So I'm back in Palestine this summer and have been here for just over a week – I haven't quite kicked the cold that I caught the week before I left so that's left me feeling a bit low on energy. But I think I'll soon be fine for the remaining month that I'm here for.
I'm serving with CPT in Hebron for the first couple of weeks as staffing is low in Palestine at the moment and CPT decided to pull all the volunteers to Hebron until more arrive and we can return to At-Tuwani village. Our Italian partner organization, Operation Dove has been staffing the At-Tuwani project by themselves during this time. This coming week I'll be able to head down to At-Tuwani for a couple of days and I'm looking forward to that!
We've had one crazy day in the Hebron region so far – please take a look at video and the release below. Really it's maddening and also slightly disturbing that the Israeli administration in the West Bank decided that it was necessary to rip up irrigation pipes for vegetable fields. And part of me wonders, for how many weeks and days have the Israeli civil administration authorities (in control in the region of the Baqa'a Valley where these incidents occurred) driven through the valley on the Israeli settler bypass road that bisects it....and looked at how large the tomato plants were. Did they keep track of when the plants were first transplanted in the fields? Did someone flip the calendar in their office ahead a couple of months to the date when the tomato plants would be around 2 weeks from being ripe and ready to be picked for market...and schedule an 'operation' for the Israeli border police? I do really wonder, if it is the case – that's evil.
And tear gas does definitely not improve a cough.
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Israeli border police destroyed several Palestinian fields in Al Baqa'a Valley just east of Hebron on July 6, 2010, directly impacting the livelihood of more than one hundred Palestinians.
Landowners said that Israeli border police and the Israeli District Coordinating Office (DCO), responsible for the coordination of Palestinian civilian affairs in Area C, began implementing the destruction at around 8:30am. Israeli authorities, with the assistance of hired labor, damaged fields of vegetables and destroyed the irrigation systems of those fields.
When international peace activists from Christian Peacemaker Teams arrived in the area at 11:30am, about 20 workers hired by the Israeli border police and DCO had cut and disposed of the irrigation pipes laid in two fields. The fields each measured 10 dunams (approximately 40 acres) and included tomatoes, eggplant, cauliflower, and beans. In addition to dismantling the irrigation pipes, the workers also cut the twines that were holding up each tomato plant. A matriarch of the family, Aratiki Karim, said, "These tomatoes are for the kids, for the babies, to feed the kids and to sell them to buy other food for the kids." The Palestinian farmers had planted the tomato plants nearly three months ago and the tomatoes were only 20 days from being ready for market.
The border police, DCO, and hired laborers then moved to another field further along Route 60 in the Al Baqa'a Valley to perform the same procedure. The border police blocked the junction between the residential zone and the nearby fields, shooting tear gas and sound bombs to prevent Palestinians from going to the area where the hired workers were removing more irrigation pipes. Several women and children suffered from tear gas inhalation and required hospitalization.
Badran Mohammed Jabber, looking out onto his destroyed fields uttered in exasperation, "I have spent 43 years under the Israeli reign of terror. I have lived my life in fear, I never know what the Israelis will do tomorrow. They have destroyed my land, they have destroyed my life, these fields are my life."
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This is not the first time Israeli authorities have destroyed crops and irrigation equipment in the Al Baqa'a Valley. See the following links for further reading on demolitions in the Baqa'a Valley:
*"Whose water is it anyway?" http://www.cpt.
*"This Used to be Paradise" http://groups.
*"Fight for survival in the West Bank" http://english.
河水永遠是相同的，可是每一剎那又都是新的。．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．
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