The West Bank Blog

Olives Near Hawara

At half past six last Friday morning I left my flat and crossed Arlozerov Junction. Abu Rami's minibus was already there. I climbed on board and tried to go back to sleep. Forty-something minutes later one team, comprised on Yesh Din / Machsom Watch ladies was dropped off at land adjacent to the Gilad Farm outpost, west of Hawara, where there's been trouble recently. I went with four PHD students from the Weitzman Institute for Science. We continued through Hawara, turned left before the checkpoint and jumped off the bus on a road just by a large almond tree. We were where I'd been only two months ago, picking almonds. We walked up the hillside, the wadi and checkpoint bellow us to the right, then came across the family. We'd come from the Hawara side of checkpoint, they from Kfar Kallil on the Nablus side. The father, Jawal didn't know me, but quickly noticed that his nephews did.

We set to work picking olives. Last year was a good harvest, and so this year is not. I joined the boys up in the trees, balancing on bending braches, trying to get to what olives there were without falling. One of the teenage kids, Hamudi, revived the chant from last time of "yehudi balagan, yehudi sababa." Later he started banterously poking me and accusing me with, "yehudi balagan". Eventually I retorted with "aravi balagan, aravi sababa", which drew a sudden laugh from their grandmother who'd been quietly attacking the olives with a stick.

I stuffed the olives into my pockets before descending from a tree to relinquish them into a container. We stopped for breakfast and sat in a circle eating. One of the Weitzman scientists was Anna, a thin, blond English woman from Cornwall, down here for two weeks from Oxford University. Another was Jasmin, a pretty Italian brunette who'd come from Milan a year ago yet spoke fluent Hebrew. Neither had been to the territories before.

Jawal raised the issue of going to get water from the family's spring. The kids clambered around me, wanting to be picked to come. I asked Jawal to choose, anyone but Walid, who'd been irritating, laughing at me in Arabic. He picked Walid. As we walked down the path he was suddenly nice and suddenly understood Hebrew well too. The lack of an audience made him OK. As the road and the almond tree came into sight we saw first a head and then a car, parked behind the spring. We hung back, and waited. Five or ten minutes, then back. But we'd been seen, more cars turned up, more people came out of them. We headed back.

We had worked for over four hours when Rabbi Arik Asherman turned up with a UN man. He utterly ignored the Israelis and went straight to talk only to the Palestinians.

We looked down at the valley. People streamed out of the checkpoint. "Look," said one of the Palestinians to me, "they've been let out."

Our time was almost up. Jasmin, more religious than the rest of us, was beginning to get nervous that she wouldn't get home with enough time to prepare for the Sabbath. I took Walid and the bottles and headed once more towards the spring. Two of his brothers came too. The settlers were still there. This time with an army jeep alongside. I told the kids to stay there and started down the hill with the bottles. On the path I saw a soldier. He aimed his weapon towards me. "I'm Israeli!" I shouted, (in Hebrew). He lowered his weapon. I continued towards him. He raised his weapon. "Lower your gun, I'm an Israeli!" I shouted, (in Hebrew). He lowered it. I came closer to him. "I was just looking through the lens" he explained. "It's still unnerving," I said, and asked if it was alright to go to the spring. He didn't mind.

I got down to the road and asked the commander of the jeep, a fat man in a scull cap, if I could go to the spring. He tried to ignore me. Behind the jeep were half a dozen settlers, sitting around the spring, a small pool of water. I asked if I could take water. One tried to ignore me. Another asked why I was there. As I filled the bottles he and I got into a conversation about Jewish philosophy: he quoted Rashi, I Maimonedes. My phone rang. I was told to hurry up. Abu Rami's bus was there. As I rose to my feet, the settler who'd been ignoring me told me, "that's the pool, the spring's over there", pointing to another water source, "I tell you this because you're a Jew." I'd already drunk from the water and it'd tasted fine. With no time left I decided to deliver the water I had. I bid the settlers Shabbat Shalom and left them there.

On the road the three Palestinian kids were leaning against the front of the jeep, a soldier checking them one by one. The UN man and Arik were trying to figure out what was going on. The kids had been ordered down to the road by the soldier I'd met on the hillside. Once there they were detained. The army said there'd been shots fired in the area two days previously, and the area was off-limits. This was the first the Palestinian had heard of this; it was the first the UN man had heard of this; it was also the first that Rabbi Asherman had heard of this, even though he's in daily contact with the local DCO.

The upshot: they had come from the Nablus side, Area A, under full Palestinian control. They had passed along the hillside overlooking the checkpoint. They were now on the Hawara side, in Area B, under Israeli security control. In normal circumstances, such as two months ago when I was last there, there would be nothing to challenge them, (nor the donkey I also saw wondering the hillside on Friday). The final upshot: The Hawara Checkpoint has no security value in the prevention of terrorist attacks. On the stretch of road between Tapuach and Hawara Checkpoint I counted three flying checkpoints, each checking the same vehicles. Some checkpoints certainly do have some security value. All these don't.

It was agreed that the kids would be driven in the army jeep to the checkpoint and released on the other side. An experience, something to tell their friends about. Abu Rami's bus was now waiting. I couldn't shake any hands, so I waved goodbye, said Shabbat Shalom to the soldiers and asked the UN guy to make sure that the kids call Jawal to let him know what was going on. We all got onto the bus. There was no time to stop for falafel in Hawara. We had to get Jasmin back to Tel-Aviv with enough time to prepare for the Sabbath.