I reached Tuwani on Monday of Holy Week for a "normal" day of accompanying the Palestinian shepherds in a place where they had recently been attacked and beaten by Israeli settlers. It went without incident.
On Tuesday we woke up to learn that during the night Israeli settlers had come down and spread poison on Palestinian land. The poison consisted of barley kernels boiled in rat poison. We later had it analyzed and learned that this particular poison kills instantly if over 300 grams is consumed; but in any amount will stay in the system of the animal for a long time and will be toxic to anything that eats it, even if the contaminated animal shows no symptoms.
The poison was and is everywhere: In little piles under the shrubs that the sheep eat; under rocks; spread thinly all through the grass. We started notifying the press and the Israeli authorities immediately, and on Wednesday, after we got some latex gloves, we started cleaning it up. By Wednesday morning at 5:00 a.m. one sheep was dead. By Wednesday afternoon three sheep were dead and 13 sick. Two gazelles were found dead, along with a variety of rodents and snakes. I have seen the gazelles run wild in this land, and they are an endangered species. This area is also full of storks--you cannot believe how beautiful they are! By Saturday there were four dead gazelles found and I also saw a dead black snake--a big one.
We spent Thursday cleaning it up and talking to press. It became a big story in Israel, because this of course could affect wildlife all over the area, not just South Hebron Hills. To clean it up, we had to pick up the barley kernels one at a time off the ground. It is tedious and time-consuming, and we may never get it all. The Israel Park Service was helping on Thursday and Friday.
On Thursday the Israeli authorities came to see the poisoned places: police, army, civil administration (the branch of the army responsible for governance), etc. We were accompanying the Palestinian landowners as they showed the authorities all the poisoned places, because Palestinians are used to being abused by Israeli authorities and they feel safer when we are with them. Anyway, I was walking through the hills when I ran into three young settler men who said they were helping with the clean-up.
They were from a nearby settlement (Suseya), not the one next to Tuwani (Ma'on). They heard about the poison and wanted to help clean it up, because, although they agree that all the land belongs to the Jews, they do not believe that poisoning it is the way to claim it. They also talked about the fact that Jews have all the power in Palestine and they intend to keep it that way.
On Friday morning (yes, Good Friday) we got a call from the nearby town called Kirmil. Five Israeli settlers with machine guns were at the local swimming pool threatening Palestinian children. This was my Way of the Cross for the day. We left to walk up there, and the villagers met us with a car at the road block (constructed by the Israeli army) which prevents free access between the towns.
We got about three-quarters of the way there and met the settlers on the dirt road leading to the pool. They were five young men about college-age. They looked like they could be nice young men, except for the M-16s they carried. We got out of the car to talk with them, asked them what they were doing and why they were there. They didn't really answer, and when I pulled out a camera they turned around and began walking in the direction of Tuwani.
We followed them on foot, because there were a lot of Palestinians farming and grazing along that road. When the five young men reached the paved settler road (off-limits to Palestinians) a car was waiting for them and they drove off in the direction of the settlement. Why did they walk through Palestinian villages and farmland with machine guns and threaten children? I do not know. To me it looked like a display of power.
On Holy Saturday the excitement really started. We had made plans with Ta'ayush, an Israeli-Palestinian human rights group that we work with closely, to bring a larger group of people to Tuwani to clean up the poison. They brought maybe 25 or 30 people.
That morning, because there were so many Israelis and internationals present, the shepherds from Tuwani and a nearby village, Um-Fagara, decided to graze their sheep in a place called Khoruba, on a hillside across from the place where much of the poison was placed. Khoruba is an abandoned Palestinian village, but the land still belongs to those who abandoned it. It was abandoned about 4 years ago as a result of settler harrassment and violence.
