Kufr Qadum

It’s Friday, the day for prayers and protest, and we are in the village of Kufr Qadum. It’s story is similar to many West Bank villages; the nearby settlement of Qedumim was established around 35 years ago and since then much of the village’s land has been confiscated. Villagers are also banned from using the road that goes directly to the nearest Palestinian city of Nablus, as it cuts through the settlement, and must now take a long detour around the settlement to reach either Nablus or the nearest Palestinian village.

The village has been protesting since 2011. Every Friday demonstrators march towards the forbidden road.  Since then many demonstrators have been injured, and one protester was attacked by military dogs. The army regularly raids the village at night, sometimes breaking in to people’s homes and damaging property,  and many villagers have been imprisoned.

The majority of today’s demonstrators are villagers (all men, as Palestinian women are rarely seen at demonstrations) along with several members of IWPS, ISM and some Israeli activists. The Israelis are from Anarchists Against the Wall, a group who once turned up at the US embassy with a box of spent tear gas grenades (Israeli weapons are paid for by American tax dollars) with a note saying ‘return to sender.’

The ritual begins in late morning when a truck arrives with a load of used tyres which are piled across the main road out of the village towards the settlement. The protesters set fire to the pile, sending huge clouds of black smoke in the direction of the settlement. Today the wind favours the protesters; it’s all blowing away from the village and towards the settlers.

The main road out of Kufr Qadum, with the settlement of Qedumim in the background.

After midday prayers the march begins towards the settlement. An Israeli army jeep is visible through the clouds of smoke. The protesters have anticipated the jeep, and have set up a series of makeshift blockades of rocks at intervals down the road. The army has anticipated the blockades, and are accompanied by a bulldozer.

Army jeep accompanied by bulldozer

There are soldiers up on the hillside overlooking the village and some of the youth throw stones at them. In a familiar routine, the army responds by shooting tear gas at the protesters. Some of the older villagers stand further down the hillside shouting directions at the youths;  at first they shout at the youth to hit the soldiers, later, when the situation begins to look more risky, to come back.

One of the Israeli protesters pointed out a mysterious individual at the top of the hill, away from the other soldiers,  dressed in black. He said that the last time he appeared, there were arrests of internationals, and he advises us to take a different route home. I ask him if he thinks the presence of internationals bothers the army. He says that in their worldview, if there are Israelis and internationals present at a demonstration, then they must be telling the Palestinians what to do, so part of their strategy is to get internationals and Israelis out of the picture.

I’m never sure what I feel about this style of protest, which despite the stone-throwing, is part of what is  considered non-violent resistance.  Many people have observed that these weekly demonstrations, which take place in villages every Friday across the West Bank, are like a ritual or a game in which each side participates week in week out, with nothing gained. When I spoke to Ahmed, the coordinator, he told me that the demonstrators have three main objectives: to reopen the main road, now closed for 11 years, prevent the expansion of the settlement, and for the village’s land to be returned. But when I asked him if they would be prepared to march all the way to the settlement, if ever the army decided to take the day off, he gave an emphatic no.

This is a small group of people protesting against a heavily armed occupying force; a very different context than political protest in Western democracies, where the leadership is accountable to the people, or even Cairo, where it’s possible for millions to protest en masse. The difficulty for Palestinians is always that they have so few options – they have no standing army, no real political representation, and no powerful friends. For now, this is how many Palestinians choose to resist the occupation.

Once the organisers declare the protest over, we sit and drink tea. We have been advised to wait a while in case there is a checkpoint set up on the way to catch activists. The Israelis leave ahead of us, then call to say the way ahead is clear. We say goodbye to our hosts and leave.

Funeral

On Thursday we were heading to a demonstration against the closure of a Palestinian road near Tulkarem when we heard it had been cancelled due to the killing of two local youths the night before. As we were already on the way, we decided to attend their funeral.

The youths, aged 17 and 18, died after being shot by Israeli soldiers near a checkpoint. It’s hard to tell exactly what happened, but the Israeli army said the youths had thrown molotov cocktails at the military post. The first boy, Amer, died at the scene and according to witnesses, the army would not allow anyone, including an ambulance, near him for half an hour.

Around this time, his cousin Naji was noted to be missing. Volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement offered to try to find the boy, along with Axle, one of my colleagues from IWPS who was with them at the time. It was felt that the army would be more likely to allow internationals to search for the boy than Palestinians. An ambulance agreed to take them to search for him, but before they left, some local people told them he was safe and well and the search was called off.

The volunteers went to the hospital where they met Amer’s family and photographed his body in the morgue.  He had been shot in the chest.

In the early hours of the following morning, the body of  his cousin Naji was found, behind a factory, shot in the back. This accords with witness accounts which report that he was running away from the soldiers at the time.  He had bled to death.  It looks as if he was left to die, as the soldier who shot him must have realised he had been hit.

As we approached the town of Anabta, where the boys lived, large crowds were congregating. Cars full of young men drove past, flying flags representing various different political affiliations. When we arrived at the village the shops were all closed and the atmosphere was subdued. Reporters were lining the street near the mosque.  On the rooftops among the photographers, men and young boys waved the large yellow flags of Fatah. A few people looked devastated.

