‘On Shabbat, settlers swarm Palestinian villages with clubs. They pull people out of their homes’

Yuval Abraham

Ayelett Shani writes in Haaretz on 29 October 2021:

Tell me about yourself.

I’m Yuval, 26 years old, I live in Jerusalem and work for Local Call [Sikhah Mekomit in Hebrew, an online magazine run by a collective of journalists and photographers]. Most of the time I’m in the West Bank, especially the South Hebron Hills, in an area called Masafer Yatta [home to about 20 Palestinian hamlets].

“Most of the time I’m in the West Bank” – it’s worth pausing over that somewhat odd statement.

Pretty odd, I agree. But that’s the reality of my life. For the past three years, that’s where I’ve been most of the time.

How and why did that come about?

Six years ago I started learning Arabic. That changed my life. I’d been drawn to the language from an early age. My grandparents spoke Arabic with each other. My grandfather, who grew up in Jerusalem before 1948, spoke perfect Palestinian Arabic. During the last four years of his life we spoke only Arabic with each other, and that drew us close.

Knowing Arabic changed the way I grasp my surroundings. Once I had learned Palestinian Arabic, I began to understand local political issues. Home demolitions, the routine of life in the West Bank – those were things completely new to me, and the larger the circle of my Palestinian friends became, the more I learned.

I started going to demonstrations, I became an activist. A few years ago I was present, as an activist, at a demolition operation by the army in Sur Baher [an East Jerusalem village annexed to Israel]. I was actually at the home of a Palestinian family while it was being demolished.  Earlier in the evening we were in the kitchen, and the owner told me proudly about the colors he and his wife had chosen for the cabinets, and later that night, he was kicked out with blows and the demolition began. We watched as the bulldozers rammed the house, until there was nothing left. It really shook me up. Both the experience and the realization that it wasn’t a random act, that it was a method.

That’s how I got to Masafer Yatta, an area where the demolition of homes and infrastructure is routine. I met a guy named Basil al-Adraa, an activist who was born and raised there, and who has been documenting the demolition of homes in the area since he was young. We became good friends, and I’ve been there ever since, usually on weekends. Sometimes I also spend the whole week in Basil’s house.

Why?

At first, I think, I went there out of a feeling of responsibility. I wanted to write about what was going on there, to shout to the world about this injustice I’m seeing and experiencing. After all, most of us don’t know it’s happening, that Israel demolishes homes systematically, as a policy. Eventually I became closer to Basil, I met other people and formed ties with them, too. Today I’m there because I feel that I belong. I feel very close to them. I’m simply worried about them.

How do you spend your time when you’re there?

I’m not doing much. There isn’t really anything to do there. These are villages that don’t have sewage and water systems, there are no roads, because they were also destroyed. The people support themselves by farming or breeding sheep. Most of them live in tin shacks, the more fortunate ones live in real stone homes. The poverty is rampant.

The thing is, even though they don’t do anything, it’s not quiet there. You’re aware all the time that something bad is about to happen, and something bad does happen. Settlers suddenly arrive and attack, or the Civil Administration [part of the Israeli military government] sends a unit to demolish a house. Everybody there lives with the knowledge that maybe that night they’ll be sleeping out in the open because their home will be demolished. Maybe they’ll demolish the clinic, too, or destroy the road. No one knows who’s next. They’re always in waiting mode.

That’s all they talk about. Morning is an especially tense time because that’s when the bulldozers show up. The shepherds see them first – driving along the road, slowly, in a convoy. Depending on how many bulldozers they see, they try to guess what’s going to be demolished. If there’s only one, maybe it will be a small house, if there are two, it’s probably a big home, of a family.

We’re talking about Area C of the West Bank, which is pretty sparsely populated: a few thousand inhabitants in an area of more than 30,000 dunams [more than 7,500 acres]. The people who live there are forbidden to build or expand homes, pave roads or hook up to the water and power grids.

One reason that not many people live there is that it’s impossible to live there. A young person, let’s say, who wants to raise a family and build a home, can’t do that. Demolition orders exist for the existing structures, and Israel systematically refuses to allow construction. Almost 100 percent of the requests for permits are denied. The residents have nowhere to go once their homes are demolished. They simply don’t.  They put down mattresses next to the ruins of the house, live like that for a time, take a loan, start to rebuild and then there’s another demolition. Because I’ve been there such a long time, I can absolutely see the cycle: construction, demolition, construction, demolition.

