Israel's War on Children: Mohammed's Story

 "Muhammad was a butterfly."

Muhammad al-Hallaq was a 9 year old student, soccer player, bird enthusiast, brother, and son that was murdered by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on October the 16th. He was out playing soccer with his friends when an IOF sniper shot him from 200 meters away.

His grandmother described him as a butterfly to demonstrate his insatiable energy through teary crystal eyes and the slight grin of a loving grandparent. She sat beside her daughter Alia, the 33 year-old mother of Mohammad, and her other grandchildren. Alia told us that other family members said she didn't have to keep telling the story, but she wants to do everything she can to make sure no other families have to go through this. Alia's mother and sister have been staying with Alia and her children since Muhammad was murdered.

We drove through Fawwar Refugee Camp and through some Olive Groves before reaching an overlook. The person we were with informed us "there's the school and right over there is where he was shot." The valley drew a winding road until we reached the top of a hill and to the family's house.

 

Inside the home two of Muhammad's siblings were accompanied by his mother and grandmother. Muhammad was the third of five children. They started to recount the tragic day. It was clear that Muhammad was indeed a butterfly with the energy only a fourth grader would have. They told us the story of how he had received a UN backpack that day with an intense excitement. "He was the happiest I have ever seen him." When he was showing his family he saw that his older brother was a little disappointed. His older brother went to a different school and they didn't get backpacks. So Muhammad ran all the way back to school to ask his teachers if he could bring a backpack for his brother.

His mother's guess was correct and only students of the school could get backpacks. Alia unzipped the backpack and pulled out some of Muhammad's work books and showing off his excellent grades. They were so proud of their clever child.

His energy contained a lot of generosity. They told us stories of him throwing out seed and catching birds only to hand to friends to play with. He loved birds so much they kept telling us.

After getting home from school that day he did some work with olives that his father had bought and then said he wanted to visit his grandmother. And even though his mom said "maybe tomorrow on Friday," he insisted and ran off for a fifteen minute visit. His grandmother said "I remember praying for his safety three times as he ran out of the house." Apparently the road she lives on can be dangerous with a rocky terrain, and she was given an urge to pray. He then ran off to play soccer with his friends. About thirty minutes later Muhammad was shot by an IOF soldier. Eye witness reports from the village say the soldier raised his hands above his head as if cheering after getting on one knee to aim and shoot at the crowd of players, hitting Muhammad in the abdomen. Muhammad was then driven to the hospital by members of the village, but because of road closures and road blocks they were forced to go thirty minutes out of the way.

Alia was at a grocery store with her father in Yatta, a bigger near by city, when her uncle called her father. She had a feeling the call was for her so she took the phone out of his pocket. It was her uncle who wasn't expecting her, but asked if she heard about any confrontations with the IOF in Al-Rihiya that day. "I said 'it's Muhhamad,' a mother's intuition, but I knew."

When Alia and her father got to the hospital there were already about a hundred or so people from Al-Rihiya there. This is custom when someone from a community is injured by the Occupation military. The doctors kept Alia from seeing Muhammad as they were still in the ER. Other community members tried to comfort her saying "he will be okay it is just a light injury." She would respond with "my son is not big enough to survive a bullet. Let me see him."

When Alia couldn't see her son she fainted. She couldn't remember how long she was unconscious, but when she woke up she saw a bed rolling past her room. At this point in telling the story she started to pull at her hands and wrists. She said "I ripped out all the IVs the doctors had put in her and ran after Muhammad and his team of doctors." She met them at the elevator which they were taking to the operating room three stories up. They told her every second counts and she needed to let them operate on her son. She let them go, but then she ran up the three stories. She fell three times on the way up the stairs to stand outside the operating room while the doctors tried to save her son.

She got to the OR and desperately waited for news on her son. And then she heard the heart monitor turn into a long tone. She saw a doctor run into the OR with three units of blood, and then a doctor walked out. "Muhammad is dead now."

Her twelve year old son hugged her. She was surrounded by about a hundred of her neighbors. And she was crying and shouting for Muhammad. For her generous and loving butterfly. She fainted again.

"We have had terrible pains as poor people in the past, but this is the worst pain I have ever felt in my life."

While all of this was happening Muhammad's father was trying to get back from his work in a Ramallah grocery store. It took him four hours to drive the what should be hour and half ride, because of a particularly notorious checkpoint called the "container." The family said that those four hours were like four years to him as pictures of his bloodied son were coming through his phone, and he was forced to sit through the checkpoints and meaningless road closures that prevented his son from getting immediate care.

Community members helped to prepare the body and they took it to the family cemetery which sits below their house. Once the father got home from work they buried their nine year old son.

The four year old that was present as this entire story was being told started to cry and Alia through her intensely grieving eyes comforted him rubbing his forehead.

Later on that day we met with some people from the Fawwar refugee camp. At some point amidst a more than informative and challenging conversation they situated the marytyrdom of Muhammad and other Palestinians, children and adults, within the context of the Israeli policy of "collective punishment." 1,001 Palestinians (273 children like Muhammad, the youngest being 2 year old Laila al-Khatib) have been murdered by the IOF since October 7th, 2023. Another man we met told us his 17 year old son was shot by the IOF in December of 2023. People from his village heard soldiers making bets about hitting someone that day, the winner got a coke. The Israeli policy of collective punishment tries to justify these consistent acts of violence that are seemingly random, as well as to justify entire village raids, home demolitions of people accused of crimes, mass detentions, revoking work permits for entire villages, and many other methods that they say are deterrents but are definitively illegal under international law. Some theorist think about collective punishment as both a method of complete and total control (with the settler colonial goal of population replacement) as well as a reaction to the reality that the occupational forces cannot completely and totally quell resistance.

