Friday, 29 July 2016
When the Israeli government began building the "security barrier", a wall that was allegedly built to keep armed Palestinian groups from attacking Israelis* but in reality cuts into huge swathes of the West Bank and takes away Palestinian land
In the village, we meet Abed and Yoram. Abed is one of the leaders of the Popular Resistance Committee, and has lived in Ni'lin all his life. Yoram is an Israeli activist who has been coming to the village every week since 2011. They are good friends, and speak to each other in Hebrew, Yoram's mother tongue. Yoram is taking Arabic courses, trying to be able to learn the language of his Palestinian friends.
Speaking to both of them, we learned more about the village and its history.
As Abed explained, the wall was only aspect of the takeover of his village. Prior to the wall's construction on the village's land, Ni'lin had already lost 10,000 dunums of land, confiscated by the settlements surrounding it. The wall took another 3,000.
Many of the people who live in Ni'lin are farmers, and olives are a very important crop. The wall cuts through farmland, and those whose property it intersects are not allowed to go to their fields without permission. Some people are only able to go a few times a year, or in some cases, once every few years. Of course, that is not enough and the farmers lose their business.
Villagers began protesting against the wall in 2008. They tried initially to tear down the wall- which began as a chain link fence- with pliers and wire cutters; but eventually the Israeli military made the wall out of concrete. People now try walking to the wall, in a symbolic show of resistance. Sometimes the youth set tires on fire and roll them towards the structure.
The Israeli military responds by trying to stop the demonstrators from getting anywhere near the wall, and inevitably clashes break out between the soldiers and the shebab - young men and teenagers and boys. Soldiers armed with teargas cannisters and rubber coated steel bullets and "foam" bullets, occasionally also with live ammunition (although they use it less often than in places like Kafr Qaddum). Shebab armed with rocks and sometimes marbles which they shoot from slings. Soldiers wearing helmets with visors and body armour. Shebab wearing their everyday clothes and keffiyehs- Palestinian scarves which they sometimes use to cover their faces.
Today the village will be commemorating the eighth anniversary of the death of Ahmed Musa. Ahmed was a ten year old boy who was shot in the head by a Border Police officer on July 29, 2008. He was not killed during clashes, but afterwards, when he and some friends went to inspect the crops that are often burned by the teargas cannisters which are fired by the Israeli military and to remove some of the barbed wire. A Border Police officer saw the boys from a distance, and fired a live round into Abed's head, killing him. The officer who murdered him, Omri Abu, was acquitted by an Israeli court of negligent homicide (for some reason, the charge of intentional homicide was not raised against him), and simply charged with "negligent use of arms".
http://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20100525
That same year, four other people were killed in the village, some during clashes but also Yusuf, a seventeen year old boy, who was going to visit his grandmother but never made it. He was shot in the head from close range with a rubber coated steel bullet, fired by a soldier in a jeep. Abed was with
Yusuf when this happened.
According to Abed and Yoram, the Israeli military make very heavy use of teargas, and in an especially deadly way. The purpose of teargas is to disperse violent demonstrations of people. It is intended to be fired into at the ground, by people's feet.
The Israeli military often shoot teargas cannisters directly at Palestinian shebab, aiming for people's heads and chests. The cannisters, fired at a high velocity, have permanently disabled and even killed people. Fired at people's arms and legs, they sometimes break bones and leave burns. Recently, soldiers have been adding a black plastic "head" on some cannisters, to ensure they work more like rockets, flying farther distances and hitting with higher impact when shot at a person.
Teargas cannisters are sometimes fired in bursts from a truck aptly named "Venom". Sometimes traveling from a distance of more than 500 metres, they slam into not the demonstrators (who are targeted by the military with closer range weapons including gas), but people's homes and streets in the village behind them.
Sometimes, as a reprisal for demonstrations, Israeli soldiers invade the village and shoot gas cannisters through people's windows. Given the heat of the projectiles, in five cases homes have caught on fire. High velocity teargas cannisters have even been shot at ambulances, smashing their windshields.
"Rubber bullets"- in actuality they are steel bullets that are coated with a thin layer of rubber- are also used. Abed had been shot before by the soldiers. Unlike the shebab, he does not throw stones nor order others to do so. He remembered one time he was shot, while walking towards soldiers and yelling he wanted to talk to them.
Rubber coated steel bullets have taken out the eyes of three villagers in Ni'lin.
As Abed points out, not all soldiers are the same. Some of them fire the teargas into the air resignedly, not wanting to cause harm. Others aim the cannisters directly at people's vital body organs.
In his words, "some soldiers come to kill, others just to follow orders".
The military tries to crack down on the protests by arresting shebab and organizers alike. Abed had been arrested several times, and recounted a nightmarish scene when the soldiers who arrested him took him to a settlement. They allowed one of the Israeli workers, who was making the wall with a bulldozer, to beat him up. Another time, blindfolded, Abed was again brought into one of the settlements where he remembered children yelling at the soldiers to kill him, and a woman who told them to deny him use of the washroom. Fortunately, he was released after a few days.
