After Nine years of Struggle, Tuwani is Connected to the Electric Grid

This photo brought tears to my eyes. Finally, after nine years of struggle, At-Tuwani is connected to the electric grid and enjoying electricity 24 hours a day. I hope all of my favorite women are celebrating with dance parties that can finally continue past 9:30 pm.

For more information about the the village's victory, check out Electronic Intifada

A Tale of 7 Houses (Part Two)

DCO officer posts stop-work order on new Palestinian house

On the 20th of July, DCO delivered stop work orders for nine Palestinian structures around the village of At-Tuwani. These orders were delivered to seven new houses (the ones I was talking about in the previous entry), one cave, and one cistern. But it wasn't easy for the DCO to deliver the order. They were met with nonviolent resistance:


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. Palestinians sat in protest in front of the military and DCO and prayed together on their land.


They argued their case with the DCO. One made an especially important point - the DCO and soldiers should be delivering demolition orders to the illegal buildings in the Israeli outpost of Havot Ma’on, which is expanding every day.

Over the course of the day, the Israeli soldiers committed several abuses (in addition to delivering the stop-work orders, of course):

- Soldiers hit child.

- Soldiers shoved a Palestinian man to the ground.

- Soldiers arrested a Palestinian man for "threatening a soldier." What was he actually doing? Laughing at him. He is still being held.

Landowner being arrested

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 their land. I'll do my best to keep you updated on what's going on here. In the meantime, check out this video for another look at this protest. You can also see our press release here.

At-Tuwani: Hope - A New Year Reflection
By Janet Benvie
27 December 2008

As I write this, advent and Christmas are over. The new Christian year has
begun, the new calendar year is about to begin - Gregorian and Hijri*. It
is a time for looking forward - to the new year, the lengthening of the
days again and, in due time, the earth's new growth in spring.

Here in At-Tuwani I see hope and new growth everywhere I look. In the
midst of the Israeli occupation and its attendant violent oppressions
imposed on the villagers, I see such amazing signs of hope.

Just south of At-Tuwani, in Humra valley, a family has planted a new olive
grove. On the rocky hillside they have created a small walled 'garden'.
The olives they planted are Roman variety they told us - around four times
more expensive than the common variety, but superior and longer lasting. A
carefully crafted stone wall surrounds this new olive grove. A little
lower in the same valley other villagers have repaired a wall around an
existing grove. Considerable time and great care was taken with the work,
and the result is attractive, but practical, new stone walls.

As I walk around the village I see numerous families undertaking home
repairs and extensions. Some are re-building demolished homes, others
building new homes. One family who returned this summer to re-build their
home, demolished by the Israeli military in 2004, is walling in small
garden areas around their new house and planting trees and shrubs. Another
family, who is repairing and extending their home, is carefully building a
stone outer wall to match the stonework of the original house.

It takes hope for the future to build a new home when the occupying power
has already threatened all the houses in your village with demolition. It
takes hope for the future to invest time and money in olive groves and
gardens.

As we enter the new year, my hope for the future is that the world's
politicians (the quartet of the European Union, the United Nations, Russia
and the USA), will recognize Israel's occupation for what it is - a
brutal, oppressive and immoral act - and will stop their military funding
to this repressive state. My hope for the future is that people around the
world will say to Israel "enough" and will boycott this immoral state in
the same way so many people boycotted apartheid South Africa.

My hope for the future is that peace with justice shall prevail. Living in
At-Tuwani nurtures that hope.

For photos of some of the walls and gardens, go to:
http://cpt.org/gallery/Tuwani-walls-of-hope

* The Gregorian calendar is used almost universally, with 12 calendar
months in each year. The Hijri calendar is used by Muslims. It is based on
lunar months, and is 11 days shorter than the Gregorian. The new year
Gregorian year will be 2009; the new Hijra 1430.

Over The Last Year:

I'll admit it, I'm procrastinating. While I was looking on my computer for a file, I found a list that I created in late August, as I was nearing my one year anniversary of working in At-Tuwani. This is a list of some of the things that I've seen over this last year, both terrible and wondrous. It doesn't pretend to be comprehensive, not nearly, but it does give a snap shot of how I see life in the South Hebron Hills.

There are pictures and videos of many of these events. If any of you of especially like to see something, I can see what I can do to fulfil those requests.

