I was sent by the Common Board of Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ (UCC) and the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, and Church World Service, to participate in the World Council of Churches’ (WCC’s) Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The views contained herein are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the Common Board of Global Ministries, the UCC or the WCC. If you would like to publish the information contained here or disseminate it further, please first contact the EAPPI Coordination (eappi-co@jrol.com) for permission. Thank you.******
Photo: Jayyous North Agricultural Gate, open 6:45-7:30 a.m. Left shadow: my teammate Patricia taking the photo. Right shadow: me, seated on a rock, watching the soldier watching me.
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I’m from New York City, an urbean person if ever there was one. So I had no real idea about what living in a rural setting, in Palestine or anywhere else, could possibly be like. It never occurred to me to think about the relationship between agriculture and the occupation of Palestine.
As a solidarity activist in the U.S., I was aware of dramatic things like house demolitions in Jerusalem and other urban neighborhoods; the appearance of Israeli settler communities on Palestinian lands (in defiance of international law), and even settler violence toward Palestinian property and people. I never thought about agriculture in terms of its place in the whole economy, and the relationship between the Wall and agriculture, and how that leads to strangling and limiting the Palestinian economy.
Until I came to Jayyous….
I live in a village where the unemployment rate is about 80 percent. Virtually the entire village of a little less than 3,000 inhabitants are farmers. And, because of the Wall/Separation Barrier presumably constructed to protect the inhabitants of the settler community of Zufin – constructed on appropriated, confiscated, uncompensated Jayyousi land – the farmers are not able to farm that land, the basic source of livelihood for the entire village.
The Barrier cut off 8600 dunums (one acre equals approximately four dunums) of Jayyousi land when it originally was constructed here. Early in 2009, approximately 750 dunums were “returned” when the Wall was rerouted slightly; and we heard just at the beginning of last week that the Israeli High Court of Justice handed down a decision, under consideration since 2006, that will “return” another 2,489 dunums to the people of Jayyous. This will live about 5,400 dunums still isolated behind the Wall – still the vast majority of these peoples’ land – along with their six wells. This is good news and bad news. Of course, some families in the community will have more access to some more of their land. On the other hand, to passively accept the decision also carries the implication that Israeli authorities have the right to make it: that is to accept the assumption that the owners of the land are not the owners, and that outsiders determine who has the right to it, including the right to give it away to another party. But that’s a longer story….
In order to be allowed to travel to their lands and farm them, the village residents must apply for permits to cross through the Barrier – in this area, actually a series of gates, electrified fences with sensors, trenches and razor wire coils. A permit may be granted for a few months at a time. One cannot apply for the permit to be renewed before the time is up, but only after the current permit has expired. If your permit expires at a critical time for planting or harvesting, if you’re lucky, you’ll get your new one before that season is over.
A permit is given to an individual, not a family. If one family member has a permit, he cannot ask others to help him when they have the time – they must each have their own permits. A farmer may apply for permits for family members or hired help during a critical planting or harvesting season, and may or may not get them, or may or may not get them for the requested period of time. Their vehicles must have permits. Their animals must have permits. Three trucks in Jayyous have permits to cross the Barrier at this time, as I heard in August in a presentation in Jerusalem by Ray Dolfin of the United Nations Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
One is routinely denied a permit for:
(1) any “security history” in the family – if anyone in the family is, or has been, in prison, been arrested, been investigated, been questioned, been observed at a demonstration, etc. In practice, this means that permits are granted largely to the elderly.
(2) if one cannot prove ownership, even though the land has been in the family for many generations or many hundreds of years. In rural territory in which land is handed down automatically from father to son, and which has had at least three different occupiers in the past 100 years -- Ottoman, British, Israeli -- each with its own system of land registration, producing an updated clear title to a designated piece of land can be a challenge.
3) if one cannot prove ownership of at least a minimum required amount of land. In this culture, extended families work the land together as a unit. The specific parcel to which an individual may be able to claim title can be quite small, perhaps not sufficient to merit a permit allowing him access to it.