A legal battle has been waged over this area for years. Israel declared it a firing zone. In 1999, nearly 1,000 of the residents were expelled. We don’t have the time or space to go deeply into the details, but maybe you can put the situation into a general framework.

Firing Zone 918 was established at the beginning of the 1980s. The state declared that the area was designated for military training, but in the minutes of a meeting that were revealed a few years ago, Ariel Sharon [at the time agriculture minister] says that the area was declared a firing zone to prevent the Arabs of Masafer Yatta from expanding and spreading out. It’s clear to me that it’s a political firing zone. In 1999, Ehud Barak and his government used the pretext of the firing zone to expel the residents, claiming that it was dangerous for them to be there, and at that time a petition was submitted to the High Court of Justice.

And that legal process has been underway ever since, without a decision, for 20 years now.

According to some estimates, it might end this year, and the state will make a decision. Possibly there will be another expulsion. In the West Bank there are 160 villages like the ones in Masafer Yatta, where the army denies electricity, water and proper housing. You see it in the South Hebron Hills, the Jordan Valley, the seam area [along the Green Line] and next to Ma’aleh Adumin – areas that Israel has designated for annexation, and where the state instructs the army to demolish homes with heightened enforcement.

It’s no secret that this is the policy – it appears in the minutes of meetings of the [Knesset] Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that are accessible to the public. For people who see themselves as left-wingers, it’s also easy to say that this is the exception and to imagine that it’s happening beyond the hills of darkness due to “extremist settlers,” but I think that’s hypocritical. The bottom line is that in these unrecognized villages in Area C, people live in substandard conditions, and the Civil Administration demolishes homes every week.

The parents of 24-year-old Harun Abu Aram, who was left paralyzed after being shot in January for using a generator, in the village of al-Rakiz.

Let’s talk about those living conditions. What’s the story with the electricity and the water? How do you farm without water?

They generate electricity with solar panels. Water has to be purchased, and it’s really expensive. Because they’re not hooked up to a water main, they buy it in containers and pay per container, at eight times as high as we pay for water. A tractor carrying a water container arrives in a village, a trip of an hour in each direction, and sets the container down next to the house. When one runs out, they bring another one. Some residents dig cisterns to collect rainwater, mainly for the sheep. But for the Civil Administration that’s also considered illegal construction. Around three weeks ago they came from the Civil Administration and handed out demolition orders for the cisterns.

Take me into the field, to a demolition event.

There’s one event that’s stuck in my head, when they leveled the home of Faresah Abu Aram, a woman from the village of al-Rakiz, and someone I know well. We knew that something bad was about to happen, because four bulldozers arrived that day. The Civil Administration inspector told the soldiers, “Don’t let her take anything, we don’t want her rebuilding,” and then they demolished the house with everything she owned buried under the rubble. Clothes, pots and pans, the children’s schoolbags. I saw one of Faresah’s daughters, a girl of 8, choking on the dust. Basil and I ran after the bulldozers. It’s hilly terrain, the roads aren’t paved, not long ago they wrecked all the main roads. At some point while I was running I just fainted from the effort. I remained behind, alone. When I got up, I only heard echoes from across the hill, the screams of the residents and the beeping of the bulldozers.

A month later, Harun, Faresah’s son, was fixing one of the demolished houses in the village, and was using a generator. Within a few minutes, soldiers showed up to confiscate the generator. Harun resisted, and while he was holding on to the generator, a soldier shot him in the neck.

Were you a witness to that?

We were on the hill opposite. We heard the shot and approached. There’s also a video of the shooting. The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said it was unintentional gunfire due to a disturbance by 150 people who were throwing stones. I remember my heart pounding wildly when I read that, because I knew they were lying. I had seen that there was no disturbance. Faresah was there, and Harun, and another four relatives. This is a pretty big change I’ve undergone, as an Israeli: to have doubts about the law. About what the army says. On the rightness of the [country’s] way. After the shooting, I met Faresah again. I barely recognized her. The skin on her face had changed, it had become rough and tight. She cried so much. Harun, her son, who is my age, remains paralyzed. He only moves his eyes now. There is no way for him to undergo rehabilitation in the village. In Masafer Yatta, a wheelchair is a complete fantasy. It’s not clear to me what they’re going to do.

I’m gasping for air.