Over the last year, I've seen:

- Over a hundred children and their parents march to Tuba along a road Palestinian haven’t been able to use for 11 years

- The paramilitary settler guard of Ma’on push a pregnant woman and steal her zatre

- Palestinians organize the 2007 olive harvest so cleverly there wasn’t a single settler attack

- Settlers shoot three sheep and miss their shepherd. The next day, shepherds grazed hundreds of sheep in the same spot, clear up to the boarder of the settlement

- Palestinian children chased, cursed, threaten and attacked by Israeli settlers more times than I can remember

- Palestinian villagers from Tuba and Magher Al Abeed run through the hills to avoid being beaten by settlers too many times

- One teammate beaten by settlers, another choked by an Israeli soldier, and another teammate arrested and faced with deportation

- Palestinians lock arms together and start walking forward to protect one from being arrested

- Settlers spray pepper spray into the eyes of a Palestinian and his elderly father. He was arrested. Ma’on’s paramilitary guard threatened to kill him, saying then “there will be no more problems.” When he was released from prison, he walk right up to and and then straight past the paramilitary guard, fearlessly.

- Five sheep ran over by a settler in a car

- A family in Susiya beaten by settlers

- Soldiers attack sheep and goats, kicking one in the teeth and another in the side, causing her to lactate blood

- Women remove a road block, opening the road to Yatta

- Three soldiers expose their butts to Palestinians, while the paramilitary settler “guard” of Ma’on stood next to them

- No settlers arrested for their crimes

- Illegal settlements expanding every day

- Palestinians, time and time again, walk straight up to settlers and soldiers and assert their rights

This morning while I sipped my tea, I thought to myself, “It happens every day.”

Yesterday afternoon, October 14th, a group of six to twelve year old Palestinian children returning home from school were forced to run for their lives. Every morning and afternoon, these children must walk to past an Israeli settlement on their way to and from school in the village of at-Tuwani. Yesterday, two adult Israeli settlers waited for them near the end of the settlement, threw stones at the children and chased them towards their homes in the village of Tuba. Because these children have been attacked frequently, lately in this very location, the Israeli army is charged with escorting them each day. But yesterday, as usual, the Israeli soldiers drove away, abandoning the children while they were still in danger. “The children were very afraid when they arrived home,” said one father.

It happens every day. Serving with Christian Peacemaker Teams in At-Tuwani, I’ve born witness to more attacks on these children than I’ve been able to keep track of. The children are not attacked every day, but every day they face more danger on their walk to school than I have faced my entire life. We’ve sat together, the children, my fellow CPTers and I, and waited for the Israeli army to come for more hours that I care to recall. Sometimes we play together and manage to have a genuinely good time. One afternoon we played with my camera, the kids posing for me as they climbed trees, climbed on top of each other, giggled and danced. The next day, one of the older girls pulled on my hand and said to me, “I was so happy yesterday! Last night I woke up in the middle of the night because I had a bad dream about the settlers. But then I thought about all the fun we had and I fell back asleep.” Those words broke my heart and I can’t put it back together.

It happens every day. We all know the many ways, tiny and humongous , that our world is falling apart around us: polar bears who are losing their habitat, millions of parents who can’t feed their children, wars with no end in sight, petty meanness, decreased community, and children who are attacked on their way to school. It’s so much to bear. Too much.

It happens every day, but that’s not the end of the story. Lately my mantra has been, “It is as bad as you think it is, but that’s not all.” To paraphrase an old slogan, if your heart isn’t broken, you aren’t paying attention. But if you aren’t also filled with hope, you’re missing half of the story. In at-Tuwani, every day Palestinians are resisting a military occupation that is trying to crush them and their culture. They are grazing their sheep, building new houses, organizing nonviolent demonstrations, and sending their children to school. Now it’s time for the olive harvest and throughout Palestine, farmers will step out on to their land, sometimes risking arrest and attacks, to harvest a bounty of thousands of green, blue, and even purple hued olives. Here in my own pacific northwest, I’ve been thinking about the salmon who every year come down the river, offer themselves up to the people, and then swim back to their headwaters to spawn and die. For thousand of years, despite ever increasing odds against them, they’ve survived through this cycle. I can’t help but think there is something they are trying to tell us.

It happens every day. Horror and hope. They stand together, side by side, on the knife’s edge. And they offer us a choice, every day.

More Good News! Adam's father has come home!

