Olive Harvest: A Dangerous Resistance

"Why do you think the Israelis continue to destroy this beautiful land by building up so many monstrous checkpoints and dropping so many bombs?" I asked our Palestinian driver, a long-time nonviolent activist leading our caravan of over 60 internationals, Israelis, and Palestinians heading to the olive harvest. Despite a life-time of activism, this man has been more careful lately with his resistance after having recently spent an unimaginable six months in Israeli prisons, suffering untold abuse.

"They want to make us all leave," he responded. "They want to make it so unbearable for us here that we choose to leave, so they can take all the land for themselves."

 

We were on our way to Beita, a Palestinian village north of Ramallah, (read about Beita's amazing history of organized resistance here) to assist families in harvesting their olives. A joyful family event that takes place for about a month each fall, olive harvesting has become a major symbol of Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation. Every year, Palestinians risk arrest, injury, and even death by harvesting olives on their own land. Soldiers prevent Palestinians from harvesting by randomly declaring large tracts of land "closed military zones," arresting and disappearing anybody who enters their own fields. Illegal Israeli settlers viciously attack Palestinians and international observers, beating them with metal pipes and shooting at them with live fire.

The area's Popular Committee (the name given to the multiple Palestinian grassroots networks organizing the nonviolent resistance to the ethnic cleansing) had coordinated the international support for day. The hillside where we would be harvesting was full of hundreds of trees, and close by were several new illegal settler "outposts" - groups of trailer homes used by ideological Israelis to stake claim to land. Though the more than 225 settler outposts are illegal even by Israeli law (all Israeli settlements, even the 134 Israeli sanctioned ones, are illegal according to international law), continue to be defended and protected by the Israeli military.

Upon our arrival, we learned that three Palestinian villagers had already been beaten by illegal Israeli settlers and taken to the hospital. About seven soldiers brandishing automatic weapons - their fingers on the triggers - met us at the top of the mountain. Aggressively, they barked out their declaration that Palestinians were now "forbidden" to access certain tracts of land where they could harvest their own olives. Though we stayed where they told us to, the soldiers soon unleashed sound grenades and tear gas upon our group anyways as a form of intimidation, and stood watch as a menacing group of seven illegal settlers harassed our group. One journalist with our group was shot in the foot with a tear gas cannister, and needed medical attention.

Throughout the morning, as we warily harvested olives, several military and settler security vehicles continued to drive around us, demonstrating how the Israeli military is in collaboration with the movements of illegal Israeli settlers. More soldiers arrived to let us know of new areas of land that were now also "forbidden" to harvest from.

After a few hours, chaos broke out. On a hill across the way, illegal settlers firebombed a Palestinian vehicle - a new land rover - that was being used to cart olives down the mountain.

Large flames and plumes of smoke consumed the car as a group of about 30 masked illegal Israeli settlers carrying clubs and pistols began attacking Palestinian harvesters with stones. About half of our group moved toward the harvesters and the burning car to offer protective presence while the other half stayed back to stay with other harvesters, to film, and to take cover. As we watched more illegal Israeli settlers move along the ridge, we heard live fire and shouts of "Get down! Take cover!"

"Yalla! Let's go!" shouted our Palestinian organizers with urgency, as they ushered us down the steep, rocky hillside. We ran from the live ammunition for about 15 minutes, helping one another slide down breaks in the rock terraces, until Palestinian vans picked us up and brought us to our vehicles parked safely at the bottom.

Members of the Palestinian Popular Committee who had been interacting the most closely with the settlers brought us hot sandwiches that they had prepared for us in advance. We counted our numbers to make sure all were safe.

A total of twenty were injured, eleven Palestinians taken to the hospital. A Palestinian suffered a gunshot wound by an Israeli settler; and one solidarity activist was evacuated to a hospital after having been beaten with batons by Israeli settlers, breaking her arm. A total of eight cars were set on fire, and one ambulance was flipped over.

"This is what they have to experience every day," remarked one stunned international volunteer. Most of us were at a loss for words. Later that evening, we read the news dispatches of similarly violent olive harvest events around the West Bank. (See full list of injuries at Beita, as well as attacks from around the West Bank on that SAME DAY here.)

As we were driving to the next site where we would harvest the next day, I asked our driver if the day had gone as he had expected. "Yes," he replied soberly. "We expected the violence. But it was good to have so many of us. It gives the villagers courage to continue."

And continue they have. The very next day, the villagers of Beita returned to the hillside to harvest and show that they would not be intimidated.

