How many must die on behalf of racist settlements
November 22, 2002

[] How many must die on behalf of racist settlements Metzer delegation to attend Jerusalem Saturday night Peace Now demo.
[] Amira Hass reports from Hebron,
1) Fear And Loathing
2) The Shuttered Houses On Holy Days
[] Mitzna victory a sign of hope but the tone still set by violence Gush Shalom statement issued just after the attack in Jerusalem
[] Head of Petach Tikva Yeshiva: Torah Forbids Unethical Behavior
[] Khirbet Yanun - transfer is what you don't see happening article by Gadi Algazi and Azmi Bdeir
[] [STOP PRESS] Irish human shield worker shot at in Jenin

[A week in between the violence, in which there were still small groups of peace activists harvesting - at the call of Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom (Rabbis for Human Rights). Others sat a whole day in court - to provide some counterbalance to overloud right-wing presence at another session of the Marwan Barghouti trial (at the call of Adv. Shammai Leibowitz). In Tel-Aviv Peace Now activists with the help of Gush Shalom maintained a daily vigil in front of the Defence Ministry - calling for Withdrawal Now. None of us came up with a more fitting answer in face of the actual and the announced house demolitions in Hebron under the pretext of prevention/revenge - as Sharon said "the opportunity which shouldn't be missed". None of us had the immediate vitality - but Amira Hass, who went there, spoke with the Palestinians in the threatened zone, and was physically attacked by settlers. We decided to include both her alarming articles, of Nov. 18 and 20, among the material which we selected. The article by Algazi and Bdeir, about Khirbet Yanun exposes another example of the underreported day to day violence paving the way for transfer.]

[] How many must die on behalf of racist settlements Metzer delegation to attend Jerusalem Saturday night Peace Now demo.

Another week of mourning and we ask ourselves:

HOW MANY DEATHS WILL IT TAKE TILL WE KNOW THAT WE MUST END THE OCCUPATION?
How many soldiers must die in defense of racist settlements?
How many citizens must die for a messianic nightmare?
How many innocent people must die in the circle of revenge?
You and Me can make a change!!!!!

This Shabbat - 23.11.02 at 20:00 - we will protest opposite the PM residence under the slogan:

We will be honored to host a delegation from Kibbutz Metzer and hear their message!!!
We will Salute Kibbutz Metzer's Determined Faith in Peace!!!!
Join us in our efforts! We need your help in handing out fliers throughout the city and in enlisting all efforts in the cause fo the struggle for peace.
If you can help, please call Shiri : 02-5660648 or 054-687539 or send an e-mail to shiri@peacenow.org.il
Peace Now daily protest vigils in front of the PM residence continue

[] Amira Hass reports from Hebron
1) Fear And Loathing
Ha'aretz Monday, Nov. 18

HEBRON - Every weekend, including this past Friday, at around 5 P.M., soldiers take up positions on the roof of the home of Hussam Jaber in Wadi Nasara in the eastern part of Hebron. The three-story home is located on a narrow street that turns southward from the "worshipers' way" from the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba to the Tomb of the Patriarchs. The entire wadi, the hills that surround it, the houses of the neighborhood, the grapevines and the olive and peach groves spread beneath the roof like a relief map.

On the railing around the roof the soldiers set up a floodlight ("At our expense," notes a member of the family) that illuminates the wadi. This happens every Friday and every Saturday, to ensure the safety of the many Jewish worshipers who walk the kilometer or so between Kiryat Arba and the old city of Hebron.

"On Fridays and Saturdays we don't go out," relates a neighborhood resident last weekend. "Because of the many Jewish settlers that go through our valley and because of the military reinforcements, we don't dare go outside."

The weekly observation post on the roof of the Jaber family home is not the only one that overlooks the wadi. Another three permanent military positions surround the wadi and light it up at night. The residents of the upper stories in the neighborhood, which is just a few dozen meters south of Kiryat Arba, do not dare turn on their lights during the weekends, lest they attract the attention of those who are walking along the path and lest it stimulate them to throw a stone or, heaven forbid, fire shots into the air.

Many residents do not even dare go up to the upper stories or get near the windows. And when they do go upstairs, they speak in whispers.

Therefore, on Friday at about seven in the evening, when the inhabitants of the neighborhood heard shots, they were convinced that soldiers or Jewish settlers were shooting. No one could have imagined that right under the spotlights and the nearby military positions, Israeli soldiers were being killed by Palestinian gunfire.