The IOF's preliminary investigation claimed that the soldiers who murdered Muhammad "deviated from rules of engagement." Unconfirmed reports from a local chat said that the soldier that shot Muhammad admitted that he knew he was shooting at children. No one is expecting that there will be any accountability or conviction.

Once Muhammad's family finished telling us the story of October 16th they then walked us into the bedroom Muhammad slept with his four siblings. There was a special blanket with his picture on it now in the place where he laid his head every night. There, too, was his soccer ball, the shirt he planned to wear to prayers the next day, his perfume, his beloved backpack. His siblings haven't been able to sleep in that room since he was killed. Sleeping in their mother's room instead.

There were some drawings on the wall in permanent marker and we asked "was that Muhammad?" The family's eyes lit up and then started to point to every marking on the wall and saying "Muhammad, Muhammad, Muhammad."

When we left the bedroom the grandma pointed to the other bedroom door and said "Muhammad," and then made the motion of a hammer. Apparently he had taken a hammer and made about nine holes in the door. It is clear he will still be present in those walls, in his generous spirit, in his grandmother's kind eyes, and his mother's insistence on telling his story.

Reflections From Home

 The worst thing that happened to me in the West Bank is that I got chiggers from a very sweet young orange cat at a Palestinian family’s house. Cats are not pets in Palestine, generally speaking, but occasionally become appendages to a family, like farm cats in the US, who aren’t allowed inside but are fed bread and rice or other leftovers from dinner, and otherwise subsist on lizards or other small prey. This cat, like all such cats, is named Biss (Cat), and is the only cat that’s come to snuggle with us during our entire stay. This was before and after supper, while on what can perhaps be best described as the fenced in patio, which functioned as the dining room. This is the only house where we’ve slept in the same room with every single family member, including the father of the house, and there is no place to change clothes. Other locations where we’ve slept outside near men it’s been possible to step a ways away into the darkness to use the bathroom, brush teeth, and change for bed. But at this house, it’s a closed military zone, so being caught outside would get us deported and the family arrested for hosting us. They nevertheless take that risk because they fear settler violence, and if and when it occurs, they want it documented by internationals who can tell the story.

This is the only house of the more than half dozen we stayed in where one really has to sleep in one's clothes, but since we arrive after dusk and depart at dawn, because of the aforementioned closed military zone, it’s not that bad, and one can arrive dressed in sleepwear. Its not that bad, that is, unless cat snuggles have left you with teeny tiny fluorescent red bugs on your skin. The result was 34 bites, all where clothes or skin touch skin most tightly. They emerge after 12-24 hours, and are at their itchiest 48 hours in, but stay itchy for about a week, and the marks seem to last about two weeks. The second time we stayed at this house, my last night in Palestine, I avoided the cat entirely, and still ended up with 6 new bites. We had been fed maqluba the first time we were there, a lovely dish of rice with roasted veggies and optional chicken, spiced with thyme and cinnamon. It was so filling that upon learning we would stay there a second time, we skipped lunch in anticipation of a big dinner that night. It was a school night, and the girls were doing homework when we arrived. School is only three mornings a week this year; last year it was cancelled entirely. Israel collects taxes on imports and exports to/from the West Bank, and is supposed to turn those over to the Palestinian Authority, but has not done so in full or regularly in the last two years. As a result, teachers haven’t been paid in full or regularly, and class time is reduced. The mom seemed more stressed than the last time we were there, and hit her ten year old repeatedly. When we were last there, the ceasefire had just been declared, and there seemed hope that the bombing of Gaza would stop. The second time we were there, Israel had just bombed a bus of 11 people, killing 7, and the ceasefire seemed beyond fragile. The family called a relative in Gaza, and it seemed like we wouldn’t be having supper at all. The relative did his best to reassure them that aid was trickling in, and people were returning to their homes, albeit destroyed homes. Somewhat assured, the mom went to make tea and soon after 9pm, we were called out to the patio for the quick supper of bread, olive oil, and za'atar, with tea and sage.

She was right to worry. The next morning, hours after we departed at sunrise, two Israeli soldiers in Gaza were operating a bulldozer to clear rubble from streets they had destroyed, and hit an unexploded ordinance that the Israeli military had dropped during the war. It exploded, killing them. Israel blamed Hamas, and instantly started dropping bombs all day, killing over 40 people. This may happen repeatedly, as there are 20,000 unexploded ordinances in Gaza. Just as I finish writing this, I see two Palestinian boys were injured by an explosion of another one of the 20,000 bombs, all of which could go off at any time.

In coming to the West Bank, many people feared for my safety. For many, there was some confusion that I was going to Gaza. US support of Israel has been so absolute that there’s confusion about what and where Palestine is. This is intentional. “There is no such thing as a Palestinian,” Golda Meir famously said, a sentiment echoed in Bezalel Smotrich‘s recent claim about the invention of the Palestinian people. The best way to grasp the situation is to understand it as one of settler colonialism, where an immigrant population displaces a native population in a quest for land and resources. Any resistance to that process is met with overwhelming violence. This has been the history of the US, which in recent decades is being re-enacted in the Middle East. We have become so relatively accustomed to the neocolonialism of multinational corporations across the globe that it’s genuinely shocking to see a mostly 19th century progression play out in the 21st century. The sentiments of US General Sherman in 1868 are found all over Israel towards Palestinians in the Gaza Strip: “The more Indians we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed the next war, for the more I see of these Indians, the more convinced I am that they all have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers.”

Currently, 157 of 193 UN countries recognize Palestine as a country. The Vatican, though not a UN country, does as well. The US does not, and this informs so much of what we’re presented on Palestine. The US may be the last country on earth to recognize Palestine, after Israel does.