Unfortunately, as it has happened in almost every harvesting location around the West Bank in the last couple of days, the military prevented the harvest from continuing.

Given such a violent start to the olive harvest season, it is looking like this year harvesting olives will be a dangerous form of resistance for Palestinians. Those who choose not to harvest because of fear of violence will lose their groves due to Israel's absentee property law.

Many people here believe that the ceasefire Israel was forced to sign in Gaza, while a relief for so many, will now cause the Israeli military and illegal settlers to focus their attacks on the West Bank, and speed up their plan of ethnic cleansing. It has already begun.

Reflections on Arriving to Falastin

 On landing to Ben-Gurion on the evening of Rosh Hashanah in the year 5786, it was unmistakable to me that I was arriving to a nation at war, the pictures of hostages lining the walls of the arrival hall.

While in line for entry, a male U.S. traveler remarked to another U.S. traveler that he "hoped to see the Iron Dome in action" while simultaneously stating he was there "to walk in the steps of his Lord and Savior."

This twisted violent contradiction left me speechless in its cruelty as I resolved and reminded myself why it is necessary to do solidarity work so necessary for the Palestinian people in a world complicit in genocide and unspeakable violence combined with an infuriating combination of ineffectual words.

Masub Abu-Toha writes in Things You Find Hidden In My Ear, "Borders are invented lines drawn with ash on maps and sewn into the ground by bullets."

Nowhere was this more evident than in the city of Al-Khalil (Hebron), declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site in 2017 while wracked by violence over decades and now at the epicenter of the militarization of the Occupation. I had prepared for the trip, both physically and mentally, but nothing can fully prepare you for the depth of the apartheid in the military checkpoints in a city which finds itself abandoned by tourists and entrapped by settlements and military.

My comrades remarked, "Oh wow, this is worse even than last year." The shops shuttered, garbage collecting on the sidewalks, with only a few humans in eyesight as we walk into what the tourist brochure dubs "the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world" and one of the holiest places in both the Judaic and Islamic worlds.

Alone on a once busy souk, we were quickly identified as internationals and approached by two former shopkeepers who told us the story of their livelihoods vaporized by the force of a nation at war. They told us that since October 7, 2023 five hundred and fifty more shops have closed in the Old City due to the strain on the economy and lack of tourist traffic as well as increased military presence and settler violence.

Part of a much larger exodus since 2000, they reported that a full 1800 shop owners have gone out of business. They also told of us of the 2000 soldiers in the military presence protecting 400 settlers in the four settlements within the city. Of this reality one said, "they treat us worse than the animals but we do our best to resist."

Later that morning as we monitored the checkpoint leading to Al-Ibrahim Mosque, we saw their words in action. As 300+ worshippers answered the call to Friday prayer, we bore witness to the indignity of checkpoint 10. Barely able to see into the turnstile, we had difficulty ascertaining what constituted the multiple delays we observed, we saw one man turned away from prayer at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, one of the holiest places in both Judaism and Islam.

The man walked away visibly angered as my colleagues debate the effectiveness of us tallying the numbers in a conflict the United Nations is obligated to monitor. Just five days earlier, the U.N. complains about the two boys aged 6 and 8 who are detained for playing soccer in the very alleyways we were standing in.

I reminded my colleagues that solidarity meant showing up, bearing witness, and doing as the people ask. The people of Palestine had not only asked us to be here and welcomed us by offering us chairs as we counted and gave us tiny cups of the delicious Arabic coffee. We sat and watched the checkpoint and reflected on how the will to resist stays alive.

Resistance stays alive in dignity and courage but most of all in kindness in the face of injustice. "Salaam alaikum", some called out to us, perfect strangers only recently arrived. Do not forget, these passersby reminded us, God is still good.

Al-Khalil does not forget what it means to be a friend to God in its sumud (steadfastness). Falastin has so much to teach the world-- I am honored to be here to listen.

Hope and Resistance

 At the conclusion of our morning tour with ICAHD, (formerly known as the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition and now an international coalition resisting Israeli apartheid), our tour guide Chaska- a local Israeli activist who has been working for decades to end Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine - painted a bleak picture of the future of the Holy Land. "We are nearing the end," she said. "This situation has to end at some point. And the way things are going, it is looking like Israel will succeed in not only in the total colonization of historic Palestine, but also in the normalization of that colonization. It will be much like the way the United States colonized Indigenous nations on Turtle Island, pushing the Indigenous people onto smaller and smaller island reservations, and making that completely normal." (We hope to give a fuller description of this informative experience in a future blog).

