Head of Family and grandson 

This past week, Michigan Peace Team members Martha and Brenna spent two nights in Susiya, a small village in the very south of the West Bank, in an area known as the “Southern Hebron Hills.” They slept in the tents of a family who is trying to hold onto the little land that they have left, after having been evicted from their homes to make way for illegal Israeli settlements, and having their new homes repeatedly demolished. International groups, including MPT, have been asked by the local organizer of the region’s Palestinian nonviolent committee to stay in villages a few nights a week in order to maintain a continual presence of human rights observers in the area.  

In order to understand our role as international nonviolent activists in Susiya, it is important to know the village’s history. According to the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), an organization that has been in the West Bank since 1995 and in the South Hebron Hills since 2004, Palestinian families first came to Susiya in the 1830's to live in the numerous spacious caves throughout the area. In the generations that followed, these families developed a unique culture and way of life based on their sheep herding, agriculture, and cave-dwelling, which they try to continue today.

  Israeli Susya Settlement

Until 1985, most of the Palestinian community of Susiya was concentrated in an area next to an archeological site that contains Byzantine, Roman and Hellenistic ruins and the ruins of an ancient Jewish synagogue. In the early 1980's, Israel took control of the archeological site, and in 1986, expelled the 60 Palestinian families (about 1,000 people) living nearby. Israeli settlers demolished every dwelling of the evicted Palestinians. The families spread out in all directions: some of them went to live in Yatta – a nearby town, and others went to their lands located between their old Susiya village and the then-three-year-old Israeli settlement of “Susya,” built near the archeological site. The Palestinian families were thus living on lands that rightfully belonged to them, but were sandwiched between two areas now controlled by Israelis who wanted them out.

 Cooking Dinner 

Since 1985, Palestinians have not been granted permission to build permanent structures on the land where they are now settled. When they have tried to build homes or even refurbish caves to make them suitable for habitation, the Israeli military has demolished these dwellings. According to Mohammed, the father of the family with whom Martha and Brenna stayed, such demolitions have happened four times in the last twenty years (once in 1990, once in 1996, and twice in 2001). During one of these expulsions, Israeli soldiers herded the Palestinians into trucks and dumped them some 15 kilometers to the north.

The mid-1990's saw the spread of Jewish farms and illegal Israeli “outposts” in the region, all established in areas previously seized by the Army. (Note–according to international law, all Israeli settlements are illegal, as they are settling on militarily occupied land. Some settlements, like these outposts, are illegal even according to Israeli law.) The ongoing persecution of the Palestinians by the Israeli settlers, together with the continual seizure of more Palestinian land by the Israeli Army, clearly reflects a policy aimed at cleansing the area of its Palestinian population.

The year 2001 witnessed extreme and repeated acts of destruction and violence by the Israeli Army and Israeli settlers, such as the forceful eviction of Palestinians in the Susiya region; destruction of Palestinian dwellings, fields, olive orchards, and livestock (bulldozed and buried alive); and the bulldozing of even the emergency tents supplied by the Red Cross.

Tent for eating and sleeping

Although the Israeli High Court of Justice (HJC) in 2001 ruled that such expulsions were illegal, and followed its ruling with an interim injunction allowing the return of the Palestinian residents until another decision was issued by the court, nothing has occurred since then to actually benefit the Palestinians. This interim injunction continues to prevent Palestinians from building on their own land. Thus, Palestinians have been forced to live winter and summer in tents and shacks.  

The State of Israel now claims the Palestinians are in fact trespassing  on their own lands - -because, as the State argues, following their eviction from the old Susiya village in 1986, they have built their homes without obtaining the necessary building permits from the Israeli District Coordination Office’s (DCO) “Sub-committee for Construction Oversight.” They claim, now, that these homes must therefore be demolished. 

On June 6, 2007, the HCJ held a hearing on the Susiya case, during which they required that the villagers re-submit a required building plan to the DCO to obtain building permits. However, it has been impossible for Palestinians to make such a plan, since the Army has continually forbidden surveyors access to the land. Thus, between the court, the military, and the settlers, the state of Israel has made it impossible for Palestinians to build homes on their own land.

Family homes

Israeli settlers persistently “encourage” Palestinians to leave Susiya, using scare tactics and other means, because the Palestinian presence prevents the settlers from connecting their settlement with the site of the ancient synagogue. Settlers have blocked off the old Palestinian road that linked the village to the town of Yatta with an electric fence, so no Palestinian vehicles – even ambulances – have a direct route to the town. The settlers’ aggressive behavior over the years has been well-documented: the beating of local Palestinian residents; the beating and killing of local residents’ animals; the destruction of residents’ home, property, and belongings; the poisoning of land and animals; the illegal appropriation of Palestinian land; and continued menacing and verbal threats and harassment against Palestinian residents. In the past few months, several human rights workers have also been harassed and attacked.

  Isa

As Palestinians are continually denied permits to build, settlers grab more land. In June and July, human rights workers caught settlers building fences and water pipes on Palestinian land to irrigate the Israeli settlement. The military has declared this land a “Special Security Area,” and has forbidden Palestinians from using it. However, the police have allowed the Israeli settlers to continue working, claiming that it was not their job to settle land disputes, and that the Palestinians need to wait until the court decides whose land it is. Thus, in effect, the court delay is allowing Israeli settlers to build infrastructure that will establish their claim to the land (http://www.palsolidarity.org/ 7/23/07 and 8/28/07).