The funeral procession began, with men at the front carrying the bodies of the two boys on their shoulders, and women  at the back. The men waved flags and chanted slogans as the procession headed first towards the boys’ family homes and then towards the mosque,  ending at the cemetery, where women are not allowed. Axle marched with the procession from the start and later wrote:

‘The sound of a woman’s scream when her child has been taken from her is unmistakable. It is of love raging. We walk to their houses in a large crowd hung heavy in mourning……. The mother’s wails from the depths of their souls for the baby she will see every day and never hold again… …..This sound cannot be told objectively, it cannot be reported accurately. It is a movement; it is of love pouring from a sadistically inflicted wound. It is a command for a massive healing.’

After the funeral we were invited back to the municipality building where food was provided for the (male) mourners and us. The boys’  family homes are female space, where women gather to cry together and pay their respects. After the funeral we waited to see if there would be be any clashes between the army and youths. There wasn’t, so we went home.

Who knows what happened on Wednesday night? The boys may well have thrown molotov cocktails at the military post –  the army clearly to shot to kill, which doesn’t generally happen over more minor offences such as stone-throwing. Although it should be possible to investigate the circumstances –  there are usually CCTV cameras at checkpoints, and if molotov cocktails were thrown, there’d be physical evidence – it will probably never be independently investigated, so we may never know.

Israel

It’s the first day of my break this morning and I’m returning to the Western world (northern Israel) for 3 days of coffee, showers and the wanton exposure of my lower arms.

I leave first thing. As I stand on the corner hitching a lift, I’m accompanied by a settler in civilian religious clothing. I notice that he hasn’t come out with a jacket or a bag, but he has felt the need to wear a large semi automatic slung over his shoulder. This isn’t an uncommon sight among (male) illegal settlers, but this must be a cumbersome accessory.

As I stand and wait, I look at him and wonder: Why does he have it? Out of fear? Hatred? And why the need for a semiautomatic? Would a discreet handgun not do? Perhaps he is planning to mow down groups of Palestinians, or perhaps he is compensating for something. Either way, a death machine over the shoulder doesn’t seem to be a hindrance when it comes to hitching a lift round here, as pretty soon a young secular Israeli man pulls over and opens the door for him with a friendly ‘Hi, how are you?’

I get a lift with an Israeli man who used to be a commander of a tank unit in the army. He explains to me, apparently without irony, that this area doesn’t belong to Israel, and that’s the reason why I’ll see so much army here. He gives me some chocolate and a business card, then drops me off at a junction which does indeed have it’s fair share of soldiers and armoured jeeps. There’s a huge menorah in the centre and Israeli flags everywhere.

I get talking to an Israeli woman from a nearby settlement, who is also hitching to Jerusalem on her way to see her father. She is young, attractive and  kind. She says she likes living on a settlement, ‘apart from that,’ she says, as a car with two young Palestinian men drives past, leering at us.

We get a lift together, and in Jerusalem she accompanies me to the central bus station. She says that eventually she would like to raise a family in either a settlement or a moshav, because they are pleasant and safe for children, unlike cities, where parents don’t feel able to let their children play outside. I think of the family we met last week, in the village not far from this girl’s settlement, where the army walked into the family home and took three boys at gunpoint in the middle of the day.

This is what it’s all for, I think, this is why Fatima is awake at night not knowing where her children have been taken, and this is why tramuatized Palestinian children cling to their parents with fear, in order to allow people like this to raise their children in comfort and safety on confiscated land. We arrive at the bus station, she directs me to the nearest coffee outlet, and we say goodbye.

Driving through the West Bank and then later through Israel, I suddenly become aware of what I somehow never noticed before: the absurdity of two distinct nations living together in the same land, as neighbours, yet almost entirely segregated. Speaking different languages, with separate towns,  separate public transport systems, and different names for the same places. In Israel, some Arab towns are barely signposted.

I catch another bus to Tiberias in the Galilee where  I check into a hostel which has hot water and a whole room full of showers. I don’t really like Tiberias that much – it’s a tacky resort where bad music is piped through loudspeakers at every turn, but it’s a good base for exploring some of the nature nearby.

In the morning I get my coffee at my favourite cafe and sit watching the sun twinkling on the waves of the sea of Galilee, then hitch a lift to the south of the lake with a psychodrama therapist who has just moved here from Tel Aviv in search of nature and peace. The beach  there turns out to be twice the price of the beaches in Tiberias, so I hitch a lift back again with an Israeli man who tells me about his travels around Europe and Asia. He has a child’s car seat in the back. When I ask him what he does for a living, he says he does ‘a security job.’ I know this means I can’t ask any more questions. I wonder if this means he works for Shabak, the Israeli intelligence service that interrogated the boys from Haris. He drops me off at a reasonably priced beach, where I open my book, block out the music, and relax.

The next day I catch a bus to the Golan and go for a hike in some beautiful nature. The colours of the flowers are amazing, and for a while I could hear nothing but the hum of bees, the sounds of birds and the occasional helicopter overhead. I notice that there are way more Israeli army and UN vehicles in this region, and I wonder if this is normal or whether their presence has increased since the civil war in Syria just across the border. I hitch a lift back to the Galilee with an affable reservist army major, whose gun rests at my feet the whole journey. Like many Israelis he is open, friendly and talkative. He is about to begin his reserve duty in the West Bank, where I hope I don’t bump into him.