Our guide's prediction, which felt like a punch in the gut to me, is not unfounded. It is grounded in her decades of experience watching her government encroach deeper and deeper into the West Bank, stealing more land for the construction of bigger settlements (some with populations as large as 50,000) that are connected to one another through a network of roads and closures that make it impossible for Palestinian towns to remain contiguous with one another, systematically demolishing more and more Palestinian homes, and making life so difficult for Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem that it becomes increasingly desirable for them to move out of their historic homeland and become a part of the diaspora.

Later that day, as we rode the bus to Bethlehem to visit a few friends and elders in the Palestinian nonviolent resistance movement, I shared with my team how hard it had been for me to hear this. Listening to, and seeing with my own eyes, all the facts on the ground, it seems quite possible that such a dystopian future might actually come to pass. I wondered aloud whether our hosts in Bethlehem, who had been bearing the brunt of this reality for a long time, would agree that they had no future in their own homeland.

The bus dropped us off at the Bethlehem checkpoint - a mechanized opening through the monstrous, 30-foot high wall that snakes in and around the entire West Bank. It was quite easy to get through, as we discovered, as the Israeli army encourages Palestinians to leave Jerusalem. (It is much harder to return.)

As it had been over 16 years since I had last passed through this way, I was somewhat stunned to be confronted once again with the overwhelming force of this wall that enforces and concretizes apartheid rule. The experience of walking in the shadow of this imposing symbol of oppression overwhelmed us all; one of our team members who had lived and studied in Bethlehem 25 years ago broke down and wept with grief and anger as she witnessed the destruction of this place so beloved to her.

We then visited Wi'am, the Palestinian Conflict Transformation Center. Zoughbi Zoughbi (a Notre Dame graduate!) and several of his family members hosted us for an incredible lunch. Over chicken, falafel, hummus, bread, tomatoes, olive oil, and za'tar, we learned of their own mixed family's experience of the occupation. Since 2019, Israel has refused to allow Zoughbi's wife, an American citizen, to return to the West Bank to live with her family, despite having lived there most of her life. His two sons, one an engineer with a Masters degree from the U.S., have returned to Bethlehem to work as volunteers, with next to no pay, in solidarity with their father, because they believe not only in nonviolent resistance, but also in the importance of standing against the ethnic cleansing of their people, and remaining rooted in their homeland.

Speaking of the increasing enclosure of their beloved city, they pointed out their vulnerability. "We are like sitting ducks," they said. "The soldiers have threatened that if we do not fall in line, we will be the next Gaza."

The Zougbhi family witnessed to us what hope and resistance look like in the face of indescribable oppression. Despite the attacks on their marriage, their employment, and their physical well being (all direct attempts by the Israeli government to make life untenable in Palestine), they have chosen to stay rooted in their family, the community they love, and the land to which they belong - all while offering incredible hospitality to those of us who traveled to stand with them.

Part of the Zoughbi family's resistance includes a contagious sense of humor. Lookout over the domineering wall just a few hundred feet from their home Zoughbi Zoughbi pointed out a growing Walnut Tree. "We hope the roots of this Walnut tree grow so large," he said with a smile, "that it will break the 'wall' into nuts."

After saying goodbye to the Zoughbis, we walked to the Palestine Museum of Natural History, a stunning new project being built by Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh (a biologist and geneticist who was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize) and his wife. As one of his many acts of resistance to what he calls the "monoculture" of Zionism and the Israeli nation state, Dr. Qumsiyeh insists on studying, collecting, nourishing, and displaying the vast and beautiful biodiversity of Palestine - so that visitors and Palestinians alike can continue to fall in love with both its people and its ecology.

Dr. Qumsiyeh shared a story of one of his first acts of nonviolent resistance: in 1988, when the Israeli military banned Palestinians in the city of Beit Sahour from owning milking cows, he organized a dairy collective of people who literally hid a herd of 18 cows, which were deemed a "threat to Israeli security. "Later, when Palestinians in Bethlehem refused to pay taxes for their own occupation, the Israeli military surrounded the Church of the Nativity in a siege that lasted 49 days. Dr. Qumsiyeh and others recruited and organized internationals to stand with them and break the siege through nonviolent resistance, forming what is now known as the International Solidarity Movement or ISM.

Today, Dr. Qumsiyeh uses that same creative energy to organize volunteers at the museum to plant olive trees, cultivate herbs and vegetables, care for injured owls and other wildlife, experiment with hydroponics, and tend the land with care and determination.