H. was perhaps among the few and among the first to realize what was happening. He was spending Friday with relatives in one of the houses in the valley, among the groves. According to him, he saw two Border Police Jeeps that had been standing among the trees in the valley since 3 P.M. He also saw four soldiers who were walking among the trees, the houses and the Jeeps; a routine Friday patrol, aimed at securing the "worshipers' way."

During the course of the afternoon, one of the Jeeps departed, he related. At around 7 P.M., H. saw a group of people running down the southernmost street of the neighborhood, from east to west. They opened fire on the soldiers who were in the valley. He thinks the soldiers ran forward to attack them, but he himself ran to hide inside the house.

In the home of Hussam Jabber, on whose roof was the military observation post, the shooting caught the members of the family engaged in their usual activities after the meal that breaks the Ramadan fast: chatting, napping, watching television. They rushed to huddle together in a corner of the house, and they say they did not dare peek out the window so they did not know from where the shooting was coming. They figured that the soldiers were firing from the roof of their house. They also heard shots exploding on the southern walls of their house. Later they would find bullet holes in the water pipe and in the water tank on the roof. At some stage the soldiers from the observation post came down to them and made them gather in one room. Throughout, the shooting continued, from various places and in various directions. Panicky shooting, concluded one member of the household. On the soldiers' faces they read confusion and panic. Perhaps, they would conclude later, the soldiers had been shooting at one another.

They had no way of knowing that in the meantime soldiers had broken into a one-story house that is below their home. Alongside this house stretches the path that links the valley to the street where the running Palestinians who opened fire were seen. This is the home of Hamad Jaber. Most of the family members were away visiting nearby relatives. Only the father of the family, Hamad, and his married son Najib were at home. The shooting very near also sent the two of them into a corner of the house. From there they could see that the valley was flooded with light flares.

The shooting continued; they heard the bullets bursting on the roof and on the water tanks there. Then the explosion of stun grenades informed them that the soldiers were very close to their house. They opened the door, and were ordered to come out with their hands up and their shirts rolled up. Outside, Najib saw the corpse of a man wearing a mask and gloves. He could see that the man had been shot in the head.

"Who is that?" the soldiers asked him.

"I don't know," he replied.

"He was here in the house," said the soldiers.

"But we were inside. We don't know him and he wasn't in our house," answered Najib.

After a search of the house, the soldiers put the two into a Jeep with their eyes and their hands bound. They were driven to an unknown place, apparently a military base, taken out of the Jeep and put into another Jeep that was driven away - they do not know where - and then they were let out somewhere. Over unfamiliar hills, they began to walk home. Part of the way, Najib had to carry his 71-year-old father on his back.

Hours later they came across a house: The owners told them where they were. From there they set out for home. But when they arrived, at 9 A.M., their house was no longer there.

Toward midnight, the residents of the Wadi Nasara neighborhood, who are imprisoned in their houses because of the shooting, heard the frighteningly familiar growl of a bulldozer. Hamad and Najib were already in the Jeep that took them to the unknown location. The rest of the family watched from afar: Within 20 minutes, the house was demolished. Another two houses nearby were also demolished: One belonged to another son of the family, who they say was visiting his family in East Jerusalem; the second house was unoccupied.

In the morning the family members returned to try to gather whatever remained: They did not succeed in finding the money and the gold that were in the house - savings for an approaching wedding, for times of need. The mother, 61-year-old Suheila, found her good wooden leg. She is a native of Jerusalem. When she was seven, during the 1948 War of Independence, she was injured by gunfire and lost a leg. For short distances, she uses her other, second prosthesis, which is not as good. With a face red from crying, on Saturday she indicated her good wooden leg, its foot broken when the house was demolished.

She really weeps when she talks about her eldest son: A year-and-a-half-ago, when soldiers fired tear gas into the neighborhood, he was very frightened, and choked and died.

During the home demolishing, the bulldozer tore up several of the neighborhood's electrical cables, so that most of the houses had their electricity cut off. By morning, most of the people of the neighborhood had no idea that 12 Israeli soldiers and security men had been killed. Soldiers entered one of the houses near the "worshipers' way" and made the members of the family (including an elderly grandfather and a six-month-old baby) go outside while the shooting was going on. Until morning they were taken out of the house and were brought back inside several times - each time by a different group of soldiers. They formed the impression that one group of soldiers did not know what the other was doing. Finally, at 8 A.M., the son was ordered to go out with the soldiers. An Israeli identified as an officer of the Shin Bet security service demanded that he look at three corpses that were lying on the side of street. Despite his protests, he was ordered to identify them. "I don't know them," he said.

