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.
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Photos by Kathinka Minzinga
Olive cultivation is as old as history itself in this part of the world, well-known in biblical times and before. The agricultural lands of the West Bank, as they are in the late fall of every year, are consumed with olive-harvesting these days. Although it has been a dry year and this harvest is not expected to be good, it is nonetheless one of the more important income-producing times for the olive-growers of Jayyous and other agricultural towns and villages, and every family has kicked into full-bore harvest mode.
If a farmer with a permit to access lands behind the Separation Barrier can afford it, this is the time of year he will hire extra hands and seek permits for them many weeks in advance. Additional family members who are eligible make every effort to get a permit in this season; larger numbers of women are seen crossing through the gates. Carts, wagons, trucks carry extra water and food for the pickers. Schoolchildren spend their weekends in the fields with their parents, aunts, uncles and cousins. The number of people seeking to pass through the agricultural gates may double during these weeks.
It seems the worst possible season in which to make life unnecessarily difficult for a farmer. So our EA team was shocked and annoyed to discover that our South Agricultural Gate had been closed – “permanently,” according to the Humanitarian Hotline – about a week before the start of the harvest. Further, the times that our more-frequently-used North Gate is open for the farmers to come and go, after a long period of regularity, suddenly have become unpredictable. (Of course, the Jayyousis are annoyed as well, but perhaps less shocked – “It’s not the first time,” they keep reminding us when we seek to pin down the gate times and express our sympathetic distress.)
We became aware of the rapidly-changing opening and closing times for the North Gate when we received a call from Abu Azzam, our landlord and key contact here as well as the town’s largest landowner, one evening at about 6:30. He was waiting atop his tractor with a long line of exiting farmers who had been waiting for soldiers to show up at the usual time, 6:15 p.m., to open the gate, check permits, perform cursory searches of vehicles, and allow the farm workers and their families to go home. We place calls to the Humanitarian Hotline and to Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch, and hurry down to the gate. The soldiers finally arrive around 6:45 and begin to check people out. When we asked them, at the end of the shift, why they were so late, they informed us that the gate time has changed to a later hour in order to give the farmers a longer workday during this busy season. Nice… except it makes no sense. This time of year it is dark by 6:00 p.m., so the “extra time” is wasted while tired, dirty, hungry olive harvesters sit in line in the dark and get bitten by mosquitoes.
In fact, the village leadership has made a formal request that the gate both open and close earlier during the harvest season, so the farmers can take better advantage of the daylight, and a request also has been made that the South Gate be re-opened.
Over the next few days, we make several calls to try to confirm the correct opening and closing times for the North Gate. One day we are clearly told that it will open at 6:15 in the morning, and arrive to monitor at that hour to find the farmers lined up impatiently – the gate has not opened. When the soldiers arrive and open the gate at 6:45, they remind us that this is “the usual time” for this gate to open… except we and the farmers had been told that “the usual time” had been changed. So we come back the next morning at “the usual time,” to discover that the soldiers had begun checking people through at 6:15. We call the Humanitarian Hotline again. We call Machsom Watch, who calls the Humanitarian Hotline again. We call the International Committee for the Red Cross, who calls the local Civil Administration. We call again, and three times in a row get the same series of confirmed times for the morning, midday and evening openings and closings.
For the next three days in a row, the times differ for at least one of the three daily gate openings. The farmers fume; so do we. One afternoon, my Swedish teammate, Patricia, arrives for her monitoring stint at the time we’ve been told farmers will be allowed to exit, to find the gate standing wide open but with no farmers to be seen. Questioning the soldiers on duty, she is told that the gate opened a full half hour before the announced time, and that the soldiers intend to close it a half hour early – but no one has informed the farmers, who are still picking olives. Patricia whips out her cell phone to phone Abu Azzam (he’s in his own field, picking olives, his cell phone on his belt), as well as the usual lineup of authorities and hotlines. Then, as the soldiers approach the gate, Patricia stands in the opening with a calm, firm look on her face, keeping the gate from closing until she sees a line of tractors, donkeys, carts and wagons appearing over the hill. She waves. Farmers wave back. The gate remains open until every farmer is checked out. Patricia is offered a ride home on the back of the donkey belonging to the last farmer to exit.
Meanwhile, another farmer asks someone from our team to come with him one morning to the South Gate, the one we’ve been told repeatedly is now closed “permanently,” to see, if he and others will be allowed through. “They can’t close the gate during the olive harvest!” We are skeptical – there have been no soldiers (or farmers) arriving at the South Gate each time we have monitored there for the previous two or three weeks. But I go, and find about a dozen farmers and family members, along with donkeys and carts, harvesting buckets and bags, and a tractor waiting at the gate.
To my surprise, at just about “the usual time” the gate historically has opened, a jeep with a double contingent of soldiers arrives. (There normally are four soldiers at our agricultural gates; eight emerged from the jeep on this occasion.) They walk straight to the gate… and line up in front of it, without moving. I slowly approach the gate, ask if someone speaks English and, when a soldier answers that he does, asks him if they will be opening the gate. The answer is “No.”
“But why not? This is the regular time. Why are you here, if you’re not opening the gate?”
"This gate is closed permanently."
“Then why are you here?”
“Because they (gesturing at the waiting farmers on the other side of the gate) are here.”
“But they’re here to pick their olives. They’re here to get to their lands. Why did you come?”
“They can go pick olives somewhere else. This gate is closed permanently.”
“So why are you here?”
“Because they are here.”
That, it seems, is precisely the issue. The Palestinians are here.