The only moment of real fear I had the entire month was our second afternoon in Masafer Yatta. We had filmed that morning a teenage settler trespassing with his sheep onto the land of the family we were with, the sheep taking some bites of olive branches as they went by. In the afternoon, the same young man was back without the sheep but with two other settlers, one a bit younger and one a bit older. The older one had an M-16 around his neck, casually. We had seen plenty of armed settlers in the Old City of Jerusalem, but from the yard of a Palestinian family pushed toward removal, it hits different. They walked through the family’s land, but just outside their fenced in terraced backyard, and appeared to be on the move elsewhere. As the two younger ones were unarmed, I thought they may just be on their way to a cafe at a nearby settlement, taking the most direct route for ease and to project dominance, but not looking for violence. We nevertheless warned the village down below that they were on their way. The village took a collective, “Aw, hell no!” approach to the situation and immediately came pouring out of their homes, school, and places of work. We could hear their screams of indignation from about an 1/8th of a mile away. Young boys of about 7-8 immediately ran up the hill to get us, urging us to join them. The family told us to go, so we started down the rocky hill a ways, until I had a clear view of the situation and could start taking pictures. The boys urged me to keep running, but I indicated I needed pictures first. Zooming in, I saw a line of 30 villagers, mostly women and children, facing off the settlers who had the audacity to walk through their village. This was samud, the steadfastness I had heard so much about. I lingered a bit, tying my shoes, not wanting to run towards a man with a gun, and still fearing the possibility of a massacre. By the time I got there with my 7 year old companion, the settlers were moving on. I expected to see such things every day, or worse, and am glad to report that I did not. Overall, its much more peaceful than your own American city, even here on the edges of removal.

Having the comparison of 26 years ago, before 9/11, before the second intifada, before the apartheid wall, before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, before the Arab Spring, before we all became addicted to our phones, made me question always, how much of this is the usual expansion of urban life, of Denver now stretching to Colorado Springs, of people moving off the land into the city, and how much is because of the occupation? I was in shock at the expansion of Jerusalem, the takeover of East Jerusalem, and absolutely devastated to see the wall, the way it cruelly cuts into Bethlehem and cuts out Olive groves of Palestinian families, annexing them in a waste of concrete. I wept to see the many hotels and souvenir shops that had annoyed me as a college student now shuttered. Absolutely no one was in the street. I was in a zombie apocalypse. I started shaking and crying and couldn’t keep walking. Then Tariq Zoughbi was beside me, whom I had last seen as a five year old, and was now a grown married man, looking exactly like his father, Zoughbi Zoughbi. His steadiness somehow allowed me to walk towards the Wi’am office, where a beautiful lunch awaited, along with baby Rafiqie, the youngest Zoughbi, who was now 26 and an engineer from Purdue. Zoughbi’s characteristic gentleness and humor has been inherited by both his sons. Their self-possession somehow lifted my spirits, and look in awe at how they are able to continue in the face of this devastation. Like the glaciers--if you're able, go to visit, while you still can.

Caves and Cranes: Development and Self-Determination

Just over a couple hills here in the southern West Bank and the landscape quickly turns to the desert. Nights get even colder and even clearer. As we slept on a rock facing the south we had to be told just how far we could see. Lights line the mountain tops almost looking like shelves of white Christmas lights. "No, that's Jordan, and in between one of the mountain gaps is the Dead Sea." Turn slightly to the right and you can see lights from a '48 town. Military bases and buildings dot the skyline. A view of borders, displacement, violence, and development. And a couple of houses from families trying to remain on their land.

When we went on the tour with ICAHD a few weeks ago they made a stark point that the construction crane was a symbol of Israel and its economic/development prowess. "The crane symbolizes and says, 'look what we can build, look how Western we can be, can the Palestinians do that?' No, but what they don't say is the laws, zonings, and regulations that the occupational forces use to prevent Palestinians from doing just that if they wanted to."

The more time we spend in the Southern hills it starts to feel like a struggle between caves and cranes. Between tents and internet towers. Between two different kinds of developments. One of self-determination, autonomous-cooperative communities, and listening to the land, and the other built on subjugation, apartheid, and imperialist development.

On drives around town we have begun to hear historical stories about how shepherds used to shepherd for three or so months sleeping in caves with their sheep before returning to a village center. Here a group of families or just one could take care of about 1,400 sheep (the cluster of villages totaled about 700 people to 18,000 sheep). These nomadic or quasi-nomadic communities did not utilize cities in the same way we do, and they did not also utilize borders and property lines in the same way America and Israel have enforced. For Bedouin and other nomadic communities they didn't utilize borders at all. In fact it was the Zionist, with agreement from the British mandate, that changed how land was bought and sold in historical Palestine. During the Ottoman rule if a landlord bought or sold land they were not necessarily able to evict the villagers living on that land. If you bought a village the villagers came with it. There was not a complete separation of the land and who cultivated it (taken from Illian Pappe). Until the Zionist insisted that that change and property laws became more exclusive and total. It is clear that in the South Hebron Hills there is a struggle over property lines and resistance against the settlement process of stealing land, and over time you begin to see that it is also a struggle over a way of life. Like most indigenous struggles throughout the world, what is being fought over is not simply land, but also an economic way of life, subsistence, and thus a method of development.

A family member predicted that this season of Olive Harvesting would be the worst ever on record. Not simply because of settler violence during times of harvest, but also because of the consistent refusal of Israeli soldiers to allow Palestinians to care for the trees before harvest.