As journalists and military spokespersons flooded the valley and the residents of the neighborhood huddled around the demolished houses, two Israel Defense Forces bulldozers began to uproot trees in the valley. Another ancient olive tree with thick roots was pulled up, and another slender peach tree; a few more grapevines vanished as if they had never existed.

A hand snatched my glasses

On Saturday afternoon an urgent call came through to the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) in the old city of Hebron. This is a group of Christian volunteers from various countries that has set as its aim peaceful intervention in places where there are crises and conflicts: Colombia, New York City, Iraq, Hebron. The members of the group, who live in the old city of Hebron, were asked to come and stay in the home of one of the families that live near the "worshipers' way." The members of the family knew that on Saturday evening the Jewish settlers from Kiryat Arba and Hebron were intending to hold a rally in the large plot of land in the northern part of the Wadi Nasara neighborhood, right at the exit from Kiryat Arba. From experience, they said, they knew that such events led to attacks on the houses. One family in the neighborhood had already hastened to flee from its small, old, isolated stone house, which is opposite the lot, and having no alternative, had to accept hospitality from the neighbors.

Thus, at 8 P.M., the members of the CPT found themselves in the midst of a mass of Israelis who had gathered there. They did not understand what the speakers were saying, and they did not know that the moderator repeatedly said: "We are calling upon people not to take the law into their own hands." They just watched dozens of children of the Jewish settlers as they spread out among the ruins of what had been, until that morning, a vineyard and groves, run toward the houses of the neighborhood and throw stones at the windows of the houses on the edges. They saw some of those soldiers mingling with them and trying to stop them from getting too close to the center of the dark neighborhood.

Later they saw a large group of police, who also came down into the valley where the trees had been uprooted. But they did not see that any of the police were trying to prevent teenage boys and girls and a few women from throwing stones at the windows and using sticks to break windows of houses and about 10 cars.

I asked some police who were sitting in a Jeep with the license plate 80-503 why they were not stopping the children from smashing windowpanes right at the corner, 10 meters away from them. "Thanks for reporting to us," they said, and slowly, one by one, they came out of the Jeep. Later it would turn out that their job was to protect the police photographer.

One of the women who passed by heard the question or guessed what the question had been and began to scream things like: "Bitch. She called the police. Where were you yesterday?"

She was joined by other women with a variety of curses. Other people began to crowd around and they were joined by more women, teenagers, all of them screaming, hitting out and pushing. The CPT people tried to intervene, but the circle grew tighter and the screaming increased.

Somebody grabbed my jacket, snatched my notebook and threw it up into the air. Others prevented me from picking it up. More people crowded around and one woman began to hit me. A man with a long, gray beard tried to calm her down and to explain to her that she was overwrought because of the massacre. He suggested that I get into a car and get out of there fast. A teenage girl secretly returned the notebook to me and disappeared quickly.

"Let's get her out of here, otherwise it will be bad," urged one woman.

A teenage boy was heard saying: "Let's grab her glasses."

The circle around me grew tighter. A hubbub of shouting and imprecations in sabra, Russian, American and French accents rose from the circle. Suddenly a hand reached out and snatched my glasses.

"Let's get her out of here," the woman continued to plead.

"Without glasses I can't leave," I said.

"Your glasses are gone. Forget about them," said someone. Twenty or 30 meters away stood dozens of soldiers and police. None of them showed up.

The CPT did all they could to calm the crowd down. Suddenly Channel One reporter Muki Hadar appeared. Somehow, his tall frame worked as a restraining influence. The circle began to grow looser. Only then could I safely reach the military Jeep that was parked opposite. Only then did representatives of the IDF show up, who suggested waiting until the people dispersed. A soldier suddenly held out a black plastic bag to me: One of the children had asked him to give it to "that woman." Inside it were my glasses. Broken.

"Wait" was also the delayed advice of the policeman, from whom only a direct appeal extracted a promise to "protect." One policeman passed the mission along to another who, in turn, as in a relay race, passed the mission of "protecting" along to a third policeman. Ultimately, when that third policeman got ready to ride a bus back home, made it clear that it was not his job to protect. "Go to the policeman who promised you protection," he said.

