Oasis of Peace - Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom

A couple of days ago while on a short break from the work in At-Tuwani, I took the opportunity to visit a village in Israel called Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom.  This village is located half way between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, on land give for the village by Latrun Monastery.  The village was started 30 years ago as an intentional mixed Palestinian-Arab and Jewish village (all with Israeli citizenship) to demonstrate the coexistence between Jews and Palestinians by developing a community based on mutual acceptance, respect and cooperation.  Democratically governed and owned by its members, the community is not affiliated with any political party or movement.

The village gives expression to it's vision through programming like it's bilingual, binational school (first Jewish-Palestinians bilingual children's educational program in Israel) and the school for peace (conducts outreach education through encounter work between Arabs and Jews).

Please feel free to watch this short video about the village if you are interested...better than any words I'd find to describe it!

There is a Canadian Friends of WAS/NS group which has been working on touring an exhibit of art from last year's summer camp program in the village across Canada as part of raising awareness about the village and the programs that are offered there.  The board of Canadian Friends is currently based in Calgary and I have been involved with their efforts in the past half a year - and so I'm glad that I took the opportunity to visit the village while here.

Follow-up on the Quartet and Electricity in At-Tuwani

Thanks to all of you who responded to the urgent action that the CPT At-Tuwani team released the other week after the Israeli military delivered a demolition order to the newly constructed electricity pylons in the village.

We have heard back from the Quartet office - they are concerned about the situation and are working on it.  And just the other day the Mayor of At-Tuwani had a call from the Quartet office saying that the villagers have verbal permission from the Israeli authorities to bring electricity down.  Of course verbal permission is not as good as a written permit....however today construction workers are beginning to string the wires on the pylons down from the next town to the north!

Boys on Wheels

The new paved roads in At-Tuwani have opened a whole new realm of play for the young boys in the village.  Anything with wheels is used to zoom down the hills...from bikes and rollerblades to bits of a broken skateboard, and a roller skate attached to the bottom of a plastic crate.  Here are some photos!

The clinic in the village is still only open one day a week, through CARE international, so it is probably a good thing that the kids haven't attempted to stand on their wheeled toys as they ride down the hills.

Encouragement for the Quartet needed

URGENT ACTION
28 July 2009
At-Tuwani Urgent Action: Demand that Quartet pressure Israeli Occupying Forces to revoke demolition order for electricity pylons

On Tuesday, 28 July, members of the Israeli District Coordinating Office (DCO) – the branch of the Israeli army that administers civilian affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)- issued a demolition order to the newly constructed electricity pylons in the village of At-Tuwani, located in the South Hebron hills.

On 19 March 2009, Tony Blair, special middle east envoy of the Quartet, visited At-Tuwani (see AT-TUWANI: At-Tuwani hosts former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair to address Israeli occupation and violence in the southern West Bank). During his visit, Blair assured villagers that oral permission had been given by the DCO to carry out the electricity construction work.

On 25 May 2009, the DCO entered the village of At-Tuwani and ordered villagers to halt construction work on new electricity pylons in the village. No written orders were delivered. (see AT-TUWANI URGENT ACTION: Demand that Israeli occupying forces allow At-Tuwani to bring electricity into their village).

On 26 May 2009, Saber Hreini, head of the At-Tuwani Village Council, wrote to Blair requesting written permission for the electricity work to continue.

We hope that in your role as envoy for the Quartet, you can be of assistance to us in contacting the Israeli government with the hopes of procuring written permission for these projects. We fear without written permission our problems will continue.

There was no response from Blair, as the representative of the Quartet, to concerns of the villagers when the DCO ordered a halt to the construction work on the electricity pylons.

ACTION TO TAKE
Contact:
Stefan Szetesi
Private Sector Development Officer
sszetesi@quartetrep.org

and

Olivia Otecosky
otecosky@quartetrep.org

Office of the Quartet Representative
Telephone: +972 2 633 3333

And ask them to put pressure on the Israeli government to revoke the demolition orders on the electricity pylons and give permission for construction to continue on the work to bring electricity to the village of At-Tuwani.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
The Quartet is the body consisting of representatives of the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, and Russia responsible for facilitating peace talks between the Israel government and the Palestinian Authority. Tony Blair is currently the special envoy for the Quartet to the Middle East.

Currently At-Tuwani receives only four hours electricity a day, supplied by a diesel generator operated and paid for by the villagers. The illegal Israeli settlement and outposts of Ma’on, Havat Ma’on, and Avigail, located within 2km of At-Tuwani, are supplied by electricity from the main Israeli power grid.

Israel, as the occupying power*, is responsible for the general welfare of the occupied Palestinian civilian population. Whilst providing electricity and water to Israeli settlements and outposts in the occupied Palestinian territories they fail to supply these basic services to Palestinian towns and villages. In this most recent move they are now threatening to demolish the villagers attempts to improve their living conditions.