Last October, the Israeli Occupation Forces and settlers demolished about 40 acres of Palestinian olive groves. The trees were destroyed just before Susiya Palestinians could harvest their olives, following their Ramadan fasting. An economically starved area, the poverty-stricken Susiya residents depend on olives for income and consumption (www.palsolidarity.org, 9/12/07). 

MPT-ers Martha and Brenna had the task of being ready to try to prevent Palestinian families from getting hurt if attacked by Israeli settlers, to document such attacks with cameras/photographs, to make sure that settlers do not build on or cultivate land that belongs to Palestinians (or document it when they do), and try to prevent Israeli settlers and/or military from demolishing tent-homes in Susiya. Luckily, while they were in Susiya, there were no incidents. According to local residents, the likelihood of violent attacks by Israeli settlers is greatly diminished with the presence of international human rights observers.

Chaim

Still, the two women witnessed a bit of the hardship that the area Palestinians face every day. After traveling for 2.5 hours to At Tuwani, a small village south of Hebron, they were taken by van to Susiya. Their driver, Ahmed*, is a young father of three and a resident of Susiya. Since Ahmed is a Palestinian, he is not allowed to use the Israeli road, which would have enabled them to be at his village in about five minutes. Instead, they drove on rocky roads, over hills and valleys, for a total ride of about 25 minutes. Ahmed said that if he was caught driving on the Israeli road, he could be jailed, and his car would be confiscated and taken to the settlement.

Ahmed’s family, with whom we stayed, did not have access to regular electricity because of the lack of building permits. While there, MPT-ers met an Israeli electrician, Chaim*, who works with Tay’aush, a Palestinian-Israeli peace organization. Chaim hooked up a solar and wind-powered generator so that the family could have lights at night. As the sun sets at about 5:30 PM, it would be very difficult to function without any electricity whatsoever. 

Ahmed’s brother, Sami*, who is twenty-one years old, told us how much he loves this land. He is the youngest of eight children. However, he cannot find sustaining work in the West Bank, so he frequently and illegally crosses into Israel to work in agricultural fields – harvesting potatoes during the winter and lemons and oranges in the Spring. Sami often sleeps outside with his friends, sometimes getting up in the middle of the night to avoid discovery by the police. If Sami is caught, he will have to spend a few days or weeks in jail. If he is caught three times, he says, he will have to spend seven months in jail. He loves his family and he loves Palestine, but he may have to leave and live elsewhere (if he can get a visa) in order to find sustainable work.

Land behind road illegally confiscated 

On October 5^th, MPT members Brenna and Martha gathered for a demonstration with 40 Palestinian, Israeli, and international peace activists on land confiscated by the illegal Israeli settlement of Efrat from the village of Wadi a Nis, located on the outskirts of Bethlehem. The historical city of Bethlehem is being completely choked off by a vast system of illegal Israeli settlements, Israeli-only highways, and a 26-foot-high concrete wall. In Wadi a Nis, acres of grapes, pine trees, and other vegetation that once provided a livelihood to rural Palestinian families are now being cut off by a restricted road and soon will be encircled by a towering concrete wall. Martha had been at previous demonstrations in the village and has witnessed the advancement in road and wall construction. This time, she noticed the appearance of a large steel barrier gate. 

According to a July 7, 2007 front page article in Ha’aretz, a leading Israeli daily newspaper, most confiscated land for settlements actually goes unused by Israeli settlers.  According to the report, citing Civil Administration figures, only nine percent of the area under settlement jurisdiction has been built on.  Futhermore, the report stated that despite their huge unused land reserves, 90 percent of the settlements still exceed their boundaries, and about one-third of the territory they do use lies outside of their jurisdiction.** While some Israelis say such land confiscation is for their protection, illegal settlements are in actuality annexing more and more Palestinian land by cutting much beyond the Green Line, the internationally recognized 1967 border.

Demonstrators who walked on the confiscated land to face about 30 well-armed Israeli soldiers, some with riot gear, were commemorating the International Day of Nonviolence, recognized by the UN on October 2^nd, Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday. Demonstrators were asked to bring symbols of nonviolence. One woman from the Christian Peacemaker Teams read statements of Martin Luther King to the soldiers. An Israeli soldier grabbed the head of a Palestinian man who was talking to him and whispered defiantly into his ear. One can guess these were not words of endearment. Another Palestinian man spoke in English to the soldiers and to the demonstrators, emphasizing that our effort was completely nonviolent, and that violence has never lasted, no matter how long or with how many weapons. Another Palestinian man spoke to the group in Arabic while demonstrators sat on the ground and listened intently. Martha spotted the man who had lost a nearby grape vineyard and wondered at the pain in his heart. Soon after, the Palestinian leaders told us that the demonstration had ended for the day, but that the struggle would continue. The kind of discipline and organization displayed by Palestinian leaders is a manifestation of active nonviolence.

Did the soldiers listen to the message of nonviolence? They must have been glad for the quick end of yet another nonviolent demonstration. Hopefully some wondered at the legitimacy of their use of violence to protect land that was taken illegally and forcefully. What was evident from the day was the Palestinian commitment to nonviolence, both in individual actions and as part of an ongoing movement.

Outside sources for this article:

Christian Peacemaker Teams Archives (http://www.cpt.org/archives.php)

International Solidarity Movement (http://www.palsolidarity.org)

 *Some names have been changed to protect people’s identity

**"Settlers use just 9% of state-allocated West Bank Land,” by Amos Harel, Ha’aretz Correspondent, 7/7/07