“Safety line” road marks land off limits for Palestinians.
 

On November 15, Brenna, David and Martha traveled to the village of As-Sawiya to do research for a possible MPT work site. The village is located on a high hill south of Nablus in Zone C. [According to the Oslo agreement, Zone C of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, comprising the sparsely inhabited rural areas of the West Bank and the Israeli settlements, remains under complete Israeli control.] This village is surrounded by hill top settlements and by several small Palestinian villages. It is not really a sparsely inhabited area, considering that farmers need land at different levels for a variety of crops and for herding. The major settlements around Sawiya are Ariel, one of the largest Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Rehelim, Ele and Shilo, all of which are major threats to the village.*

As-Sawiya, with a population of over 2000 people, is a village dependent almost totally on the farming of wheat, olives, grapes, figs, and beans. The land is also used for grazing animals. Some residents make yogurt to sell. An elected village council governs the village. The village has a clinic, but relies on the larger cities of Ramallah and Nablus for medical facilities, which means passing through Israeli-controlled checkpoints. As-Sawiya’s girls’ school has large class sizes, but girls graduating have won national honors. The boys’ school is located across a highway that had been inaccessible to Palestinians, therefore a dirt road was built to the school.  However, before 2005, there was continual harassment of the boys by Israeli soldiers and settlers.  More than 100 children were arrested and many were injured by gunfire. At this same period, settlers damaged windows, chalkboards, walls, and gates of the school.
 

Under ground spring - major water source for village.

A village organizer, Arafat Abu-Rass, took us on a tour on the land across from the village proper that was beyond the “safety line,” a dirt road connecting the hilltop Israeli settlements, which was “off limits” for Palestinians because it is “too close” to the settlement.

Before we reached the “off limits” land, Arafat showed us an ancient water source, a natural spring deep in the ground dating back 5,000 years that was still in use during the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate.

In the late 1990s, this spring was taken by the settlement. Two years ago, however, through legal action resulting in an Israeli court order, the village was able to regain access to the spring, which is their main water source. With less land for their use, because of land confiscation by the settlers, villagers have an even greater need for water on the land they still have.

MPTers observe the pipes carrying water to the village.

Their water needs exceed what they receive from their wells, and this spring is piped down the hill and under the highway. Therefore, to meet their needs, villagers are forced to buy expensive water from the Ariel settlement, illegally built on Palestinian land.

Arafat points out the hole drilled for tree poisoning

The construction of Israeli settlements in the area around As-Sawiya has led to a huge destruction of olive trees. The first settlement, built in 1982, destroyed many olive trees. Arafat showed us olive trees on the hilltop inside the area now off-limits for Palestinians where settlers had drilled holes in the trees and inserted poison, resulting in the death of groves of trees. Fig trees were also dead because of lack of cultivation due to lack of access. This year, the Israeli army only allowed villagers two days to access their land to harvest their olives in this area. During this time, the military supervised the villagers to prevent attacks by settlers. In actuality, the villagers needed a week to reach all of their trees, so many could not finish harvesting the olives on their own land.

Between 2000 and 2005, settler violence against Palestinians was ongoing. One woman was kicked and her olives and donkey taken. The donkey returned, but the olives did not!  Since 2005, there has been less violence, but on June 15, 2007, settlers of Ami Ad, a sector of the Shilo and Ele settlements, uprooted and stole 380 fifty-year-old olive trees from two Palestinian farmers. The farmers filed a complaint with the Nablus District Coordination Office [DCO Israeli], who sent a delegation to the land, demanded proof of land ownership from one of the farmers, and then took him to the Israeli police station in Ramallah and kept him there until midnight.  Four days later, the Israeli DCO told the farmer that they had found 140 trees inside an unnamed Israeli settlement. They offered him compensation for the lost trees, but the farmer refused, insisting that all his trees should be brought back and replanted, and that the perpetrators should be put on trial. **

Settlers illegally harvesting olives from Palestinian trees.

Arafat pointed out the Rehelim settlement near Sawiya. In 2005, this settlement used Palestinian land as a place to dump their sewage. The Palestinians’ trees were surrounded by the sewage of settlers. Hilwe, Arafat’s mother, remembers planting trees in this waste flooded area when she was pregnant with her oldest son. Arafat showed us a video of his mother who, after the flood, waded through the filthy bodily wastewater to dig a diversion canal around the trees, many of which were dying. We had the chance to meet Hilwe, a strong Palestinian woman who has been attacked by Israeli settlers many times, and we were delighted to eat her tasty homemade bread and soup.

On our way, Arafat pointed out a checkpoint that is now in disuse. In 2002, a Palestinian sniper killed 14 soldiers and wounded another 13 at this checkpoint near Sawiya. The sniper was arrested and the checkpoint, located in a valley, was closed.

Both that morning and afternoon, we passed settlers from the Shilo settlement harvesting olives on land belonging to the Palestinian villages of Luban, Sawiya, and Qyriot. When David asked the settlers how they could believe the land was theirs, they claimed that they had bought the land. The settlers did not want their pictures taken, knowing that the photos could be used as evidence of their illegal activity, but we were able surreptitiously to take several pictures of them working.

Arafat confronts the settlers with their illegal actions.

Arafat spoke to the settlers, telling them that they had no right to be there.

Arafat works for the Ministry of Social Affairs, which deal with benefits for orphans, the poor, and widows. During the sanctions against the Hamas government, when Israeli did not release any Palestinian taxes, he was not paid for ten months. Arafat also does freelance photo-journalism for Palestinian Agricultural Relief. The work that he does outside of his regular job in organizing and telling the story of his village is unpaid work. He has purchased an unfinished house, which he is trying to complete so that internationals can come there to live and work on development projects with the village. We were pleased to meet and spend the afternoon with this dedicated Palestinian.

We traveled to As-Sawiya on the 19th anniversary of Yasser Arafat’s declaration of independence for Palestine announced in Tunis, Tunisia.  At this time in 1988, the PNC (Palestinian National Council) was formed.  We heard our host’s longing for true independence for Palestine, with a right of return for refugees, the recognition of the 1967 borders, and the recognition of the state of Israel.

*   Information for this report is from Arafat Abu-Rass, a local organizer from the village, and from an           

            International Women’s Peace Service [IWPS] report  http://www.iwps.info/en/articles.php?ud=752 ,

            2005.

     **    http://www.poica.org/editor/case_studies/view.php?recordID=1112  [Applied Research Institute –         

     Jerusalem]

    ***   Look for more pictures and information:   www.flickr.com,  under Abu Rass

   ****  There has been much written on Sawiya as is evident with a Google search.