Well, two reports of good news in one week? That's unprecedented. And such good news I have to share with you. Just before I left for the airport, I received word that Adam's father is out of jail and back in Tuwani, safe and sound! Humdulilah! I couldn't be happier, or more relieved.

I'm now also home safely, in the United States. I'll be here just for a brief visit. Hopefully, I'll be able to upload some of the wonderful video we've been taping and editing, but youtube has been refusing to upload. We truly need a better internet connection, but I'm rambling. Ah, jet lag...

From Sami Awad:
Christmas in Bethlehem; A Time for Joy and Resilience

I received the most wonderful article in my in-box today. Here's a taste:

The colored strings of lights are now decorating its streets. As you drive past homes you now see Christmas trees proudly placed in front of windows so that all may see. Manger Street is full of traffic at night but no one is complaining for everyone is waiting their turn to receive candy from one of the many Santa Clauses dancing with joy in the street. Everywhere you go you hear Christmas songs played from small radios placed in front of stores or on balconies. In Manger Square, the main Christmas tree shines with bright colors and decorations. The joy is doubled in this holy city this year as both the Palestinian Christians and the Muslim communities celebrate. Christmas and Eid Al-Adha (the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice) have come together this year.

Check out the rest of the article on Sami Awad's wonderful blog (with a fresh new, lovely look): Never Give Up

Hannah, a wonderful woman I had the privilege of working with in International Women's Peace Service, is an American Jew, co-founder of Birthright Unplugged and ceaseless supporter of the Palestinian struggle. She has some wonderful things to say:


I am feeling optimistic about Palestine.

I know it sounds crazy. How can I use “optimistic” and “Palestine” in the same sentence when conditions on the ground only seem to get worse? Israeli settlements continue to expand on a daily basis, the checkpoints and segregated road system are becoming more and more institutionalized, Israel is holding 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners illegally in Israeli jails, Gaza is under heavy attack and the borders are entirely controlled by Israel, preventing people from getting their basic human needs met.

We can never forget these things, we can never forget the daily suffering of the people, and yet I do dare to say I am optimistic. Why? Ehud Olmert. Let me clarify. Better yet, let’s let him clarify:

"The day will come when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights. As soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished."

That’s right, the Prime Minister of Israel is currently trying to negotiate a “two-state solution” specifically because he realizes that if he doesn’t, Palestinians might begin to demand, en masse, equal rights to Israelis. Furthermore, he worries, the world might begin to see Israel as an apartheid state. In actuality, most of the world already sees Israel this way, but Olmert is worried that even Israel’s most ardent supporters will begin to catch up with the rest of the world.

"The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us," he told Ha’aretz, "because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents."

Perhaps Olmert is giving American Jews too much credit here, but he does expose a basic contradiction in the minds of most American people, Jewish and not: Most of us, at least in theory, support equal rights for all residents of a country. Most of us do NOT support rights given on the basis of ethnicity and religion, especially when the ethnicity/religion being prioritized is one that excludes the vast majority of the country’s indigenous population. We cannot, of course, forget our own history of ethnic cleansing on this continent. But we must not use the existence of past atrocities to justify present ones.

I am optimistic not because I think the process of ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Israel/Palestine is going to end tomorrow, but because I can feel the ideology behind these policies beginning to collapse. For years the true meaning of political Zionism has been as ignored as its effects on Palestinian daily life. And suddenly it is beginning to break open. Olmert’s comments last week are reminiscent of those of early Zionist leaders who talked openly of transfer and ethnic cleansing in order to create an artificial Jewish majority in historic Palestine.

“We must expel the Arabs and take their places and if we have to use force to guarantee our own right to settle in those places – then we have force at our disposal.” – David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, 1937

So this idea of a “two-state solution” a la Olmert, which I would argue provides neither a “state” nor a “solution” for the Palestinian people, is the new transfer. It is no longer popular in the world to openly discuss expulsion (though there are political parties in Israel that advocate this), but Olmert hopes that by creating a Palestinian “state” on a tiny portion of historic Palestine, he can accomplish the same goal: maintaining an ethno-religious state exclusively for the Jewish people in most of historic Palestine. His plan, as all other plans Israeli leaders have tried to “negotiate,” ignores the basic rights of the two thirds of the Palestinian population who are refugees. They, like all other refugees in the world, have the internationally recognized right to return to their lands and receive compensation for loss and damages. This should not be up for negotiation.

