Newsletter: Vol. 9. Iss. 2
15 December 2009
Resistance in Bethlehem's
villages cont'd.
Ellen Cantarow
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On top of which, the Israeli military has continued harassing him.
One day this past fall while he was bulldozing his land, soldiers appeared.
Kalawi told me, “They took the number of the bulldozer, and said, ‘What
are you doing here? Building? Digging a well?’ “(Israel forbids
Palestinians to dig wells. Israel’s water-confiscation and rationing
for Palestinians is a separate story. “‘I’m just planting
as our people do,” he told the soldier. “You can see for yourselves
we’re not building,’” Despite Kalawi’s pleas, the
soldiers made him stop his work and stand in the sewer housing for an hour.
Then they allowed him to go back to his labors, warning he should stay a hundred
meters from the sewer.
After that, Bethlehem Stop the Wall members and internationals came to stay with him while he worked. Guarding people like him is imperative: so many others have left their land out of fear and exhaustion. Of course, this is what Israel wants. As Defense Minister Moshe Dayan once put it, “You Palestinians, as a nation, don’t want us today, but we’ll change your attitude by forcing our presence on you.” You will “live like dogs, and whoever will leave, will leave.” (Gershom Gorenberg, Accidental Empire, p.82).
By backing and helping farmers, bringing them services (bulldozers; plants; roads for accessing their fields) Stop the Wall makes life more bearable for some, persuading them not to leave, and expanding its base. The campaign also travels, trying to raise awareness and inspire energy. “We try to coordinate all the villages, go to the mosques,” said Abu Swayk, explaining the campaign’s efforts to arouse popular resistance. “Everywhere I go I say, ‘You have to be aware. You’re losing your land.’”
* * *
Artas once had 13, 830 dunams of land. Israel has already confiscated 69 per cent of that for its colonies. If Stop the Wall were to fail in its litigation against the most recent confiscation, Artas would be left with only 18 per cent of its former wealth. Excavating the mountains for the settlement would create debris and havoc throughout the agricultural valley. “No more lettuce,” comments Abu Swayk. “No more onions, cucumbers, potatoes. Nothing will be in this valley.”
In the midst of loss, every defense, however small, is urgent. Two years since the apricot grove was destroyed, Abu Swayk has been able to keep his promise to replant the trees. Stop the Wall petitioned the PA Ministry of Agriculture to buy new ones for Kalawi: 65 have already been delivered. In early December another 65 will come.
Other victories: through litigation in 2007, Stop the Wall was able to prevent at least part of the wall from being built into Artas. In May, 2008, it raised money among Artas villagers to rent a bulldozer to clear a small dirt road so farmers could reach their land more easily. The PA Ministry of Agriculture is financing another such road; construction is due to start during the Christmas season. On November 22 an e-mail arrived from Mazin Qumsiyeh, who teaches at Bethlehem University announcing a victory on lands belonging to the village Um Salamuna, very near Artas: “[O]ver 150 Palestinians and internationals participated in an activity to reclaim and plant olive trees on a threatened hill in an area called Um Salamuna. Um Salamuna already lost significant amount of its land to colonial . . . settlements . . . The wall that includes the settlements has not been completed in this area and is slated to zig-zag to capture the hill we worked on. . . .”
Bethlehem’s Stop the Wall committee also plans to dig seven wells on Artas land lying next to the segregation wall. “We will go to court if the Israelis stop us.” What if the army comes? “I expect the army will destroy what we do. But we will do it two, three, four times. We will not stop.”
Ellen Cantarow, a Boston-based journalist, has written from Israel and the West Bank since 1979. This article is part two of a series, “Heroism in a Vanishing Landscape,”about non-violent Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation. She can be reached at ecantarow@comcast.net
This article was first published in
Counterpucnch, 15 Dec. 2009