As a consequence of the permit system, about 120 persons, or about 10 percent of the approximately 1200 recognized landowners in the village, have access to their land (this according to the Mayor of Jayyous, Abu Taher.) Children under 16 years of age, the age at which a person must acquire and carry an official identity card, may join their parents to work the family’s fields as long as they have birth certificates to show at the gate, proving that they are under 16. Young teenagers are frequently denied passage through the gates on the grounds that they might be pretending to be younger than they are. And these people can enter and exit through three specified agricultural gates, which are open only at certain hours.
People enter and exit only through three specified agricultural ages, which are open only at certain hours of the day. The gates are “staffed” by Israeli soldiers, firearms slung over their shoulders, who open and close the gates, examine id’s and permits, check the contents of trucks, donkey carts, containers, and determine whether or not to allow Palestinians to pass.
And this is where we come in. We monitor the traffic through the gates. We note the hours the gates opened and closed, and whether or not they correspond to the published hours; we observe who comes through, we observe the behavior of the soldiers, we see who is, and is not, allowed through the gates and sometimes try to help, if it’s possible. We call the District Humanitarian Hotline if the gate is not opened for waiting farmers who have arrived on time. We call Machsom Watch[i] if we observe abuse, or if someone seems unfairly to have been denied entry. We’re told that our presence, the soldiers’ knowledge that internationals are watching them, sometimes helps. We document. We talk to the people. We tell the stories of what we see and hear.
Each time it’s my turn to monitor one of “our” gates, I’m struck again: these people are going through this process, lined up here, being checked through a gate by armed soldiers, sometimes harassed, physically assaulted or simply forced back – in order to have access to their own land, to do their daily work for their daily bread.
Jayyous’ experience is one example of the strangulation of the agricultural sector of the Palestinian economy, and is a vivid illustration of the effect of the Wall on the fertile region of the northern part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. If people cannot work their land, they cannot make a living. Jayyous, like other villages in this area, is becoming impoverished and the population is declining. Young people who cannot grow up to work their parents’ land (the young are frequently automatically classified as potential “security risks,” thus denied permits) may go to study if they can afford it – and then return to Jayyous, where there are no jobs for them. The pressure is very great to leave, to emigrate. This is an enormous and touchy issue for people here in this extremely traditional, family-centered rural culture. Young families are caught between the desire and the social pressure to remain, and the need to feed themselves and their children.
The agricultural sector is further affected by total Israeli control of the water supply, and by the requirement that vehicles with produce also require permission to enter Israel – the only place to which Palestinians can export their crops. If they cannot harvest at the right time, if they cannot get across the border to market at the right time, they don’t sell their products. Without profit from sales, they cannot buy seeds for new planting, feed for animals… the cycle goes on. The agricultural sector contracts further.
I’ve written previously about our twice-weekly task of early-morning monitoring at the Qalqilya North Terminal, a Green Line crossing point where Palestinians with permits to work in Israel must be checked through each day in order to get to their jobs.
A different side of our work is what I would call the pastoral task. This is being with the people: accompaniment, what we’re really here for. We visit people in the village, and listen to their stories. Particularly if there is an arrest or army activity in the village, we try to be there both to document and to try, in a very small way, to say to people that they are not alone, that someone sees what they are going through and cares about them.
And then we write, and speak, and do whatever we can to tell the stories we hear and share the experiences we witness.
The ubiquity of families with people in prison has hit me hard. Palestinians boys and young men are frequently arrested for any form of “resistance” – from the obvious, like throwing stones at the Israeli Defense Forces, to participating in demonstrations, or often just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nearly every family has, or has had, someone in prison.
Where I come from, there is at least some stigma or shame associated with prison – even though I know, and many are fully aware, that being in prison may have a great deal to do with social status, race, poverty, etc. But here, it’s a part of life. People who are arrested are grieved; people who return from prison are celebrated – by the whole village.
Just being present, and then telling the story, is probably the most important part of our job.
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[i] “Machsom” is a Hebrew word meaning “Checkpoint.” Machsom Watch is an Israeli human rights organization, comprised largely of women, whose volunteers observe and document the experiences of Palestinians at checkpoints, whether internally in the Occupied Palestinian Territories or between Palestine and Israel.
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