UNTITLED

Witness statement as given to B’Tselem on Sunday 21 November 2010

At 6am on Friday 19 November 2010 M.A.N., aged 22, went with his grandmother through the agricultural gate at az Zawiye to help her tend the family’s olive trees on the west side of the separation barrier, where they own land.

At 11.30 while the grandmother continued to work on clearing the land, M. came back to the gate intending to go to the mosque to pray. As the gate was not yet open, he sat down on the ground and leant against the gate. He put his pruning saw and his bottle of water on the ground beside him and waited. He was pleased when two jeeps appeared as he thought that they would open the gate early, but the soldiers were verbally aggressive towards him, they then started beating him and kicking him. He asked why they were attacking him and was told that he had caused trouble to the Israeli security by sitting by the gate. It seems he had set off an alarm. They accused him of trying to cut the barbed wire because he had his saw with him.

Another 15 jeeps drove up and the soldiers sent a radio message that they had caught a troublemaker. A female soldier from the last jeep was told to go away when she asked the others why so many were surrounding this man who had no weapon. Most of the soldiers realised this was a false alarm and they drove off leaving two jeeps.

The officer remaining said, ‘You are alone now, I can do anything.’ M. tried to shout for help but they tied a gag around his mouth. The officer told him to take off his shirt and trousers and his underwear, they put his hands behind his back and handcuffed him, they then posed for photographs, one soldier each side of him. He was then blindfolded but he continued to hear the clicks of camera shutters. There were male and female soldiers present. There was some laughter and taunting. Proposals of a sexual nature were made.

Still naked he was put into a jeep and driven to a military camp. There was music, laughter and dancing while they decided what to do with him. They made him sit naked in the hot sun and told him they would put the photos on facebook.

He was then sent to an officer called A. who started crying when he realised that he had several things in common with the victim: they were the same age, both married and both fathers of small daughters. A. said that he had seen M. on the camera at the gate and knew that he was sitting still. He removed the blindfold and the handcuffs and gave M. his clothes. When he heard the other officer coming, he put the handcuffs back on him but this time in front; he also replaced the blindfold, but loosely.

The first officer led him to a small jeep, the sort used by officers, and he drove around for 1 hour 15 minutes accelerating and braking sharply so that M., who was not wearing a seat belt, was thrown suddenly forward and back. When they reached a checkpoint in the separation barrier, the officer kicked M. out of the jeep, and while M. was lying on the ground, he threw out the saw and bottle of water.

A few minutes later a car arrived at the checkpoint. Palestinian workers were being driven by an Israeli. They saw that M. was in handcuffs, and the Palestinians asked the driver to take him towards his home. The driver was suspicious at first and asked what had happened. M. showed him his ID and his previous permit, the current one having been taken by the soldiers. (Because he is a young man he has to reapply for a permit every two months.) The driver was convinced and drove him to the az Zawiya bridge from where he was able to get home.

*The above is an edited version of the statement collected.Source is undisclosed according to publisher concerns.   

Roll up your sleeves . . .

Olive trees preceded all things in this land, you can even find some older than 10 000 years. I haven't come across any yet but mainly because i haven't had the time to look for it.They are so important that some settlements pay an enormous amount of money to have one transplanted into its entrance as a sort of proof of belonging, of connection to this land. It must be an odd thing to feel the need to show you belong, like the transplanted tree most were also born, growing and living elsewhere before. 

From dawn to dusk under the sun, with a pause for breakfast and lunch, farmers families gather in the fields to harvest the olive. Throughout generations they've been doing this and they shall continue to. Harvesting is no easy task, it is a long hard work even when rakes are available to comb the branches. 

Unfortunately the difficulty of the harvest is not what farmers consider the most troubling, settlers and their "security zones", restriction on access to their fields and trees enforced manu militari by the Israeli Army are their main concerns and not without reason. 

Some of them are granted access once a year to pick their olives, with no other possibility to come and prun the trees or plow the fields necessary to improve the quality of the soil and consequently of the harvest.

Settlers yearly arson the groves, interfere violently in the harvest, steal the crops under the complicit gaze of the Israeli Army yet with an impressive resilience this farmers keep on returning to the place where their trees are. Until the day they won't be there no more, either ones or the others.

this land is my land...

Today i got up at dawn, headed to an agricultural gate - a door in the Wall, the Israeli Government has been building since the year 2000 for "Security Purposes", and that the International Court of Justice declared "to be illegal" in its Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory  of 9th of July 2004.

Every day J., like many other farmers, throughout the Occupied Territories,  at early dawn, has to cross such gate to access his land. He went through a long process to get a magnetic card and then a permit from the Israeli authorities, the administration of which falls upon the military. Then each day, during a period of time fixed by these same "authorities" he is able to cross a gate where this magnetic card and permit are checked and his fingerprints taken. The gate opens three times in the day, if he and every other farmer in the West Bank is "lucky" enough. His work schedule is subject to this "authority".

By these agricultural gates you find only those few who have got permits, those "lucky" few who besides owning their land, which they all do, have the permit to go through.

Here i sit, every other day, at dawn, during these three months trying to say, by my presence, we care, you're not forgotten. Oddly enough though, these men and women, some well into their 60s are the ones that through their welcome, their smiles, their presence give me the hope that i wish i could convey to them... 

You are probably wondering: "why is he there? What does he expect to accomplish with his presence?"
These questions are dangerous. They reveal a tiredness with this subject, due to excessive media coverage, a fatalistic approach that i cannot have. I am tempted at times to have it, to let it go. And i am then confronted with the kindness of a people with whom i have no kinship and with whom my only resemblance is my long beard, my loud laughter and a shared humanity.

Drawing strength from their empathy, their will to resist, their courage none of which seem to portray the long years of waiting, the forgetfullness of the International Community and its lack of backbone, i am here and i have a task to accomplish.

"Pour que l'Homme ne soit plus l'esclave de l'homme. So that Man shall never again be the slave of man."

these were also the questions my colleague and i were asked today by two very young Israeli Army soldiers (Israeli Defense Forces). They seemed puzzled, confused, bored by our presence, so after accomplishing their duty at the gate they came, their gear imposing a certain respect, to ask us who we are and why we're here. Some words came to my mind, a certain reply instantly vibrates within my chest, but some sense of duty and a reflected reply comes instead: " We are from the World Council of Churches and we're here to see that everyone is doing fine!" Still a bit of my "wise nature" reveals itself in the nature of my reply.

I would rather have said:" Why are you here?"