Climate change and drought get added to the mix, and the trees need more care, but illegal settlers and the army stops the Palestinians for providing that care. He predicted only a five to ten percent yield from what harvests usually average. "Expect a $100 a bottle," someone else quipped. When you put together the battle over borders and land in the context of the battle over olive trees and sheep (one serving as food and the other gives back fertilizer) it reveals a battle over ways of life and a struggle over which economies people are forced to interact with.

Mohammed El-Kurd asks us to stare the Palestinian resistance fighter in the eye. He demands that we don't "de-fang" them by insisting they be "perfect victims." Meaning that they we insist they be fully cooperative, nonviolent, and timid. What does it look like to refuse to de-fang families and communities that insist on holding onto not only their land but also their way of life? And, thus also their economic being that, without violence, could offer alternatives of self sufficiency, autonomy, and cooperation with the land that settler colonialism needs to destroy?

The ICAHD tour made the point that the most important part of Israeli social development is utilities. Staring at settlements all day you can see this. Through their houses without water tanks on top (proof they have waterlines), through their radio/cell phone towers, through the non-indigenous trees, through the sidewalks, paved roads, and garbage pick up. The hoarding and exclusivity of utilities not only serves to make life more appealing to people that want subsidized lives, but also as a way to make life harder on Palestinians in a hope that they leave. Utilities can be viewed as the social dispersal of vital resources. Utilities then can be a weapon against ways of life and an insistence on living under different economic models. In the US water bills (and debt), energy bills (and debt), having to have a cell phone to work, public transportation (and lack thereof), and many others are used as tools to further displacement, gentrification, and imperialist development. Same is true here in Palestine and enforced with more militarized and gruesome ways. And thus, surviving and insisting on your own methods of social resource dispersal is not just an act of resistance, but a threat to the occupation.

This refection is based partly on thinking about the people we meet through the lens of Clyde Woods and his book Development Arrested, especially how he highlights the struggle against imperialist/capitalist enclosure and methods of development for people in the Mississippi Delta throughout all of history. It is also an attempt to reflect further on the question of, "Why?" That one word question bounces around your head so often when visiting families and cities in Palestine. "Why are people picking olive trees so threatening?" "Why would they attack shepherds?" "Why?" Because settler colonialism always needs complete and total economic control, and all alternatives must be squashed. It also must be perfect yet its process never ends. This perhaps is also where the "Why?" that gets asked in Palestine also echoes the "Why?" that gets asked about when bulldozers come to violently evict and clear encampments, when twelve agencies show up to raid an apartment building in the middle of the night, and when the United States federal government makes it legal to drill on the spiritual lands of Oak Flat. One part of the "Why?" is simply because the generous and gracious people that live and insist on staying here are a threat to the violent settler colonialist social order. I don't want to not understand them as such.

Roots of Resistance: Olive Harvest in the Shadow of Occupation

On Thursday, October 23rd, about 100 citizens of the Municipality of Sa'ir, a village about five miles northeast of Al-Khalil, marked the opening of the olive harvest season by attempting to harvest their olives in a location from which they have been blocked by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) and settler violence since October 7, 2023. They were joined by at least 20 journalists and 6 international volunteers, who had responded to an urgent appeal from the Sa'ir Committee for Lands Threatened with Confiscation.

The call was for all farmers and landowners to participate widely on that day, to make the 2025 olive harvest season a "message of strength, unity, and cooperation." The Sa'ir Committee had extended a "special invitation to all local and international journalists" to attend and cover the event, which they hoped would convey the "true picture of the farmers' resilience and determination to remain on their land."

The invitation was written by Yusef, our host and one of the coordinators of the harvest. In September 2024, the house that Yusef had lovingly built with his own hands was stolen by illegal Israeli settlers, who kicked out Yusef and 16 of his family members. This expulsion was part of a broader campaign of forced removal. Since October 2023, Yusef shared, 43 families - 450 people - had been expelled from the Sa'ir area. From the street, we could see Yusef's house up on the hill, as well as several of the illegal Israeli settlers who had now commandeered it.

Immediately upon arriving to the groves closest to the illegal Israeli outpost, the harvesters were stopped by the Israeli army. At least seven soldiers, armed with live ammunition and two military vehicles, blocked the Palestinian harvesters, journalists, and international solidarity activists by showing them paperwork that now declared the Palestinian land a closed military zone. Other Palestinians slightly up the road from the Israeli army rushed to try and pick as many olives as possible, but only harvested one or two trees before getting evicted by the IOF.

At least 16 soldiers, some armed with rifles with tear gas attachments, and others with live ammunition, forcibly marched the group - at least 40 Palestinian harvesters, 20 journalists, and 6 international solidarity activists - down the road for a total of 40 minutes, stopping along the way to pull different harvesters out of their groves and prevent them from picking their olives. Members of the group, including at least one international solidarity activist, were shoved by Israeli soldiers, who shouted multiple times, "Your field trip is over. Move!"

During the forced march, two soldiers on a hill on the side of the road cocked their guns and aimed them toward the crowd, while illegal Israeli settlers observed the scene from the hillside.

 

Once the group was outside of the so-called "Closed Military Zone," between 16-20 soldiers and five military vehicles formed a blockade of the road for at least two hours, refusing to allow anybody to pass and return to their fields. Two small groups of Palestinians, likely the owners of the groves, did continue to harvest right near the soldiers, but nobody else was allowed to join them. Several illegal Israeli settlers came down from the top of the hill to attempt to harass the Palestinian harvesters.

After about two hours, most of the Palestinians left, unable to harvest their own olives. Other farmers climbed the steep hillsides to harvest in areas outside the so called "Closed Military Zone," but unfortunately the harvest was extremely scarce in those locations. Some Palestinians are predicting that, between the drought and the intense violence from the IOF and illegal settlers, the olive harvest this year will be only 5-20% of what it normally is.