Until midnight, scores of inhabitants of Kiryat Arba remained in the valley, many of them boys and girls under the age of 18. A few teenage girls showed up with a bucket of paint and wrote "Am Yisrael hai" (the people of Israel lives) and "Vengeance" on the iron door of one of the neighborhood shops. In the houses in the Palestinian neighborhood, no one dared to sleep, from fear. They left the lights extinguished.

[] The Shuttered Houses On Holy Days

By Amira Hass
Haaretz, Opinion (Israel)
November 20, 2002

The one and only meaning to the creation of "territorial contiguity" from Kiryat Arba to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, is expulsion. The expulsion of thousands more Palestinian residents of Hebron, people who were unlucky enough to find that their homes, shops and gardens are in the area meant for "contiguity." The IDF will protect the Jewish construction and dozens if not hundreds of Israelis - contractors, engineers, architects, carpenters - will join the work, and police will protect them. Thousands of Israelis will thus become active partners in the expulsion. They'll go home every night to their worried families in Jerusalem and Kfar Sava. If one of them is killed in a Palestinian ambush, the response will be even more "territorial contiguity."

There won't be any need to load people onto trucks. They simply won't be able to stay in their homes, let their children risk of going to school every day on the same route where their Jewish "neighbors" are building, striding the streets with their rifles like masters of the land if not the universe, speeding along streets that for security reasons are closed to Palestinian traffic. They'll lose ever more days at work when they try leaving their homes or try coming home and are faced by a noisy laughing gang of Jewish teens of both sexes, stoning them with rocks, kicking at them and spitting at them, while a policeman or a few soldiers stand idly by. The Palestinians living in the "territorial contiguity" will go through what happened to the Palestinians of the old city of Hebron, but at an accelerated rate.

It's an open secret that many of the residents of the old city have left their homes in recent years. They simply couldn't take life with the unceasing harassment from a handful of Jewish citizens of Israel who were allowed to behave that way due to the laxity or sympathy of soldiers and officers, the apathy or sympathy of police and the indifference of the Israeli public. Dozens of shop owners in the old city have stopped opening, whether because of the unending days and nights of curfew imposed on Hebron and its ancient heart, or because the "neighbors" scare off the shoppers, or because the streets where the shops are located are closed to protect the security of the Jewish neighbors.

When the curfew is lifted, and the market is reopened for a few hours, there is the illusion of life. But last Saturday, on the day after the gun battle between armed Palestinians and soldiers, police, and armed Israeli guards from Kiryat Arba, under the full curfew imposed on Palestinian Hebron, it was possible to discern how empty the old city has become. An elderly woman and her son peeked frightened through a barred and netted window. Behind a tightly shut iron door, one could hear the murmurings of the inhabitants. Someone, in the chilling silence, quickly opened and closed an iron door. But from one of the rooftops in the old city the abandonment could easily be seen: wide open wooden window shutters lazily flapping in the breeze and behind them black holes - empty rooms. Dried up plants, clotheslines bare of laundry - these were the signs of an empty place.

Some of the Palestinian houses are already empty in Wadi Nasara, where the gun battle took place opposite the southern nook of Kiryat Arba. The "Worshipers Way" for the Palestinians has become the path of the stone throwers and the shooters in the air, and the lack of response from the authorities for years. Fridays and Saturdays and other Jewish holidays when the worshipers walk the way, are the cursed days for the residents of Wadi Nasara and the old city. That's when they lock themselves in their homes and shutter their windows, blocking their ears when the window shatters or their plant pots are overturned and they know there's no point calling the police.

The settlements were built before the terrorism and after it. They were built whether the Palestinians expressed their opposition or not. A lengthy curfew was imposed on Palestinian Hebron after Baruch Goldstein murdered worshipers at the Ibrahimi Mosque/Tomb of the Patriarchs; a curfew was imposed on them when a Palestinian murdered a Jewish baby and a curfew is imposed when armed Palestinians fight armed Israelis. Jewish zealots in Hebron and throughout the West Bank harass Palestinians before attacks and after attacks. Now they don't even hide the fact their "settlement enterprise" is part of their Transfer plans, which everywhere else in the West is known as "ethnic cleansing."

Are those Jewish zealots and their lobbyists really the heirs of the Jewish Diaspora? From inside Hebron they actually appear to be of a different heritage, scions of nationalist, anti-Semitic movements who sent pogromchiks at the head of mobs who spread fear and were full of greed for the Jewish homes, to gradually implement the plan of "cleansing the homeland of its kikes." Hebron, on Shabbat, was reminiscent of ancestral tales from Sochba, a town in northeast Romania, where on Holy Sundays, the Jews would shutter themselves up in their homes.