Looking at the newly planted trees and other creatures on the land it is clear that those who are bringing this project to life envision for Palestine a future of beauty, flourishing, and meaningful life.

The struggle is not over yet.

Serving in the Garden

One of the most dangerous places we serve in Masafer Yatta, our location in the West Bank, is what is called the Garden. It is not a garden in the typical sense but rather a massive platform of stone, rock walls, shrubs, struggling olive plants, cacti and dirt. 

The view, however, is incredible. One can see a panorama of sloped grazing farm land, the local village and an illegal Israeli settlement. The family who owns the garden has worked the land for decades and holds a 100 year-old deed for it. Twice a day, he takes his goats and sheep out to graze, 6:30 to 10 AM and 4:30 to 7 PM. Two of us accompany him because he is harassed daily by Israeli settlers, soldiers, military or some combination thereof.

The point of the harassment is to push him off his land. It would be easy to give up after decades of persecution but this man and his family do not. They are practitioners of “samud,” steadfastness. Generations before them have resisted, therefore, they resist, always nonviolently. 

The farmer keeps going out into the garden to feed the sheep and goats, knowingly facing harassment. Each day before we serve in the garden, the farmer treats us to cups of warm sweet tea and perhaps a treat. Then we follow the animals and him to the garden, maintaining a short distance. 

We are to be the buffer between the harassers and the farmer. At some point, settlers, police or military approach us and ask for passports. They photograph them or take them even though that is forbidden by the United States government. They research our backgrounds to see if we are Palestinian sympathizers or members of organizations Israel considers terrorist. The irony of a nonviolent peace organization ever being considered a terrorist organization is not lost on me.

The conclusion of these interactions can result in a wide-range of possibilities from simple harassment to deportation. I had been enjoying the landscape and photographing the view when a settler told border patrol I was filming the illegal guard post on the farmer’s land. Border patrol took my phone, looked through the photos and discovered I had only shot panoramas and photos of my friend. They returned my phone and my passport and warned me not to photograph the empty guard post because it is classified.

Despite these disturbing interactions, we have the satisfaction of protecting the farmer who is able to do his job. In addition, we can look over the landscape, and enjoy the natural beauty of the West Bank and build relationships.

Why do Palestinians resist and persist under such stressful circumstances? Faith, history, love of land and samud. I see it in the farmer’s body as he contentedly crouches on a rock, sipping a coffee, smoking a cigarette, watching his sheep and goats graze.

This is his legacy.

Today I waited for a taxi to Ramalla where the Burin Road meets the main road. There was a man in his 30s who also wanted a taxi to Ramalla. But he was standing way back up the side road. I could not figure out what he was doing. I asked my hosts, who said he was afraid. 

The road to Ramalla is to the left. The man down by the telephone pole on the road to the right is waiting for the taxi to Ramalla

He was afraid of being run over by a settler's car. Once again, just last week a 15 year old boy was run over, only 50 meters from where I was waiting for the taxi.

Looking the other way the boy was run over near the telephone pole.

Unrelated to this incident in the first photo you can see the red sign.  This is one version of the signs which are on every road that enters an Area A.

These signs are part of spreading fear. Maybe it is not deliberate, but if you drove by one of these signs a dozen times each day it is bound to effect your thinking. These also help keep the Israelis from meeting Palestinians.

Taking Land

24 Dec 2015/ Meta Peace Team, Scott/ Burin

Colonial assault is visible in Burin.  Since last year I can see 3 new houses expanding the "out posts" which are illegal (under Israeli law) expansions of illegal (under international law) colonial settlements.  It is a process where a few radicals squat on land they do not own, build a house knowing that if they call the occupying army and say they are being threatened the army will arrest any Palestinian who dares to say it is their land.

on the hill in the middle of the picture you can see an outpost. The hill on the right has the highest house in Burin

 A closer view of the house on the right.  It is empty.  The settlers came down and attacked it so much the family abandoned it.

In this picture you can see the last house going out the road of Burin.  It too is empty, the settlers came down with torches and the family was afraid they would get burned up some time so the left their house.

The new houses on the hill impacted a friend of mine.  She has olives high in the hill. This year when she went up there were new houses next to her olives. The soldiers would let here in for 2 days to pick olives, but she is not well and even if she was she could not pick all her olives in 2 days.  Internationals who went up with her were forced by the occupying army to sit down by the gate into the olive orchard and watch.  They were not even allowed to accompany while she worked.  Mean while the woman and children from the new illegal houses yelled "bad things" at her.