So why am I optimistic?

Why do I think Olmert will fail, if not in the short term, at least in the long term? There are many signs.

The first and most important is that Palestinian people are holding on. Sometimes by a thread, but holding on nonetheless. Despite the hope of many in Israel, Palestinians will not disappear. They engage in daily acts of nonviolent resistance, from demonstrations against the Wall and land confiscation, to simply remaining in their homes against all odds. Young people are joining organizations designed to preserve their culture and identity. Older Palestinians have said to me, “We lived through the Ottoman Empire, we lived through the British Mandate, we lived through Jordanian rule, and we will live through Israeli occupation.” This too shall pass.

In Israel, it seems that within the traditional “Zionist left,” Jewish Israelis are beginning to have open conversations about the exclusivity of Zionism as a political ideology, and are questioning it more and more.

In the United States, I have been traveling around speaking to groups about Palestine, and they get it. Even those whose prior information has come only from US mainstream media, when they hear what is actually happening, they get it. When we explain the difference between being Jewish (a religion or ethnicity), Israeli (a citizenship), and Zionist (an ideology), people understand.

Does Israel have a right to exist? people ask. What does that mean? Do countries really have
rights, or do people have rights? The Jewish people have a right to exist, the Israeli people have a right to exist, but what does “Israel” mean? Israel defines itself as the state of the Jewish people. It is not a state of its citizens. It is a state of many people who are not its citizens, like myself, and is not the state of many people who are its citizens, like the twenty percent of its population that is Palestinian. So if we ask a Palestinian person, “Do you recognize the right for there to be a country on your historic homeland that explicitly excludes you?” what kind of response should we expect?

So when Olmert warns that we will “face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights” and that “the state of Israel [will be] finished,” I get a little flutter of excitement. I think of the 171 Palestinian organizations who have called on the international community to begin campaigns of boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel until Israel complies with international law. This is already a South African-style struggle, and we outside of Palestine need to do our part. Especially those of us who live in the US, the country that gives Israel more than $10 million every single day, must take responsibility for the atrocities committed in our name and with our money.

Ultimately, this is our role as Americans. It is to begin campaigns in our churches, synagogues, mosques, universities, cities, unions, etc. It is not to broker false negotiations between occupier and occupied, and it is not to muse over solutions the way I have above. But one can dream. And as a Jewish American, I know that while it might be scary to some, while it will require a lot of imagination, the end of Israel as a Jewish state could mean the beginning of democracy, human rights, and some semblance of justice in a land that has almost forgotten what that means.

Amira Hass: Disrupting the Separation Policy

Here are some excerpts from Amira Hass' wonderful article in Ha'aretz. For more, visit their website. It's well worth reading.

A woman chatting idly in Ramallah on Sunday said dismissively: "The High Court of Justice's decision to move the separation fence in Bil'in proves nothing about the effectiveness of the popular Palestinian-Israeli struggle. Israel needs it to portray itself as a democracy."

Her frustration is understandable. The lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians are disrupted by a fence whose route elsewhere is no less "disproportionate" than it was in Bil'in. After two and a half years of weekly demonstrations by Palestinians, left-wing Israelis and foreign activists - demonstrations that were brutally dispersed, with numerous protesters being injured or arrested - the fence was moved a mere 1.7 kilometers. And the same High Court that moved the fence also legitimized the Jewish neighborhood that had already been built on Bil'in's private land....

...But those frustrated by the limited impact of Israeli anti-occupation activity are ignoring two of its salient characteristics. First, by helping to return one dunam of land to one individual, enabling farmers to complete an olive harvest without harassment and attacks by settlers, shortening the waiting time at a checkpoint or releasing a patient or a minor from detention without trial, life is made a bit less difficult for particular individuals at a given moment...

...Moreover, this immediate personal relief is interwoven into a more fundamental, longer-term Israeli-Palestinian struggle against the occupation. Since the 1990s, Israel has endeavored to separate the two peoples. It has restricted opportunities to meet and get to know one another outside the master-serf framework, VIP meetings or luxurious overseas peace showcases from which the term "occupation" is completely absent.

Because of this separation, the Palestinians know only settlers and soldiers - in other words, only those whose conduct and roles in the system justify the Palestinians' conclusion that it is impossible to reach a just agreement and peace with Israel. This separation also reinforces Israelis' racist - or at best, patronizing - attitudes toward the Palestinians.

