleged crimes committed against Palestinian civilians by Israeli settlers or soldiers. Yesh Din then follow up these cases within the Israeli military courts. They also help defend Palestinians who seem to have been wrongfully charged.

At the end of the year these posts will contribute to a Yesh Din report. Their style has been dictated by Yesh Din: everything will be reported, from smells to feelings to violence. They will be a weekly diary of the clash between the occupation authority and Palestinian civilians.

But the next post will be about a different organization, Rabbis for Human Rights. They take Israeli volunteers to work with Palestinians on their lands in areas where they would not otherwise be able to go for fear of extremist settlers. Now is the time of the olive harvest, a time of heightened tensions. The presence of Israeli volunteers means that the army and police check in on proceedings, to protect the volunteers from the settlers. Only with such a presence do Palestinians in parts of the northern West Bank dare to enter their land. Last week a group of about 50 settlers attacked such an olive-picking party, throwing stones and firing a gun. Four were hurt. (See this article for more, and here for a short piece on the Rabbis).

More to come…

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