Life in the Jordan Valley

Last week I went to the Jordan Valley, which is the eastern part of the West Bank, running north to south along the Jordanian border. It's about the only part of the West Bank that has a natural abundance of water, rich fertile soil, and natural minerals from the Dead Sea. All this makes it perfect agricultural territory, and it also makes the Valley a major target for Israeli expansion and land confiscation. It was occupied by Israel following the 1967 war, and now, after 40 years of occupation, Palestinians control about 5.6% of the territory, while Israel controls 94.4%. Before 1967, there were some 200,000 Palestinians living in the Valley, and now there are only about 52,000 left, with most of them concentrated in the city of Jericho. I want to tell a story to show that the consistently diminishing Palestinian presence in the Jordan Valley isn't an accident.

We stopped at a few villages on our tour, but there was one that struck me the most. Actually, I shouldn't even really call it a village, because it's only one house. There used to be about 100 families living in this village, but slowly, they were forced to leave, with many of them even having their homes demolished by Israeli troops with bulldozers. Now, all that's left of the village is one house with one farmer living there with his family. This farmer absolutely refuses to leave his land, no matter what he's subjected to.

He's got a greenhouse and a small patch of land that he farms, and he's surrounded by illegal settlements. He has no electricity, even though he has two electrical towers on his property, maybe 10 metres from his front door (see the last picture below). But these towers, one running north-south, and the other running east-west, only carry power to the Israeli settlements that are on all sides of him. Even though there's all this electricity running right on top of his head, he doesn't get any of it.

This farmer is also unconnected to any running water network. This is despite the fact that, just like the electricity situation, he has a water pump on his property that pumps water to the settlements around him. A nice, steady flow of water runs right underneath him, but he can't have any. He actually used to pump water himself from a spring a few kilometres away, but a few months ago, Israeli troops came and cut the pipes and dug them up, so he can't do that any more (see the picture of his cut up pipe on the right). Why did they cut his pipes? They said he was "stealing water from nature." Completely absurd.

But even in the face of all this, and seeing his fellow villagers lose their homes one by one, this farmer refuses to leave. This is his land, and he won't give it up to a colonialist power. But now, Israel has issued him a demolition order saying that his house will be destroyed if he doesn't leave voluntarily by a certain date. The funny - or not so funny - thing about this demolition order is that it states that his house will be destroyed, but his greenhouse won't. Why will his greenhouse be spared? Is this some form of compassion that Israel is showing, a way of "going easy" on the farmer? Well, no. It's actually so that when the farmer leaves and the settlers come and occupy his land, they'll already have a working greenhouse. They won't have to go through all the trouble of building the greenhouse, planting the seeds, setting up an irrigation system. The nice Palestinan farmer will have left all that behind for them.

So what choice does the farmer have? He can move off of his land, but where is he supposed to go, since his family has lived in this small village for generations? Or he can stay there and watch his home get demolished by Israeli soldiers. Thousands of Palestinians in the Jordan Valley have had to make this choice since 1967. It's really surreal, we were driving along the main road through the Valley, and the guide would point to the side of the road and tell us that a village used to be there. All that's left now is a few piles of rocks that used to be houses. If someone hadn't told me, I would never have known that people lived there. And now the land "belongs" to Israel, and the people have forcibly been expelled.

This is why the diminishing Palestinian presence isn't an accident. All of this is part of a deliberate policy that's going on all over the Jordan Valley and the West Bank in general. Doing things like cutting off water and electricity, restricting freedom of movement, preventing expansion of towns and villages, is a way of constricting Palestinian communities, making life virtually unsustainable for them. In essence, the Israeli state wants the land without the people. It's amazing that there are farmers like this one who will go through anything to prevent that from happening.

Olive Picking in Asira al-Qibliya

Yesterday I went olive picking with a big delegation of internationals and some Palestinian students in a village called Asira al-Qibliya, which is in the north of the West Bank. October is olive harvest season for the Palestinians, which is a really important time for them socially, culturally, and economically. The olive harvest has been going on for generations, and the olive trees have deep, deep meaning for the Palestinian people. A huge percentage of Palestinians also depends on the harvest for their economic survival.

Every year, though, the olive harvest comes under attack in the West Bank. Soldiers and state policies prevent huge numbers of Palestinians from even going to their farmland. Trees are burned and uprooted, trees that have existed since long before the occupation of Palestine began. Palestinian villagers are attacked with rocks and bullets by fanatical settlers. This year, 105 villages in the West Bank have been identified as being under threat from attacks and land confiscations. It's all part of the colonial project that aims to isolate Palestinians, and to ultimately eliminate their presence from Palestine.