Over and over, Yusef expressed the desire of the villagers to live in peace, to harvest their olives in peace, and to remain on their land. "We inherited this land from our ancestors. We are eating from the soil and we will remain here."

As the invitation from the Sa'ir Committee declared, "Let us all stand united behind the blessed olive tree, a symbol of peace and steadfastness, and make this a day that expresses our deep connection to the land and our identity. Together we protect our land."

Activism on the Edge

 "Hello, they beat this man and took him away for no reason. We don't know where they took him."

"It is the eighth day of the curfew and I am not allowed out of my house. They don't even allow us to get babies' milk, bread, or diapers."

"No one went to school. This is terrible for the kids."

"The soldiers are here at my house. They are taking my car."

These are just some of the messages we regularly receive from Arej (pronounced Areej) Abdel Karim Al-Jabari, a Palestinian mother of nine and social activist who lives in the Wadi Al-Hussein neighborhood of Hebron - the only Palestinian city with an illegal Israeli settlement in the middle of it. Arej lives on the border between of an Israeli-controlled territory and a Palestinian one. Often confined to her house by the frequent curfews imposed on her Palestinian neighborhood by the Israeli military, Arej has been committed since 2007 to assisting her neighbors through the documentation of the "crimes of the occupation," letting the world know of the horrific conditions under which Palestinians in Hebron are forced to live.

"What makes me photograph is the injustice that the people - the children and the women - are exposed to," she says.

Hebron is a sacred place to both Muslims and Jews, who believe it to be the burial place of Abraham and other important figures from Scripture. Due to its religious significance, Hebron has become a stronghold for the religious extremists within the illegal Israeli settler movement, who believe that the Jewish people have a divine right to control the West Bank, and who believe that a "Jewish return to Hebron is historical justice."

Arej has lived in her house since 1999, just two years after Israel and the PLO signed the Hebron Protocol, dividing her city - the second largest in the West Bank - into three distinct areas. Area H1 comprises 80% of the city and is under Palestinian civil and security control; Area H2, under Israeli military control, comprises 20% of the city and includes the entire Old City of Hebron, once the commercial center for the entire West Bank. 40,000 Palestinians still live in H2, and are subject to its exceptionally complicated fragmentation through the presence of military checkpoints, barbed wire, concrete barriers, surveillance cameras, military zones, and illegal Israeli settlements. Arej lives on the border between H1 and H2.

Still yet a third section of Hebron is referred to as the "restricted area," where 700 Israeli settlers live illegally inside the city. Here, Palestinian residents are forbidden from driving or even walking on certain roads. The presence of the Restricted Area, heavily guarded by numerous checkpoints, military watchtowers, and soldiers, makes movement in the entire city of Hebron extremely arduous for its residents. What was once a 5-minute walk from one side of the restricted area to the other now requires a 30-minute taxi ride around. As a result of such restrictions on movement and commerce, as well as extreme military repression and settler violence, thousands of Palestinian residents have lost their source of income and have either moved away from Hebron or are living in poverty.

Still, 40,000 Palestinians, as an act of nonviolent resistance to their own ethnic cleansing, remain in H2. Through their steadfast refusal to leave, these Palestinians have prevented the 700 Israeli settlers in the Old City illegally from taking over the entire area.

And yet, such a form of resistance takes a toll. Palestinians in the Old City are subject to daily marches of heavily armed soldiers; each week, dozens of soldiers clear the streets of Palestinians in order to make way for Jewish visitors from around the world to tour the city they believe will soon be entirely theirs. For the last two years, Areej has been confined to her house from Thursday night to Sunday morning by an Israeli military-imposed curfew. "This means," she says, "that residents are in their homes and it is forbidden to open the doors and windows."

Last week, due to the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, the Israeli military would not allow Areej or any of her neighbors to leave their houses for eight full days. "This is in addition," she adds, "to the assault on residents in their homes, searching them and beating them." Two weeks ago, they confiscated her car due to "security reasons." Such abuse, she tells us, has dramatically increased since October 2023.

Frequently, Areej photographs the military harassing and detaining Palestinian men outside of her home. "They detain them for no reason and torture them for eight hours," she tells us.

From her window, Areej documents this harassment with her camera and posts the videos on her Facebook and TikTok pages. While most of her followers are Palestinian, she also reaches people in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Arej feels strongly about keeping the hope of her community alive during a time when spirits could be so easily broken. For several years, she has run month-long knitting circles for women out of her house. "To relieve some of the pressure," she says. Especially for "mothers who see their children being tortured." Using yarn donated from various locations, Arej teaches the women to knit baby blankets, sweaters, scarves, and various other necessary items.

Arej also runs a summer camp for children, providing activities and food during a time when there is not much else for children to do. The children send gift packages down to other children in Masafer Yatta - the South Hebron Hills - who are actively being pushed off their land.

When asked what she wishes people in other countries knew about life under occupation, and how people abroad can support her work, she says, "I hope that the international community can stand by me and support the activities I do for women and children. I want friends to know how we suffer, to watch my documentation videos, see my work for children, and help complete my mission."

"There is an impossible dream for women," she adds, "which is to go and perform Umrah [an Islamic pilgrimage] in Saudia Arabia. They want to go pray, but the financial amount is large. I hope that those who care about them will help them achieve their only dream." She also hopes that another car will come her way so that she can cease being confined to her house and once again be a support to the rest of her neighborhood.

Arej says that she has become a target of soldiers because they know that she "films and exposes their crimes" and that they are "waiting to arrest me at any moment."

"But I am strong and they will not defeat me."