[] Mitzna victory a sign of hope but the tone still set by violence

Gush Shalom statement issued just after the attack in Jerusalem

In what could be called a silent mass demonstration for peace, tens of thousands of Labor party members decided this week to give the newcomer a chance. The not so cautious Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna had challenged the hawkish Ben-Eliezer as well as the balancing Chaim Ramon with a more outspoken peace agenda than we remember ever anybody having succeeded with - in the race for the Labor Party leadership.

Amram Mitzna is, as so many before him, a former general but after his army career ten years ago he became the mayor of Haifa. And he displayed exceptional courage and wisdom in this binational Jewish-Arab town during the ethnic strive in the beginning of this Intifada. We wish him success and hope that with the same daring and opennes he displayed so far, he will succeed to open up more Israelis - all those who show themselves to be rather dovish in theory, but who never heard the truth from a politician whom they were willing to trust.

However, the fact of Mitzna's success inside the Labot Party is the first and also the last good news. In spite of the many non-violence events it is still those who use violence who set the tone.

Today's busblast took the lives of eleven old and young, men, women and of children on the way to school. It was the work of a 23-year old from Bethlehem - this means revenge on the town of Bethlehem and is it now looks also on the Gaza Strip - as it was claimed by Hamas which have there their stronghold. Before, during and after each Palestinian suicide attack there is the routine brutality of the occupation: no day without some renewed 24-hour curfew, no day without announced or implemented house demolitions; actually there passes no day without killings which don't make headlines and whose victims are mostly Palestinians.

The Israeli and the Palestinian people are stuck in a murderous vicious circle: On the one hand, the Palestinians will not be intimidated into submission and the terrorism will not end without the occupation be lifted. (Sharon personally this week warned the soldiers in Nablus that "Palestinians are willing to give their lives in order not to be defeated.") On the other hand, those in power in Israel use terrorism as an excuse not to end the occupation. Until now they got the support of those who ultimately want a two-state solution but for the time being don't want to "reward terrorism."

Let's hope that, before we all drown in this quagmire, enough people of the latter group will again remember that wars are not decided by who has the best weapons, nor by who uses the more"legitimate" way of killing, but by the one who is fighting for an existential cause.

[] Head of Petach Tikva Yeshiva: Torah Forbids Unethical Behavior

Ha'aretz, Wednesday November 20, 2002

Torah Forbids Unethical Behavior

By Yuval Cherlow
[Rabbi Cherlow, the head of the Zevulun Hammer Hesder Yeshiva in Petah Tikva reacts to claims by some of his colleagues that the settler olives robbery of the past period was actually "kosher".]

In recent weeks, the public has seen the publication of a large number of piskei halakha (religious rulings) taking positions that are hard to see as expressions of the Torah or natural human ethics. The lethal combination of extremist rulings and the media giving them wide publicity continues to debase the status of the Torah among the Israeli public. The silent majority of Israeli rabbis has an obligation to speak out in protest.

I want to put some order into the issues on the agenda, and to explain to the public what I believe is the position of the absolute majority of rabbis in Israel.

It is absolutely forbidden to steal another person's produce - whether that person is a Jew or an Arab. He who steals produce is sinning against human ethics and against the Torah commandment not to steal, and is responsible for hilul hashem (desecration of God's name). If the orchard is one that the owners may not enter for security reasons, it is the duty of the army, not the private person, to prevent entry and to protect the lives of the settlers. But one who picks another's olives is simply a robber.

Not only is a girl who has been raped not to blame but on the contrary - everyone is obliged to rise up and rescue her, to offer her all the help she needs, to rehabilitate her, to punish the attacker and to protect her. The Torah does not protect the wrong doer, but the victim. The idea that if a woman is raped, she is at fault and it proves her lack of morals, is patently unethical and non-halakhic and cannot pass any Jewish test.

The role of a rabbi is always to support a person who has been wronged in fighting the establishment - not the other way round. When someone complains of being harmed or short changed, the rabbi is first of all obliged to investigate the complaint of the poor and unfortunate. The rabbi can only oppose him after he establishes that the person crying for help is doing so wrongfully and unjustly, and exploiting his misfortune to harm those who are helping him.

Truth must be revealed. To say that truth must be hidden en revealing it would cause harm to religious faith - because it would show that religious people also have problems - is contrary to the commandment "you shall do away with evil in your midst." We were commanded to get rid of the evil, and not to protect the evildoer, even if he is in a high and important position.