The village is also located inside something called a Military Fire Zone. A Military Fire Zone is a way for the State of Israel to legally confiscate land from Palestinians. They claim they need it for military purposes and then no-one can go there. There are, however, still Palestinians living inside this Zone, and the army does not fire anything in there. We clarified with the civil administration what this means. They said that the only people allowed inside the Zone are the people who live there, but that the Palestinian landowners can graze their sheep there on Fridays and Saturdays. Remember that we are talking about a Saturday.
So the shepherds decided to test this with this big group present, to see what would really happen. The reason is that if Palestinians abandon their land, then legally Israel can seize it after three years, so they have to keep using the land if they are to retain ownership. After about an hour of grazing, some settlers came down from Ma'on and saw what was happening and called the army and police. The police arrested one Palestinian and a scuffle broke out between a soldier and another Palestinian, resulting in a face injury to the Palestinian. I was not there when this happened--I arrived about 2 minutes after--so I did not see who did what to whom.
The army declared that all the shepherds were detained and would be arrested for grazing their sheep in the Military Fire Zone. They were waiting for reinforcements. I called the civil adminstration and they confirmed that the shepherds had the right to graze on Fridays and Saturdays, and said they would send a jeep. We waited awhile and finally they came and released all the shepherds. But they forced them off of the hillside and into the valley below.
The valley, which also sits in the Military Fire Zone, had been planted with corn by the settlers. So the Palestinians were forced by the army to graze their sheep in a settler field! Note that the settlers are permitted to plant corn in the Military Fire Zone, in land that belongs to Palestinians, but the Palestinians cannot use their own land.
By this time it was afternoon and the second incident of the day happened. While the sheep were grazing the the cornfield we all again started cleaning up the poison from the opposite hillside. I received a call from a colleague who was walking back to the village, who told me to look up at the settlement. I saw a line of settlers, about 30 or more, coming out of the settlement all dressed in white. They were lining up on the road that the Palestinian children from the nearby village, Tuba, use to get home from school.
The army and police were preparing to escort the settlers along the road, and then they all started moving toward Tuwani, where I knew that the Tuba kids were waiting with two people from Operation Dove (OD) for their military escort home. So we all got up and quickly headed toward Tuwani to head them off. We walked very quickly and got there first. Me and two OD people sat down in the middle of the road to try and block the settlers from passing into the village and toward the place where 13 children were waiting to go home. There were a few Ta'ayush people standing behind us as well, but we were in front, sitting down.
The settlers kept coming toward us, but then the army stood between us and them, and then the police pulled a car up and blocked the settlers, eventually diverting them back toward the settlement. After that, I walked a little way (maybe 10 or 15 feet) toward the settler line in order to see that they did not return to the village by another route. I was still very far from them, but had a view of where they were going. Suddenly, out of nowhere, an Israeli soldier came up behind me and pushed me down the hill. No explanation. He did not even ask me to move first. I asked him why he did it, and he refused to answer. Lucky for me, I was not injured.
The children from Tuba were still waiting to go home. So Saber, the mayor of Tuwani, lined them up and began walking them himself; three OD people and me went with him. The army is supposed to provide the escort, but they had not shown up, and instead were escorting settlers. When the army saw that we were going, they sent a jeep to go with us. As we walked, we could see settlers in the trees with their dogs, following us the whole way. At one point one came out and got into an argument in Hebrew with the soldier. The soldier prevented him from coming near us or the children.
When we got the the edge of the settlement, the soldiers left us and we walked the kids all the way home. This is not usually necessary, but things seemed particularly dangerous, so we felt we should. We held their hands the whole way. Then we had tea in the cave of Omar, one of the fathers. Then we had to take the long way home from Tuba (2 hours over rocky hills) in order to avoid the settlement, because it was too dangerous for us to walk there without a military escort.
I was supposed to leave Tuwani Saturday afternoon, but one of the villagers told us he was afraid that settlers would come to the village in the middle of the night, so we kept some extra people there and I stayed. Nothing happened, and I came back yesterday afternoon and was able to go to Easter Mass at 5:00. Today we learned that the settlers put out more poison, this time in the direction of Tuba.
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