To follow Arej and her work, or to donate:

TikTok handle is @m12345677777777777777 (https://www.tiktok.com/@m12345677777777777777)

Instagram: @areejjabari6 (https://www.instagram.com/areejjabari6)

A Fraught and Beautiful Pilgrimage

 Since we have been on the ground, our team of four has been split in half, serving at two very different sites, experiencing different faces of the same genocide. Two have been in Masafer Yatta, the South Hebron Hills, staying with families who are under daily threat of expulsion, forced removal, and vicious attacks by illegal Israeli settlers. That team sleeps in tents, simple one room houses, or caves at night and keeps watch over the hills by day, looking out for possible attacks or theft of livestock.

The other two have been assigned to Al Khalil, the city of Hebron, where we have been asked to monitor checkpoints and be present during the weekly settler incursions into the city. This team has also been asked to participate in some of the ongoing month-long olive harvest, traveling to various locations around the West Bank where villages are organizing large group harvests in order to support families who are vulnerable to attacks (which is pretty much everybody now).

Wanting to reunite and reconnect with each other and see some of the sites of Palestine, our team recently took a two-day break together to Nazareth and Taybeh. Nazareth, while technically inside the nation-state of Israel (which many Palestinians refer to as '48 - the year that much of Palestine was stolen and taken over by settler colonialists) is still very much a Palestinian town. It's just that the Palestinians here - 20% Christian and 80% Muslim - also have Israeli citizenship. According to the Gospels, Nazareth is the place where the angel Gabriel asked Mary if she would be willing to be the mother of God. It is the place where Mary, herself living under the occupation of an outside colonizing force, said, "yes." 

To get to Nazareth and to visit the Sea of Galilee, our Palestinian friend recommended that we rent a car, which we did. Half of our team picked up the car in Jerusalem and drove to Ramallah to meet the other half - an enormous lesson in the occupation's tactic of restriction of movement. Though Ramallah is only 10 miles away from Jerusalem, it took our team 3 hours and many frustrated attempts at navigating roads closed by military checkpoints and other military roadblocks to get there. Neither google maps or the Israeli app "Waze" would navigate us inside the Palestinian civilian-controlled Areas A or B, and so we had to rely on calling Palestinian friends and getting various pieces of advice before finally driving through the massive and intimidating Qalandia checkpoint. The next morning, thinking we had solved the issue, we attempted to leave Ramallah (area A) and travel to the Israeli controlled territory toward Nazareth. Once again, it took us 2 hours just to leave the Palestinian city, encountering more road closures and checkpoints enforced by the Israeli military.

We were lucky. As internationals in a rental car, we had the yellow "Israeli-only" license plates, basically a free ticket to travel through checkpoints in a special, speedier lane. Palestinians with green and white license plates are under much more scrutiny when traveling into Jerusalem; and most Palestinians are not allowed into Jerusalem at all, though it is their capital and only mere miles away.

Once inside '48, we drove along modern highways lined with both Israeli and U.S. flags - the close relationship of these colonizing forces on display for all to see. We felt relief entering the more Palestinian town of Nazareth, exploring the Church of the Annunciation, and eating a lunch of falafel, hummus, bread, and veggies before putting our bags down at a quaint hostel inside the Old City. After a nap, we headed out to the Mount of Beatitudes where we drank wine and read aloud the Sermon on the Mount before traveling to the Sea of Galilee. There, we reveled in a gorgeous waterfall and sat on the rocks while noticing Palestinian men nearby fished from the same body of water where Jesus called his disciples.

 

The next day, Monday, was a joyous one for so many. With the signing of the peace deal, 20 living Israeli hostages were released from captivity in Gaza, and the bodies of those hostages who had been killed (most by Israeli fire) began to be released as well. In turn, 1700 Gazans who had been kidnapped by the Israeli military were also released and reunited with their families, as well as 250 Palestinian political prisoners. Sadly, 150 of those released were immediately deported to other countries and not allowed to reunite with their loved ones.

We traveled back into the West Bank to the Christian village of Taybeh (an Arabic word meaning good or delicious), to visit the only craft brewery in the Middle East. It was easier to get back into the West Bank this time, as we were driving through Area C. (Fully controlled by the Israeli military, Area C constitutes 60% of the West Bank and is likely to be annexed by Israel soon). Still, the Israeli app "Waze" would only direct us to the outskirts of the village, where we encountered a huge red sign warning us that entering a Palestinians village would be "Dangerous" to our lives (example pic here).

We got to spend a few hours at the brewery, sipping different types of delicious beer and enjoying the stunning view. We got a tour by the owner, Madees, and listened to the story about her Palestinian father who moved back from Boston to Taybeh after the Oslo Accords of 1994 to start a family business, believing peace was on its way. We learned that each year since 2005, Taybeh Brewery has hosted an Octoberfest Weekend with live music, food, beer, and fellowship.

For almost twenty years, Octoberfest in Taybeh was a huge event, attended by people from all around the West Bank and a boost to the local economy. Unfortunately, since the start of the war in Gaza two years ago, Octoberfest has been cancelled. "People don't feel like celebrating right now," said Madees. "Also, with security so tight, people have lost their jobs and don't have the money."

Though we had been planning to move on to Ramallah that night in order to be closer to the car rental return, we learned that there were extra road closures and settler attacks on the roads due to the prisoner release. And so after wandering around Taybeh, we decided to stay the night at a guesthouse and go to Monday evening mass, having missed it the morning before due to our delays.

Unfortunately, the road closures still had a huge impact on our evening. The owner of our guest house - unbeknownst to us - had been working in Ramallah that day and was stuck for 2 hours at a checkpoint, unable to return to Taybeh until 8 pm to get our rooms ready. Unsure of what to do after Mass, we were so grateful to be invited by two Palestinian women (neighbors, one of them a relative of our guest house owner) to their home for tea while we waited.