It is forbidden to refuse to obey a military order, unless the order is clearly illegal. Refusal to serve is true pikuah nefesh (danger to life) that can destroy the foundations of the army and our existence as a nation, and undermines moral decency. We cannot demand that a person who opposes the settlements defend them if a person who supports them refuses to obey an order to evacuate a settlement. This does not prevent the persons in charge of the army from criticizing exploitation of the military for election purposes.

The State of Israel is worthy of praise for devoting a portion of its crops to commemorate the Temple and to express the hope that it will be rebuilt. The religious and ultra-Orthodox public is in no need of encouragement to social benevolence. It is responsible for an unbelievable volume of charitable donations, through organizations like Yad Sarah, Ezer Mitzion, Hasdei Naomi and so on, and thus deserves a great deal of admiration for dedicating one percent of its crop to express its deep faith in the idea that the master of the universe is the source of the abundance.

It is strictly forbidden to steal the livelihood of a foreign worker. Halakhically, humanely and ethically, the state should keep the tenure of foreign workers to a minimum. However, since they are already here, we must concern ourselves with their welfare and their health, pay them their wages fairly and promptly and not exploit their vulnerabilities.

Where there is no operational necessity, the military authorities are responsible for the Sabbath observance of Israel Defense Force soldiers. In general, the army must make sure not to require soldiers to do things that are contrary to their beliefs (secular or religious). On the other hand, when it is necessary to protect the residents of Israel, every soldier should prefer the general welfare to private beliefs, unless he is told to carry out a clearly illegal order.

No rabbi has ever been given the job of handing out entrance tickets to paradise, and primarily not in connection with a vote for a particular political party. The terrible combination of political power backed by Torah authority must be completely avoided.

The exaggerated use of piskei halakha does no service to halakha. It might be good if the rabbi comes with the strength of his arguments rather than that of his authority - with the strength of the truth of his words rather than the strength of "halakha." There are dangers of manipulation in the exaggerated use of this method. In the final analysis, it can only damage halakha itself.

[] Khirbet Yanun - transfer is what you don't see happening article by Gadi Algazi and Azmi Bdeir

Transfer’s real nightmare

By Gadi Algazi and Azmi Bdeir
Ha'aretz, Nov.15, 2002

As these words are being written, Khirbet Yanun still exists. Or maybe not: 15 of the 25 families that lived in the village are still there. This is not an insignificant number: If the reader recalls, on October 18 only two old men remained there, having refused to leave even after the last families departed, holding on by their fingertips to the village despite the abuse of settlers. The others had decided to take their possessions and move to the nearby town of Akrabeh.

However, Khirbet Yanun's existence is still frail and incomplete. There is still no electricity or running water, the houses are without furniture, the presence of residents sparse, their security unassured. At the beginning of last week, volunteers from Israel and abroad - Jews and Arabs who belong to the Ta'ayush movement - were still on site, but their presence there was transitory. Come the next attack by settlers, which will happen sooner or later, Khirbet Yanun may be emptied of its residents for good.

Many Israelis who are committed to a life of peace and justice in this country are convinced, it seems, that despite all the horrors of the occupation and the violent conflict, there are still certain red lines that they will not allow Ariel Sharon and his government to cross: Transfer will not be permitted to happen. When the critical moment arrives, they will stand up and stop it. But transfer isn't necessarily a dramatic moment, a moment when people are expelled and flee their towns or villages. It is not necessarily a planned and well-organized move with buses and trucks loaded with people, such as happened in Qalqilyah in 1967. Transfer is a deeper process, a creeping process that is hidden from view. It is not captured on film, is hardly documented, and it is going on right in front of our eyes. Anyone who is waiting for a dramatic moment is liable to miss it as it happens. The main component of the process is the gradual undermining of the infrastructure of the civilian Palestinian population's lives in the territories: its continuing strangulation under closures and sieges that prevent people from getting to work or school, from receiving medical services, and from allowing the passage of water trucks and ambulances, which sends the Palestinians back to the age of donkey and cart. Taken together, these measures undermine the hold of the Palestinian population on its land.

When the water trucks don't make it to the villages, when every trip to work becomes an adventure with an unforeseeable end, when schools are closed and hospitals in the nearby urban center begin to grow further away - the local fabric of life begins to disintegrate. Some of the young people, who used to work outside the village and then return home every night, remain outside, choosing not to attempt to pass through the succession of roadblocks each morning. Families that are able to do so move to safer places, closer to their sources of income, inside the population centers.