Permission to Farm My Land

November 16, 2015 | Meta Peace Team, Phoenix Jones | Occupied Burin

Land stolen by Israeli Settlers, that once Palestinians used for orchards, farming and livestock.  Now whenever Palestinians want to harvest or tend to their orchards (what is remaining after Israeli army had uprooted trees and Settlers have purposely burned down acres of trees) , on their land , they must receive a permit from the Occupying Israeli government.

Tree burned by Israeli Settlers

Settlement homes in Occupied Burin 

Settlement atop of hill in occupied Burin

Yesterday, Scott and I accompanied a family for Olive Harvest.  The family requested that we accompany them because of fear the Israeli settlers would come down from the settlement that sits on stolen land to terrorize, abuse or murder them. We also assisted the family in harvesting olives.  The permit that the family received from the Israeli government only gave them permission to harvest from the morning until 12noon, if the family continued to harvest after the time allotted the Israeli army, police, or border patrol would come to forcefully/violently remove them from their land.  During an olive harvest all of the olives can be used for something from canning, pressing for oil or making soap, but under occupation Palestinians often do not have the “luxury” to harvest and separate all that is there.   The family’s movements were so precise, only harvesting from the bountiful, rich trees and leaving behind any olives that were not plump. As we were harvesting I saw each of them at different points glance up the mountain to the settlements.  Upon reaching the last row of trees some had been scorched and beyond that, others had been burned to the ground.  I also noticed while harvesting olives that the trees were in dire need of pruning.  Prior to Occupation, Palestinians were able to tend to their land as needed, the occupation has placed unrealistic time restraints on Palestinians, that no farmer could adhere to in maintaining a healthy orchard.   Israelis that have stolen the land atop of that mountain, just beyond the orchard, were responsible for damaging and burning those trees, robbing that family of so much more than Olive trees that have been in their family for generations.

Our liberation is bound together, and your solidarity is mandatory!

Olive harvesting as experienced through our eyes this season; part II : Jamma'in

Jamma'in is located about 6 km to the southwest of us. The stone quarry/cutting industry is a major source of employment and income for the village followed closely by agriculture – mainly olives. MPT accompanied a Jamma'in family on four occasions. They treated us very well – picking us up, feeding us two meals per day, and driving us home each evening.

Leaving home about 7:00 AM we started each day with a 30 minute tractor & trailer ride over a rough rocky road. We dropped down hill to the south from the village and crossed the major road toward the very large settlement of Ariel. The area between the road and Ariel is a huge olive grove. We picked at the high eastern edge of this grove finding ourselves uncomfortable near an outpost just off the western edge of the settlement of Kafr Tappuah. The family reported to us that last year a settler showed up one day with two threatening dogs. The following day internationals accompanied the family. About ten settlers arrived with guns. The internationals called the military who arrived and sent the settlers away. Understandably this family felt a strong need for international accompaniment.

We are pleased to report that the only disturbance to this year’s picking routine was the appearance of a wild boar. The men threw rocks and chased it off before either MPTers got a confirming glimpse or photo.

It takes this family about 10 days to complete their work. It is difficult to leave such a situation before completion but other needs called us away. We were happy to be able to assist in getting other internationals to join this family for most of their days. Much of the olive harvest work is just like this. Days are long and hard, friendships grow, stories are told, and goodbyes are filled with conflicting emotions.

...................…a view of the illegal Israeli outpost from as close as we chose to approach.

.....................This looks like a big pile but closer inspection identified it as a rock pile home which belonged to the previous generations of this family. Settlers now use it as a campout location or so we were told.

...........................This is the lower entrance; there is a sizable room inside and an interior stone stairway to the upper “deck”. The family was fearful of this place and asked us not to go there but one MPTer had already taken the tour.

…....................sorting olives prior to bagging. That is a stained MPT knee at the top of the photo. There was a lot of kneeling and picking off the ground with this family.

…........loading the trailer for the bumpy ride into the sunset down the hill and up into town.

........ We were fed in two different homes; one at a table with the father only dining with us; the other seated on the floor with the whole family present. The family included the nicest, cutest kids. They came and went so quickly we were never able to determine how many there were.

Hebron: A city divided

Hebron, a city of about 150,000 in the south of the West Bank, is a city unlike all others in Palestine; it is the only city where illegal Israeli settlements are actually located in the city itself. About 20% of the city is designated as “H2,” which means it is under the control of the Israeli Army. The rest is controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Palestinians cannot drive cars in H2, but Israelis can, and certain roads are closed even for walking to all but Israelis. Settlers have been in Hebron for 40 years, and they have created a particularly hostile environment, especially for Palestinians living near the settlements.