One of the women had lived in Australia for 35 years with her husband, but had recently moved home to Taybeh to retire. "See how they treat us here?" she asked. "Nobody in the whole world would stand to be treated this way." When I asked her whether she ever considered returning to Australia or to another country where one of her three children lived she immediately replied, "Never. This is my home."

We met Abu Jaber (name changed for safety), the husband of the other woman and the owner of the house where we had tea. Abu Jaber is originally from Gaza, and was watching on his TV news of the ceasefire and the joyous reunion of political prisoners with their families in Ramallah. Noting this, I asked him if he still had family in Gaza. "Yes," he replied. "Is your family OK?" I asked. "Nobody in Gaza is OK," he replied.

When the owner of our guesthouse finally arrived, he joined us for tea before taking us to his newly completed guest house where he brought us to our rooms for the night. We were the first guests! Since the start of the war, Abed's (name changed for safety) employment had decreased from full to part time. And so he spent his free time fixing up his grandfather's old house in the beautiful village of Taybeh. It was stunning and welcoming. He and his wife cooked us an incredible, traditional Palestinian meal of maqluba, using herbs from their garden. We awoke to a gorgeous spread of bread, hummus, yogurt, beans, cucumbers, olive oil, za'tar, coffee, and eggs from their hens - a delightful meal to send us on our way back to our placements for our remaining two weeks.

Nowhere on earth have I experienced such amazing hospitality or stayed in such beautiful hostels as in Palestine. And yet, their economy is struggling because nobody is visiting. Israelis tell the world that it is dangerous to enter a Palestinian town or village, though it is only dangerous because they make Israelis make it so.

If you ever feel so inclined, I highly recommend you to visit. My prayer is that Christians from around the world travel here in such droves that it becomes impossible for Israel to continue to lie about the reality of this oppressive occupation. My prayer is that Christians from around the world travel here so often that it becomes normal for us to together marvel at the beauty and the deep Christian history of this Palestinian place. My prayer is that Christians from around the world stand in solidarity with their Palestinian sisters and brothers and demand an immediate end to Israel's brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

 

Sumud: A Steadfast Resistance

 The Palestinian people say the most important word to them is "sumud." It means steadfastness, perseverance, resilience, or "we are going to stay, this is our land." It can mean actions, demonstrations, protests, legal battles, or other confrontations. Entire books have been written about "sumud."

There is, though, another word I hear quite often here that could be spelled "kool yom," or "everyday." On a handful of occasions someone will show you a video of settlers, in Arabic "mustawtan", harassing, attacking, and terrorizing their family home and after three or four videos simply say "everyday." They'll proudly point out their mother, their brothers, their cousin, their father, and how they resist these harassments from settlers and military (mostly by insisting on living their life and caring for their family). They'll slightly grin as they show you a video of their mother cooking bread while a settler stares down at them. "How often does this happen?" we ask. The response: "Everyday." A settler will herd sheep trespassing on Palestinian land past a burnt car through gates the settlers probably cut. The owner of the house will show you a video of settlers setting a car on fire and say "everyday." They continue, "The settlers, the military, they don't want peace they want Palestine. Why should we leave? My family has been here for 3,000 years." Those last two words come out with such a strident, yet gentle, staccato that you have no trouble believing they could recall ever single day and what happened over the past 3,000 years. Everyday.

But, of course, not every single day is the same. Some days are cliffs. Some days the settler encroachment reaches a water line or settlers bulldoze the power lines. Some days they burn cars. They trespass and cut an olive tree (or the military comes and cuts 150). With the wave of a hand the occupational forces turn your land into a closed military zone. Another hand the occupation can demolish homes. The occupation murders people with the guns they get from the United States. Everyday the same project is being brought forth, the project of enclosure and land theft. The project of settler colonialism. The everyday terror is part of the centrality of violence to capitalism (or/and the US-Israel Zionist project). Ali Kadri, building off of Rosa Luxembourg, calls this "accumulation by waste." In order to get land, resources, and political control at is most profitable (not always cheapest) rate you must "beat up" the community living there, and make beating them up a market to profit off of. You must make the everyday filled with enough terror people feel no choice but to leave.

But everyday will also be filled acts of resistance and "sumud." They will record the settler violence and harassment. They'll call their neighbors to warn them. they'll insist on having strong family ties. They'll resist. They'll be human. Everyday.

Despite Ceasefire, Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rages On

Many of my friends at home are asking me how folks here in the West Bank are taking the news of the Gaza peace plan. Based on what we are observing here, our assessment is that those talks have absolutely no meaningful impact on the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the West Bank except, perhaps, supporting an acceleration of the violence. Illegal Israeli settlers and the military seem to be desperate to grab the land now, while they still have a chance. Every morning, we wake to learn of a new kidnapping or killing of Palestinian youth or home demolition that happened in the night, as well as regular invasions by the Israeli military not only of refugee camps and small villages, but also of cities under full Palestinian control. While the world's eyes are on Gaza, Israel is working rapidly to complete its annexation of the West Bank. It seems they will not stop until all of Palestine is theirs.

Yesterday, our team joined a large Palestinian family in a village north of Ramallah to help them harvest their olives. It had been several years since they had been able to harvest from some of these trees - the location is so close to the road that they are very vulnerable to attacks by illegal Israeli settlers. Such attacks have become increasingly vicious in the last several years. Gangs of young men in their teens and twenties armed with automatic rifles and metal pipes feel emboldened to beat up Palestinians and international observers alike, at times using live fire, knowing that they will not be prosecuted. Despite these risks, this Palestinian family felt that our team of five internationals could be enough of a protective presence to allow them to go out to their fields. Thankfully, there were no incidents, and we harvested from dozens of trees.