And the number of instances are mounting up: the butcher from Jerusalem, who despairs at the attempt to cross the Qalandiyah roadblock and who has closed his shop that is situated north of it; the taxi driver who moved out of his home in northern Jerusalem to live, crowded with the rest of the family, in his parents' home in the Old City, in order to have a chance to get to work; residents of a West Bank village whose son was about to begin studies in the nearby city of Nablus, but because it is no longer so accessible even by public transit, are poised to leave their village and move to the city. All of these cases signal how the hold of the Palestinian population on the land is being weakened.

Not an isolated case

What the army's closures and sieges don't achieve, the settlers do: Every new settlement and outpost requires security, of course, and the meaning of security to settlers is eviction of Palestinians from the surrounding area, and transformation of the agricultural lands to death zones, for whoever enters them to pick olives or work the land may end up paying for the act with his life. In order for a handful of settlers to dominate almost half of the land of the occupied territories, an organized action, a conquest of the land, a tower-and-stockade thrust is required. Armed, subsidized and organized, they systematically rough up residents of the villages, very much like the paramilitary units employed by hacienda owners in Latin America to inflict a reign of terror on the peasantry.

They are above the law.

The campaign against the olive harvesters was therefore an important component of the settlers' attempt to pull out from under the legs of the villagers the little that they still have. It is also intended to show them that the settlers are the real masters, that they can pick the olives of the villagers with impunity, and drive off with gunfire anyone who tries to stand in their way.

Khirbet Yanun is not an isolated case. Dozens of villages in the area of Tul Karm and Qalqilyah, Salfit and Nablus have been subjected to intense existential pressure for several months. This is not necessarily marked by dramatic incidents causing death and casualties, but by organized abuse, constant deterioration of living conditions, tightening of the stranglehold, and increased isolation from the economic, cultural and political centers of Palestinian society.

All of these long-term structural processes, which gradually undermine the population's hold on its land, are clearly expressed at Khirbet Yanun. It is a small and isolated settlement that lies only a few hundred meters from the outposts established by the settlers of Itamar. The outposts were established in the hills above Yanun in the late 1990s, under the auspices of the "peace process." Akrabeh is situated a 15-minute drive away, via a poorly maintained dirt road that is easy to block off.

Venture out at night into the streets of Yanun. The little village is dark, the landscape pastoral. But even in the village itself, residents are not alone: On the hill opposite, the settlers' watchtowers can be seen, and from the hill on the other side, the caravans and cars are visible. The lights of the patrol vehicles can be seen from far away. Here in their homeland, the people of Yanun sit surrounded, as in a sort of reserve whose days are numbered. The settlers may appear at any moment, and they do: The children hide whenever they hear the sound of their all-terrain vehicles. The residents freeze in place in the olive grove whenever the settlers appear.

This, too, is not an isolated case: If you find yourself in the southern Hebron hills along the edge of the desert, along with Palestinian residents living in their tents in Susya, here too you will find that there is no room for the local residents. Look up and you will see a star-studded sky, but all it takes is a glance around you and you will understand that you are surrounded - army vehicles patrol the road, which the Palestinians are not allowed to approach. On the other side are the settlers of Susya: Woe to anyone who gets too close to the fields adjacent to the settlement. And Susya continues to expand. An illuminated security road passes behind you, in the wadi, and if you take a look northward, you will see the lights of the nearby army base and hear the announcements crackling from the loudspeakers.

This reality conveys an unambiguous message: Residents of the reserve - you are surrounded; it would be best if you surrendered. And these are also the explicit words uttered by the settlers to the people of Khirbet Yanun during recent attacks on the village, when they broke into homes, when they beat Abd al-Latif Bani Jaber in front of his family: Get out of here, go to Akrabeh. Complaints lodged by Yanun residents to the police provide a documentation of the process by which their village has turned into a ghost town. The village is situated in Area C, which is under the full security and administrative responsibility of Israel, but in the opinion of local residents, there is a tacit agreement between the army and the settlers. All development in the village is blocked. Indeed, since 1992, the Israeli Civil Administration has forbidden any construction there. The fields have become unsafe. The settlers used to come down the hill and treat the village as if it were their own. Local residents quote one of the settlers from Itamar, who told them that he and he alone ruled the area. I will remain here, he said, when the police and the press have gone. According to residents, it was he who led the raids on the village.