Settlement placed directly in Palestinian community of Tel Rumedia.

Until recently, settler violence and incidents were particularly violent and vicious. Former MPT team members, as recently as November 2007, report being called names and spit on by settlers. However, B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, has distributed video cameras to some Palestinian families (visit: http://www.btselem.org/english/Video/Shooting_Back_Index.asp), and after some incidents caught on tape appeared on Israeli TV and sparked much conversation and controversy, settlers seem to have become more wary of how they act when internationals and/or video cameras are present.. Even so, just last Wednesday, members of the German parliament were threatened and attacked by settlers while touring Hebron. Locals say they saw large stones being thrown at the caravan, though MPT could find no reports of this in the media (see http://www.thelocal.de/11369/20080417/ and http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/976056.html).

Wire barriers hung up to protect Palestinian merchants and shoppers

hold debris thrown by settlers living above the market.

On Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights, Eric and Walt slept in Qurtuba School, a school for about 120 girls located directly across the street from a settlement apartment building and school. In August 2007, the school was burned by a large mob of settlers during a holiday celebration, but the building was refurbished and reopened in November. In March of this year, during another holiday, another group of settlers came to the school looking to damage or burn it, but internationals staying there were able to call police who came and dispersed the gathering before any damage was done. The principal was hesitant to add taller walls and make the building feel more “like a prison,” but taller walls were added after the continued threats. Also, because of the school’s proximity to the settlement, Internationals daily monitor the children going to and from school to prevent attacks by settler children. Even so, according to the principal, 8 girls from the school were attacked last week alone. The principal voiced her concern about the girls ability to concentrate with this uncontrolled hostility from settler children.

Qurtuba School

MPT team members accompany children home from school.

There are many horrific stories that could be told about the situation in Hebron that the team has witnessed and heard during their stay:
-- a local Palestinian activist detained and searched for no reason by a group of soldiers, only to be released 20 minutes after MPT members arrived and began to observe and video the scene.
-- a settler child chasing Palestinian children walking past “The Occupied House,” a home owned by Palestinians that was being built when settlers illegally moved in one night and have been staying since.
-- Palestinian boys and men are often stopped at multiple random checkpoints, merely causing another hassle for their movement in the area.

Soldiers surround and detain Palestinian without cause.

Soldiers go through the bag of a boy on his way to school.

Sunday morning, after their first night in the school, Walt and Eric met with the principal in her office to check in. (Qurtuba school runs Sunday – Thursday. In Palestine, Friday is the day of rest, but this school recently decided to also take Saturday off because of attacks by settler children. Settler children do not attend school on Saturdays, and so they are free to take up other pursuits.) A girl of maybe 8 came to the office and shared a story in Arabic with the principal and then began to cry. The principal explained to MPT team members that the girl wanted to go home to be with her mother because the girl’s 13- and 14-year-old brothers had been taken away by police the night before after some settler girls had told soldiers the boys had been throwing stones at them.

Later that night, Walt, Eric, seven other Internationals, and three Palestinian organizers were invited to the family’s house to talk with them and the two boys, who had since returned. Their story, as told by the younger boy, was that the boys were collecting wood for a fire when the settler girls came up. The boys ran away and soon were detained by soldiers and then taken from one checkpoint to a second checkpoint where they were detained for an hour until the police arrived.

The two boys were then taken to the police station (which is located in a local settlement) where they were handcuffed and blindfolded from midnight until 6AM, at which time they were transferred to a jail in the northern part of the West Bank. In the morning, the father went to the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross), trying to get his sons released. In the afternoon, a call was made to return the boys to Hebron where the family then had to sign a paper promising to pay 1500 Israeli Shekels (about $430 US Dollars, or a month’s wage for the boys’ father) for their release. The boys had to return to the police station the next morning for questioning even though no formal charges or a complaint had been filed. According to locals, the large fee is assessed in an attempt to drive families out of the area (even to the point of bankrupting them), thus making way for settler expansion.

Boys detained without charges (with parents).

Even amidst all the horrors, on Friday night Walt and Eric were able to witness 6 Palestinian boys playing soccer on a street corner near a checkpoint, in sight of a settlement, where a soldier stood by and kicked the ball back to the boys if it came his way. One must take solace in the small things that make one believe that peace, even amidst the current situation, is still possible.