* International Humanitarian law (1907 Hague Regulation and 1949 Fourth Geneva Conventions) obliges the occupying power to ensure the welfare of the occupied population.

Israeli military accompanies children but harasses older brothers who are shepherds

As I mentioned in a previous entry, I am on team with CPT in At-Tuwani during the summer camp that the village has hosted for the past 8 years for children from the south Hebron hills region. Children from several neighbouring villages are coming to the camp in At-Tuwani, which is lasting for two weeks this year.

When CPT first opened a project in the village of At-Tuwani (partnering with and Italian peace organization, Operation Dove) one of the tasks that we were asked to do was to accompany Palestinian children from a neighbouring village to and from school in At-Tuwani. The elementary school aged children needed accompaniment because Israeli settlers would attack them on roads/paths that they took to and from school. Some of you may remember that when we began doing the accompaniment of the children we also experienced first hand the violence of the Israeli settlers that live in the area with several international volunteers injured and hospitalized after settler attacks.

Israeli peace groups pressured the Israeli government to protect the Palestinian children on their journey and for the past 5 years the Israeli military was ordered to accompany the children to and from school. CPTers and the Doves were asked by the parents of the children to monitor this escort and we have noted many instances of when the Israeli military failed in their task of getting the children to and from school safely and on-time. Here is a report about the military accompaniment during a previous school year.

The Mayor of At-Tuwani coordinated with the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli military for the children to also receive accompaniment to At-Tuwani for the summer camp. Last year there were many problems with this accompaniment and this year the team decided to monitor the accompaniment more closely, which includes being present with the children at their home village.

One morning this past week my teammate Jessica and I walked with the children from their small cave village of Tuba to the location where they meet the Israeli soldiers who accompany them to At-Tuwani. There didn't seem to be any problems with the accompaniment this morning and so Jessica and I returned to Tuba to begin the second part of our day - accompanying shepherds grazing their flocks of sheep.

As we got back to Tuba we noticed an Israeli settler vehicle on a hilltop close to the valley where the shepherds often graze their sheep. After confirming with family members that the shepherds were in fact in that area, Jessica and I took off as fast as we could to reach the shepherds. By the time that we got to them, an Israeli military jeep had arrived and one of the two shepherds (boys aged around 16years) was being detained.

A month ago both of these shepherds had been arrested and told that if they were caught on any of the hills near the Israeli settlement of Ma'on that they would be jailed. However the hills around Tuba (some of them close to Ma'on) are private Palestinian land on which their families have grazed their flocks for decades if not centuries. The sheep need to eat and there is no money to buy food to feed them, so the shepherds continue to go out on the hills.

Soon after we got to the area where the soldiers were detaining the shepherd, Jessica noted that the military jeep had the same number as the one who had accompanied the children to summer camp in At-Tuwani. Jessica went up and asked the soldiers why they accompanied the children to summer camp but then came out to harasses the brothers of those same children?

After some time the Israeli police arrived (and an Israeli settler had lengthy conversations with both the soldiers and the police), and the shepherd was told to come the next day to the Israeli police station. Thankfully at the Israeli police station in Hebron the shepherd boy was not arrested. But is was for him a long and expensive journey to come from Tuba at the whim of the Israeli police.

Palestinians have the right to both an education and to access their land, and the Israeli military is responsible for protecting those rights.  It is not acceptable to work on protecting the access to education without also working on protecting all the other rights of the Palestinians living in the region.  The irony in all of this is that a most obvious and easy path to protecting the rights of Palestinians living in the region would be to stop Israeli settler violence against Palestinians and stop settlement expansion.

Israeli Military Delivers Stop Work Orders

Below is a release that the CPT team put out last week.....

Israeli Military Delivers Stop Work Orders on Nine Palestinian Structures; Palestinians Protest Nonviolently and Military Strikes a Child, Arrests Palestinian

20 July 2009

At-Tuwani – In the afternoon of 20 July, the Israeli District Coordinating Office (DCO) delivered stop work orders for nine Palestinian structures around the village of At-Tuwani. These orders were delivered to seven new houses, one cave, and one cistern in the area. The Israeli military sometimes delivers a stop work order to a structure prior to a demolition order; and after a demolition order is delivered, the Israeli military may then demolish the structure. While the DCO and Israeli soldiers delivered the stop work orders, Palestinian children and adults gathered in the area, protesting the delivery of the stop work orders. One Palestinian admonished the DCO and soldiers to deliver demolition orders to the illegal buildings in the Israeli outpost of Havat Ma’on, which continues to expand. Palestinian children surrounded each house and chanted loudly, attempting to make it difficult for the DCO to leave the orders at each house and making it difficult for the DCO and soldiers to use their radio and phones. In addition, Palestinians sat in protest in front of the military and DCO and prayed together on their land.