And so, long before they burned the electrical generator in April 2002, the infrastructure of daily life was increasingly being undermined. The children of Khirbet Yanun used to go to the elementary school in Yanun a-Tahta, which is near Akrabeh. When the raids grew worse and the road became unsafe, a small school was opened in the village, less than two years ago. This school was closed when the last families left the village. The walls were closing in on the daily lives of the villagers.

The nearest high school is in Akrabeh, which has become so much more distant. So anyone who wants his children to stay in school is compelled to leave Yanun and move to the town. But even without this consideration - who is going to decide to stay in a village where settlers come and go as they please, day and night, marching on the roofs of the houses and breaking into the homes?

On Thursday, October 17, the principal of the small school in Khirbet Yanun bade farewell to his last students. The next day, the last six families left town. Two days later, the Ta'ayush volunteers arrived in order to enable residents to return to their village. Most of the residents are still there.

Danger signal

Khirbet Yanun sends a danger signal that should not be disregarded: Tens of thousands of people are liable to become displaced persons and refugees. In addition, Israeli "security sources" repeatedly leak reports that in time of war or escalation of the conflict, the Sharon government may try to displace many others, on an organized basis. The pain of displacement will not be soothed by time. For years to come, Israeli society will have to contend with the violent cost of this displacement, which is added to previous rounds of it.

Yanun is a warning sign not only to Israelis but also to Palestinians. The danger of transfer is tangible. In order to eliminate it, there is a need for serious work in the field and a strengthening of the local economy. First and foremost, there should be a focus on rejuvenating the social fabric and strengthening the internal solidarity within Palestinian society. Without these, a new wave of refugees is liable to be added to the old camps or join existing urban centers.

The foundation that is required for sumud (the stubborn clinging to the land, the determination to hold on in spite of the occupation) will not be found in symbolic actions, in focusing on international public opinion at the expense of dealing with the distress at home, or in armed demonstrations of power. In order to contend with the creeping process of transfer, Palestinian society must enlist its human resources in order to struggle over every meter of land and every goat. Will this effort find loyal Israeli allies in the civil struggle against dispossession?

Ta'ayush volunteers came to Khirbet Yanun for two weeks to fend for the residents, to facilitate their return home and to roust public opinion out of its state of apathy. Fifteen families have returned to their homes, albeit hesitantly and fearfully, and their return is not complete.

During our stay here, the army has been compelled to demonstrate its presence. But past experience teaches the residents that despite their calls for help, the maltreatment will not end. During our stay here, the Itamar settlers succeeded in swooping down on the village and severely beating two residents and four volunteers. None of the rioters was arrested. A sign of things to come. Our presence in Khirbet Yanun was temporary. It is impossible and it is wrong for the presence of Israeli citizens to be the only guarantee to ensure the continued existence of a Palestinian village. Unless people in Israel stand up to the injustice and support the people of the village, they will remain at the mercy of the settlers. When will the next attack come? Will it be after the residents leave? Will they blow up the houses of the village? Or move into the houses? And where will they stop?

The sights from three weeks ago remain with us. On the moonlit night when we arrived in Yanun, we walked through the abandoned Arab village. The residents had time to prepare themselves, to take their belongings, gather light fixtures and pull out the electrical wiring. There wasn't even the sound of a single dog barking in the village. Still, wherever you turn, you see open homes, broken-down doors, yawning black voids. And on the surrounding hillsides, the watchtowers of the settlers of Itamar. More or less, this is how the Palestinian villages looked after 1948. Fifty-odd years later, we are here again, Israelis and Palestinians, captives of a history whose bitter lessons we have forgotten.

Tel Aviv & Kafr Kassem, November 2002

[The writers are members of Ta'ayush -- Arab Jewish Partnership]

[] [STOP PRESS] Irish human shield worker shot at in Jenin

[We just now received the following message which we try to help spread to the press.]

Caoimhe ("Quiva") Butterly, an Irish volunteer human shield worker who already for months stays in Jenin has today been shot, as reported to us, and was taken to hospital.

During yhe Israeli army reoccupation of Jenin Refugee Camp tanks were shooting at stones throwing kids. When Quiva tried to place herself between the kids and the tanks, she was shot herself in the upper leg from inside the tank and had to be taken to the Jenin hospital.

Earlier this morning she had been detained by soldiers of the same unit and held for several hours before being released - to be shot shortly afterwards.

More information: Annie Higgins +972-(0)67-540298.

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