Anyhow, there's an Israeli settlement near Asira called Yizhar, and there's been a lot of settler violence in the area since the harvest started. Settlers have been burning down olive trees, destroying farmland, and throwing rocks at villagers. One Palestinian teenager was actually killed a few weeks ago after a clash between settlers and villagers. When the clash was over, the kid was sitting under a tree, and soldiers opened fire on him. He was shot 20 times, I suppose to make sure he was dead.

We also saw a Palestinian house near the settlement that had the Star of David spray painted all over it. The Star of David, therefore, has become a symbol of colonialism, intimidation, and oppression. And the Palestinians are supposed to be the bad guys, the aggressors, the terrorists? It's really sickening how the truth is so twisted. You'll hear settlers saying things like "God promised us all of this land, we have deeper ties to the land than the Palestinians do, etc." What right do they have to say this, especially when so many of them are from the US, Russia, Germany, France...? How do they have more claim to this land than a family who has been living here for generations upon generations? And what makes them think that they're justified in dehumanizing the Palestinians to the point that they'll take any means necessary to try and expel them - essentially ethnically cleanse them - from the land? I'd love to be able to understand the psychology of these people, to figure out how they work.

Especially when you meet the Paletsinian villagers, and they're such incredible people. They were really amazing to us when we came to support their harvest. The women in the village cooked traditional food for all of us - the villagers plus around 30 volunteers, and as we ate in the olive fields, they asked us about our lives, about why we were there, what we thought about the situation, etc. Every Palestinan who I've met has been unbelievably friendly and hospitable. They'll invite you into their homes, share whatever they have with you, and just make you feel so welcome to be here.

When you see stuff like this, you develop a clear understanding of the expression "to exist is to resist." Because really, simply by being here, by living on the land that's rightfully theirs, by taking care of the land, by passing the connection to the land down to future generations, the Palestinians show their strength, their resiliance, their defiance. Continuing to live here in the face of constant abuse and attacks is perhaps the strongest form of resistance. To exist is to resist.

This is why, despite the reality that they face, Palestinians shouldn't be seen as victims. "Victims" suggests that they need people to come and help them. This isn't the case. They welcome solidarity for their cause, for people to come and show their support and stand with them in their struggle, but not paternalistic "help." "Victims" also suggests passivity, that they let things happen to them. Again, this isn't the case, because they resist and they struggle. Constantly. Just by existing.

One week in...

So I've been here a little over seven days so far, and it's been quite a week. I arrived at the airport in Tel Aviv and got through security without any real trouble, except for the fact that they didn't give me a visa...that caused a slight hassle for the next few days, but it's a story for another time. What I really want to talk about is my first experience traveling in the West Bank.

On Thursday I went to Hebron, with three Norwegians who are here, one of whom is working with the same organization as I am, Stop the Wall. Hebron is a Palestinian city that's south of Ramallah and Bethlehem, and it used to be the economic centre of the West Bank. It was really something to see this city, to see the reality of living under occupation, a reality that Palestinians have to face every day. Hebron is surrounded by Israeli settlements - which are illegal under international law - and in addition to these surrounding settlements, there's also one right in the middle of the city. The settlement in the middle of the city has about 400-600 people living in it, and interestingly, many of them are from Brooklyn. These are some of the most fanatical settlers around, as most of them are heavily armed, and there has been lots of settler violence directed at Palestinians. Maybe the best example of this fanatical violence came in 1994, when a settler barged into the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, and opened fire on the Palestinians who were praying there. 29 people were killed, and 125 were wounded. Also interesting to note that these 400-600 settlers have some 1500 soldiers stationed there to "protect" them.

Nothing of that scale has happened since then, but violence is still common. For example, the Palestinians had to cover their market with wire mesh because settlers would throw rocks and garbage down onto them from the buildings above (see the picture to the right). Now that the rocks don't work in getting rid of the Palestinians below, settlers have been known to pour boiling water or hot oil out of their buildings instead. The inhumanity of it is shocking. Inhumanity is the best way I can describe it I think, because it's like the settlers don't even consider Palestinians to be human beings. It's really unbelievable to see.

To make matters worse, with the the establishment and expansion of the settlements around Hebron, the city that was once the economic centre of the West Bank has now been economically devastated. What was once a bustling market with thousands of people going through it every day probably now has about 90% of its shops closed and boarded up. So in addition to the physical violence that's always a threat to the Palestinians, we also see economic violence in Hebron that forces people from their homes because they can't make a living in their hometown. Add onto this the psychological impact of growing up in a place like that, where you're constantly under threat...it's really hard to imagine...and this is just one city.

As hard as it is to see this kind of stuff, this is the reason why I came to Palestine - to see the reality on the ground. And this is happening all over the West Bank, so in my time here I'll have plenty more opportunity to experience occupation in a first-hand way.