While delivering the stop work orders, a member of the DCO struck a small child and an Israeli soldier shoved a Palestinian civilian to the ground. In addition, Israeli police arrested a Palestinian man who was present to protest the stop work orders. He is supposedly charged with “threatening soldiers” and remains in the Kiryat Arba police station.

One of the houses had already been destroyed in the night of 16 July (see release: New Palestinian House and Olive Tree Destroyed in the Night.) The Palestinian family suspects the house had been demolished by Israeli settlers from the Israeli settlement of Ma’on or the illegal outpost of Havat Ma’on, and the family began rebuilding the home the next day.

Despite Israeli settler and soldier harassment to discourage the growth of the village of At-Tuwani, Palestinians remain committed to asserting their right to develop and build their privately owned Palestinian land.

Anything is possible

Well there have been quite a few changes in the village of At-Tuwani since the last time I was here in the summer of 2007 (and most everyone remembers me and when I was here last!).  Children have grown, new babies have been born, and land that was not accessed for a while because of settler attacks is now being used.

For me however the most striking change is the new construction in the village, and since I came back, on the surrounding land owned by the villagers.  

The planning system in the West Bank, implemented by the Israeli Civil Administration, is one of the cogs in the wheel of the Israeli occupation.  As with the other bureaucratic systems, the planning system operates on two distinct tracks: one for Jews living in Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the other for Palestinians.

In 2008, the Office of the Quartet (EU, US, UN and Russia) Representative declared that 14 master plans will be granted for 14 Palestinian villages.  At-Tuwani is one of these villages.  The Office of the Quartet Representative claims that the approval of these master plans will facilitate in the developing, building and upgrading of schools, clinics, and other facilities within these villages.  

The area covered by the master plan for At-Tuwani does not include the entire village however, and construction in the area outside of the master plan is considered illegal and faces the continued threat of demolition.  The village's new cistern is outside of the planning area, as is the new mosque, and the mayor's new house (previous house demolished in 2003).  As well, there are restrictions on building only one structure in the village plot owned by each family in the master plan area.

However since the release of the master plan for At-Tuwani at least 10 houses/structures have been built or existing houses have been added on to, which means that expanding extended families can have smaller sub-families move out into a new house.  And families from Yatta that want to move back to Tuwani can.

All the main roads in Tuwani are paved now and 4 new rooms are being added to the school which will be able to accommodate students up to grade 10 beginning this fall (before students had to go to a larger town after finishing grade 6).  This is especially important for girls in the area as many of them are not able to go to school past grade 6 because of the need to go to another town, and families don't have the money to send them.  

Another new project for the village is that they received permission from the Palestinian Authority to build the infrastructure to bring electricity down from Yatta.  Although the Israeli military stopped the villagers from putting up the electricity pylons in the last month, the villagers have resumed putting them up.  

All of this brings new life and hope to the village.  Perhaps this picture of boys from the village performing the dabka, a traditional dance, during the 2 week long summer camp depicts the energy in the village (despite the heat!)

And they continue to resist the Israeli occupation and harassment by settlers and the army by using creative nonviolent tactics.  The day I arrived in the village we were asked to go to the top of a hill near the village to accompany someone building something up there on land they own.  We were a bit confused at first, but of course went up there.  And the next day again we were asked to go up to the area and when a truck arrived in the late afternoon and delivered a load of cement blocks we started to understand more clearly.  The following day the villagers began construction in earnest on 6 new houses, and when the Israeli Civil Administration officer came by to tell the families to stop building as they didn't have construction permits, more people came out from the village to speed up the construction.  Depsite one house being destroyed in the night (see CPT release) the families will continue to work on these houses.

Driving back to the village from the construction site of one of the new houses with the family building it, I asked....so when do you think that this road from At-Tuwani to Jinba (another small village further south right next to the Green Line) will be paved?  And the answer was “we hope some day.  We talked for many years of having the roads in At-Tuwani paved, and look they are, so anything is possible.”

Information on the Master plan available from ARIJ   – The Israeli policies in area (C): Silent Transfer of the Palestinian Population 12 Oct 2008

In Palestine Again

During my summer break from my part-time job at Project Ploughshares Calgary I will be serving for a month on the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) project in the village of At-Tuwani (village in the south Hebron hills part of the West Bank).

Although the CPT team does have limited internet access in the village now, I will probably do most of my writing off-line and upload my posts every 7-9 days when I leave the village for a day off.

So please check back here in a week or so!

PS.  For those of you who don't know - I am currently still a reservist with CPT (expected to serve on a CPT project for a short period of time once a year), I was a former full-time volunteer from 2003-2006 with CPT working on the organizations projects in Hebron and At-Tuwani in Palestine.  For more information about CPT please check the organization's website at www.cpt.org