Yes. The injustice slowly becomes routine. You get used to it. It’s important for me to document unjust routine, more important than to document dramatic and exceptional events, to photograph a small playground, with a children’s merry-go-round and swing, against which a demolition order was issued as soon as it was built. I learned about that from Basil. He has amazing inner strength. Determination. Even though the Shin Bet [security service] persecutes him and settlers threaten him, and he has a hundred times more to lose than I do, he gets up every day to go on documenting.

A few weeks ago, on Simhat Torah, the area was in the headlines following an attack by settlers on the village of Mufkara, where a 3-year-old boy suffered a head wound and was hospitalized. How’s he doing, by the way?

He’s all right now, recovering. That’s not new, settler violence. It’s part of the routine, too, though recently there has been an escalation.

To what do you attribute the escalation?

To the [settler] shepherds’ outposts. Dozens of them have been established in the past few years across the West Bank. What are these farms? The Settlement Division [of the World Zionist Organization] gives a very small number of people thousands of dunams of land, where they set up the farms, with the aim of “redeeming the Land.” Thousands of dunams that served Palestinian communities for generation upon generation to herd sheep are expropriated for farms, which the settlers prevent the Palestinians from entering by force. I can absolutely sense a kind of wave of a new generation of young settlers who establish these farms and inflict serious violence.

“Zambish” [Ze’ev Hever, a leading figure in the Yesha Council of settlements] has been quoted as saying, “These farms are a lot more effective than the settlements.”

If the goal is to Judaize the land, and to make the Palestinians’ lives miserable and expel them, he’s right. It’s effective. In terms of territory, these farms take up a lot more space than all the settlements in the West Bank together, and they’re one of the main reasons for violent events. Think of a Palestinian village like that, with 300 residents. For generations, they herded their sheep on the hills next to the village, and suddenly someone says to them, “You’re not entering here again, all these hills are now mine.” A few months ago there was a serious incident in which a [Palestinian] shepherd was attacked – his jaw was broken with a metal rod, they also hit his pregnant wife. The violence is also aimed at animals; they stab and wound the sheep.

Not I have an urge to defend, but does the violence always come from one side?

I won’t prettify things. There is Palestinian violence in the West Bank. Specifically, though, the communities of Masafer Yatta are very weak, and the fact is, it [Palestinian violence] simply doesn’t happen in this area. In that grim incident, the settlers entered Mufkara and attacked the inhabitants with clubs. The Palestinians who were there of course threw stones at them. In the Israeli discourse, this is framed as Palestinian violence. It’s simply not true. It’s a dynamic I’ve seen so many times in the past year: Settlers attack a village, escorted by soldiers, and when the Palestinians try to defend themselves the soldiers shoot at them. That self-defense is later presented as violence on their part, even though everything happened inside the Palestinian village.

And no one stops to ask what the settlers actually did there?

I’ve seen it so many times in the past year: Settlers attack a village, escorted by soldiers, and when the Palestinians try to defend themselves the soldiers shoot at them. That self-defense is later presented as violence on their part.
Right. I can say that in my whole time there I haven’t seen any case of violence by Palestinians against Israelis, even though it obviously happens in other places.

What does the violence you’re talking about look like?

There’s been a definite succession of attacks that take place on Shabbat. Masked people come to a village and attack the inhabitants.

“Oneg Shabbat” – Sabbath “celebration.”

Right. There were also Shabbats when I saw a minibus pull in and masked people got out and launched an attack. There’s a feeling that it’s something organized, that it happens on Shabbat or Jewish religious holidays – days when people get together, that they plan and execute it together.

Was it like that in the past?

No. Unequivocally, no.

From what point of view? The number of people who take part in the attacks? Their frequency?

First of all, I see a quantum leap in the boldness of the attacks. For people to enter a village and drag people out of their homes, like what happened on Simhat Torah, is something I hadn’t seen before. There are also large groups that arrive, from places where there usually aren’t many people. I think that people who don’t live in farms get there beforehand to take part in the assault.

Describe an event like that for me, what it looks like.

Someone screams, “Masked people on the way, they’re coming in,” and we run with the cameras, to film it. The masked people begin stoning the village, the Palestinians throw stones back at them. There is screaming and hysteria. The soldiers usually defend the settlers who started the attack. They hurl tear gas. I hold onto an onion to breathe its odor and not be suffocated by the gas. Sometimes they even use live fire. Usually people are wounded, sometimes seriously.

Sounds scary. Are you afraid?