Tomorrow and the next day, we join more harvest events. Given the area and the day, we expect to be met with violence from the military and perhaps illegal settlers as well. Pray for us.

Due to the rain today, there were no active harvests for which protective presence was requested. Instead, we have been staying put in the city, doing laundry, writing, and catching up with an old Palestinian friend! We have been receiving regular updates and photos from Al Khalil, our first placement here and a place to which we hope to return.

In Al Khalil, both yesterday and today, the Israeli military forced Palestinians and internationals off the streets of the Old City, using concussion grenades and the threat of live fire to do so. They did this in part because it is currently a Jewish holiday - Sukkot, a week-long harvest festival. On Jewish holidays in Al Khalil, illegal Israeli settlers and other Jewish visitors take over the streets, and it is not safe for Palestinians to be in their own city. This year, the Palestinian Ministry of Education shut down school for the entire week - already open only three days due to financial constraints - in order to keep the children safe from soldiers and settler violence. Like snow days. But much, much worse.

Illegal Israeli settlers decided to celebrate the holy festival this year by taking over a Palestinian building in the old city and establishing it as a new illegal Israeli settlement. Above the shop of our Palestinian friend fly several Israeli flags. We are not allowed to take pictures of this new outpost because it is in front of a military base. If we are caught photographing military bases or one of the many, many checkpoints that encircle the city like prison walls, we will be immediately deported. It would seem that the Israeli military does not want the reality of what they are doing to be known to the world.

If the United States government refused to fund Israel's military occupation of Palestine, this ethnic cleansing would end tomorrow. This conflict is not a religious one or even a complicated one. It is settler colonialism - a nation-state choosing to destroy and replace the Indigenous culture of the land that already exists in order to extract resources for a capitalist, and in this case Zionist, society. For those of us with U.S. citizenship, we have the choice to refuse to fund this project. We can refuse to pay federal taxes that fund the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Rooted in History, Al-Khalil Under Attack

 Standing in the center of the shop in the Old City of Hebron, known as Al-Khalil to Palestinians, stands a 300-year old sesame press. Hisham, the shop owner, lights up when we ask him to talk about its history. Hisham shows us a photo from when the press was in use and operated by camels, and points out the various parts of the building that were used to process the sesame seed into various products - from oil to tahini to something like halwa, the sweet dessert so well-loved in the area. Before the sesame press was in the building, however, possibly even as long as 800 years ago under the Ottoman Empire, olive oil was made there. Standing there in the presence of such history, I feel the immensity of what it means to try and keep this history - these stories in place - alive.

After studying in England and working as a dental engineer, Hisham came home in 2014, when the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee offered to restore the old stone building to once again be a destination for tourism and culture. "If the HRC was going to restore this shop, my father wanted to make sure one of his sons was here to run it. I was the obvious choice."

Hisham shows us a display of gorgeous blown and painted glass for sale.

Back in the 1980s, he tells us, they would take the glass blown in Hebron and drive it to their friends, relatives, and colleagues in Gaza to be painted. "It would take just under an hour," he says. Since the increasing enclosures of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, however, that routine changed drastically in the last 25 years. "We had to take the blown glass to the border of the West Bank in one car, then go through a checkpoint with all of our materials and transfer them into another car in order to drive through Israel. Then we'd do the same when we got to Gaza." Since October 2023, however, all of that movement and exchange of craftsmanship has stopped. The blown and painted glass for sale in the shop is all old, and people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip remain trapped in place by the cruel Zionist project of colonization and military occupation.

Although Hisham continues to open his shop every morning and greet people all day with an "Ahlan wa Sahlan - Welcome!" he struggles to make a living. Like most of the stores in the once bustling Old City, there are more and more days that Hisham's shop remains completely empty, and isn't even visited by one single customer. Hisham, as well as all of those who stay to run their shops do so not only as an act of resistance to their own ethnic cleansing but also out of a deep love for their homeland.

Hisham is just one of the shop keepers we have been asked to visit on Saturday evenings, during the weekly invasion of illegal Israeli settlers and international Jewish visitors - many from the U.S. - who have come to tour the old city. For the last fifteen or so years, starting at around 4 or 5 pm, dozens of heavily armed Israeli soldiers and their APCs (armored personnel carriers) clear the streets of Palestinians and international journalists. Between one and three soldiers armed with live ammunition for every Jewish tourist force Palestinians to close their shops or wait out the scenes of violence.

During one such terrifying invasion, our own team witnessed a soldier harassing an old man and his 2-year-old grandson. The soldier forced the 2-year-old from his tricycle and then drop-kicked the bike across the street. The grandfather asked us to send him the video we took of the abuse, hoping a complaint could be made somewhere. Sadly, the complaint will almost definitely go nowhere - another shopkeeper we have befriended showed us the damage done to his son's car from one of the APCs, but when he has complained in the past, he was told by the illegal settlers, "If you complain, next time I will do the same damage to your face."

Every morning here, we wake to learn of the many nightly bombings and invasions that have taken place by the Israeli military in Palestinian neighborhoods, towns, refugee camps, and villages across the West Bank, some of them nearby. Such violence and destruction continues to force people into poverty. Children continue to beg us for money, and shopkeepers are desperate to have us into their empty shops to purchase their wears.

It is clear that the Israeli military, led by its government, is determined to continue their practices of utter brutality until they gain complete control over all of the land here, and that they are willing to use consistent violence and dehumanizing tactics to get what they want. It is hard to sustain hope that a just peace will ever be possible.