Other villagers who had been arrested have spent months in prison and were released only after paying fines of tens of thousands of shekels.
In spite of all of this, Abed tells me he does not hate Israelis or Jews. Israeli activists like Yoram come to the demonstrations, and Abed had seen them also get teargassed and arrested, and beaten up by soldiers who see them as traitors.
Abed recounts a time when he saw four of his Israeli friends get arrested by the Border Police. He actually confronted their commander and told him,
"it is because of these guys that we don't take revenge on you".
In a comparison I have to admit I have never heard before, he compared the Israeli activists to Jesus.
"Like Jesus Christ", he said, "they change the world".
Abed is one of the few Palestinians I know who supports a two state solution- Israel and Palestine as two nations alongside each other; instead of a binational state where Jews and Arabs have equal rights.
"I support two states for two peoples".
We asked Yoram why he comes to Ni'lin. He said he came for the first time, in his own words, "to see what occupation looks like". As he saw the wall and learned about the land being stolen from the villagers, he realized he had a moral duty to do something.
He admits to us that unfortunately, he and Israelis like him are currently a minority in their country, and face a hostile climate. Many people see them as traitors to their country and their people.
Despite the opposition he faces, Yoram works to open peoples' eyes.
"I'm realistic. Changing society's point of view is very hard. It doesn't happen overnight, but I encourage people to think differently. I want them to question what they are told".
Like Abed, Yoram has been arrested. Unlike Abed, he had never been beaten by soldiers after being in their custody. Also unlike his Palestinian friends, he was never held by them for more than a few hours.
The settlers who live in the settlements surrounding the village- from both north and south- are cut from a different cloth than those near Hebron and Nablus.
As Yoram and Abed explained to us, unlike the former, most of them have no ideological motives for being there. Unlike the settlers who terrorize our Palestinian neighbours in Hebron, the settlers near the village don't particularly go out of their way to attack Palestinians.
For them, it is a matter of economics. The Israeli Government offers its citizens, and Jews from other countries, economic subsidies to move into the West Bank. The settlers near Ni'lin see the appeal of lower housing prices, and for this reason move in.
According to Yoram, many of orthodox Jews who have large families with up to 12 kids, move in because it is cheaper. They do not hate Palestinians, but they don't mind stealing from them either.
Of course, none of this is of any consolation to Abed, or any of the other Palestinians in the village.
He told us of an interesting conversation he had with one of the settlers, who came from Brooklyn. He asked the man outright if he was aware of the fact that the Israeli government, and by extension the settlement he is in, steals the village's land.
The answer he received speaks volumes in its indifference.
"Yes, I know. But don't worry about it".
When laying blame for the disgusting actions of the settlers, whether those near Ni'lin or those in Hebron or near Nablus; Yoram lays blame on the Israeli government and extremism of some Jewish religious leaders.
However, he also points out another, disturbing source: American evangelical fundamentalist Christians.
"Ideologically," he said, "Christian evangelical fundamentalists are worse than even the settlers themselves."
Unfortunately, this is true. While the Bible (neither the Old or New Testament) does not support the things done by the Israeli government, some Christians have abused Scripture to justify support for Israel's actions, no matter what the injustices inflicted on the Palestinian people.
Anyone who watched the Republican presidential debates and listened to the likes of Ted Cruz would unfortunately be hard pressed to find evidence that suggests otherwise.
Continuing, Yoram stated: "I think the Christian fundamentalists in America pay the settlers to do to the Arabs what they want to do to the blacks".
Abed and Yarom both often try to talk to the soldiers during demonstrations. Abed told us he likes to point out to them that some 2.5 million Israelis live under the poverty line.
"Think of the money that could be used to feed your people, to help them buy bread every Saturday". He also talks to the soldiers about Mrs. Netanyahu's expensive shopping trips, and asks them whether it is worth for them to place themselves at risk so their leaders can continue to profit.
Throughout this discussion, Abed and his son Nasser served us cup after cup of hot tea and coffee, as well as cake and then afterwards fried bread mixed with herbs like za'atar.
After a few hours of good discussion, we set off for the demonstration.
*It is true that when the wall was being built, there were attacks by Palestinian armed groups like Hamas, which included suicide bombings against Israeli civilians in cities in Israel, attacks which did cause many deaths and which do fall under the definition of war crimes and which I believe were morally wrong and oppose wholeheartedly.
It is also true that during the same time, Israeli military forces were attacking Palestinians- civilians as well as armed groups- across the West Bank and Gaza with live ammunition, helicopter gunships, tanks. All of these were war crimes also, despite statements to the contrary by many American and Canadian politicians. For every Israeli killed by Palestinians, there were four Palestinians killed by Israelis. Most of the victims among both groups were civilians, although interestingly the label of "terrorist" was... and continues to be applied... only to Palestinian attackers.
Not to mention this is not nor has it ever been an equal conflict.
No comments:
Post a Comment