Very much. I’m not an especially brave person. I realize that at any moment someone could be killed. I feel that both the settlers and the soldiers are against me, because I am, supposedly, on the Palestinians’ side. I usually shout in Hebrew. That doesn’t especially help, but I feel that the Hebrew might calm the settlers, the soldiers. In the Simhat Torah attack I shouted all the time, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot.” Listen, I also understand how the soldiers experience these situations.

How?

Not all of them, of course, but generally, they see the Palestinians as people who aren’t part of their people, who don’t speak their language, and from their point of view any one of them could be a terrorist, and they have an itchy trigger finger.

In the past I didn’t understand why Palestinians were afraid of soldiers. Why they tremble when they go through a checkpoint. Today I can understand the feeling of knowing that you’re completely at someone’s mercy, of living with the feeling that if you make just one wrong move you’ll take a bullet. When I’m at an event like that, I’m very much afraid for my Palestinian friends, I know how easily they could be killed, and I know, as a journalist, how it happens in the West Bank, over and over, at similar events.

From the villagers’ viewpoint, was it an exceptional event?

Definitely not. It happened in Masafer Yatta at least eight times in the past year. It’s not a one-time event, it’s part of a succession of events that happened, are happening and will continue to happen. A week after that event, an Arab farmer said that settlers came to his village and beat him so badly that he was hospitalized. There’s no video record, only his testimony, which naturally no one will listen to. There are dozens of stories like that every week across the West Bank, especially in Area C.

Why do they stay there? What’s the motivation? Ideology or a lack of an alternative?

Lack of an alternative. It’s their land. They can’t just get up and move to the city. They would be refugees there. These are families whose life is based on shepherding and farming, on life in open spaces. Yatta is one of the most densely populated and smokiest towns I’ve ever seen. They really couldn’t survive there, on top of which, they have no way to make a living in the city.

Not even the younger generation?

The younger generation also has few opportunities. Whoever can tries to rent an apartment somewhere, in order to raise a family. Most of them don’t have that option because they don’t have money. This isn’t the ideological banner of, “We will resist the occupation forever.” These people simply have nowhere to go.

I cried when I read your articles, and you’re simply living it. That’s far from obvious, especially given your age. You’re supposed to be completely immersed in your own affairs. You’re a really defective millennial.

Listen, I also see how my peers are living. An activist from the area told me once that a young Palestinian has two options: either to be a worker in Israel or to go to university and be a worker in Israel. Basil graduated cum laude from the law school at Hebron University but he can’t find a job. The students in his class, without exception, are home renovation workers in Be’er Sheva.

At the Metar checkpoint I met engineers, council heads, school principals. That’s also why Palestinians stop being activists – economics. The Shin Bet denies them work permits [for Israel]. All my friends in Masafer Yatta who document home demolitions are on the blacklist. If they stop the documenting, they’ll have a better chance of getting a permit. Every so often the Shin Bet has “leaving the blacklist” parties, and after age 25, when you get married, you need a way to support a family. So a lot of them stop documenting demolitions, just so they’ll be able to work building houses in Jerusalem, across the Green Line. When you’re struggling for the most basic things, dealing with big political questions becomes secondary.

Your way of life raises a number of identity issues. When you said you shouted, “Don’t shoot” during the attack I wondered where you consider yourself. Where you belong.

I feel my [Jewish] Mizrahi identity in everyday life, mostly because of my appearance. I can pass completely as an Arab, both with my accent and with my face. In Ramallah or in Yatta, passersby don’t know I’m an Israeli, they think I’m a Palestinian. It’s a complex experience. If I’m asked I will say who I am, but usually I’m not asked. Let’s say a taxi driver in Bethlehem tells me how his children were jailed by the occupation, and about how things used to be before the separation fence, when they could drive freely to Jerusalem. It’s obvious that he likes me, and we laugh – but I feel uneasy, a feeling of concealment and secrecy.

I also engage in concealment and secrecy with Israelis. All the time. At the entrance to shopping malls, guards stop me when they hear me speaking Arabic on the phone, and I’ll hang up. It’s the same everywhere. This week I was looking at an apartment that was for rent in Jerusalem, and a friend, a Palestinian woman, called me. The owner of the apartment, who heard me speaking Arabic with her, started to shout at me “why hadn’t I told her?” She said she wouldn’t rent to me if I was going to hold “parties with the cousins” [Hebrew slang for Arabs]. I didn’t say anything. I was silent, but I felt bad about that afterward.

This article is reproduced in its entirety.