Well, both a lot and very little has happened since I last wrote. I've flown around the world, from the United States to Palestine, and I'm now back in the West Bank. I'm living in Tuwani, a tiny village located in the South Hebron hills, next to the Ma'on settlement and it's outpost. Palestinian children coming to school in Tuwani and Palestinian shepherds graving their sheep have been attacked by settlers living the outpost.

Tuwani is a very beautiful place and thankfully since I've been in the village, very little has happened. Mostly, children have gotten to school on time and safely and, by and large, Palestinians have been able to graze their sheep quietly. I've spent most of my time recovering from a vicious attack waged by the Tuwani bacteria. But I'm back to good health again.

I've been able to visit Bethlehem and Hebron as well. Hebron, in particular, is looking up. The city government is paying shop owners 200 NIS a month to keep their shops in the old city open during Ramadan. The old city is normally a ghost town, as Israeli settlers often throw trash down at Palestinian shops and harass them in other ways. But today I could hardly recognize it. So many shops are open. It's beautiful to see.

I must get on with life here, so I'll wrap this up. God willing, things will continue to be quiet and I'll continue to have very little to say.

Additional Information of the Dismantled Wall Outside Tuwani

CPTnet
20 August 2007
AT-TUWANI: "Security" wall along Route 317 dismantled

On 7 August 2007, members of CPT observed the dismantling of the "security wall" along Route 317. Upon investigating, they saw a crew of workers under Israeli supervision taking the wall down just past the road connecting At-Tuwani to Yatta. By the end of the day, no wall remained in the area.

The short wall--as it came to be known for its 80-cm height--along route 317 was constructed the previous summer, reaching the village of At-Tuwani on 14 June 2006. It consisted of six-meter-long slabs of preformed concrete that fit together in a tongue and groove pattern. The Israeli military had originally planned the Separation/Apartheid to run along route 317 but the Israeli Supreme Court had rejected the plan. The military built the short wall instead, under the auspices of security, despite the fact that, given its height, a person in reasonably good physical condition could climb over it. Its actual effect was to greatly reduce access to the economic and social hub of Yatta for the people of the South Hebron Hills, and to cut off shepherds from their land on the other side of the wall. The Israeli army could also more easily stop all vehicle traffic from Tuwani and the surrounding villages to Yatta and the villages to the north, because the wall had only two small openings that were frequently the sites of "flying checkpoints." In July of 2006, the Israeli military temporarily closed even these openings with cement blocks.

Last summer, the people of At-Tuwani and nearby villages, with the support of Israeli and international peace activists, organized demonstrations against the building of the wall. Eventually, they won a court decision that declared the wall illegal. The Israeli army delayed in implementing that court decision for some time.

Asked about the way events unfolded, a village leader for nonviolent activity said, "The IDF routinely disregards Israeli court decisions. We believe what happened is a success for the people's nonviolent resistance. This is a very important step."

The village plans to hold an action to celebrate the dismantling of the wall in the near future.

Joy Over the Fall of a 2 and a half foot High Wall

(click for larger photos)

My friend Kayla and I were talking about stress and burn-out, something that's all too common amongst people who work in NGOs and people who live war zones - and doubly likely for people who work with NGOs in war zones. Kayla suggested that I make a list of the reasons that I'm doing this work, so that I'll have something to look back on when I'm feeling hopeless.

So, here it is. I work in Palestine:

• Because standing in solidarity with people who are oppressed at the hands of my government is a part of what I believe ethical people do.
• Because in my own experience, international accompaniment does reduce violence and create a space for indigenous people to wage their own justice struggles.
• Because the Israeli military occupation Palestine is one of the greatest example of injustice in this decade and one the greatest sources of international stability. Freeing Palestine is crucially important and I'm honored to be able to play an extremely small part of ending it.
• Because even if my work doesn't make a difference, it's important to try. It's important to witness, even if only so that I am personally able to live with integrity and advocate effectively here at home.
• Because I feel led to this work.
• Because I find this work to be life-giving, because in a strange way it's already been my salvation.
• Because I want to learn what it means to live nonviolently. I know that involves suffering, but I still want to experience it.
• Because I've wanted to travel to Palestine for years, since I was in 8th grade. This is an opportunity to live out a dream.
• Because I believe that another person with a solid understanding of the problems of cross-cultural work and a commitment to Palestinian-led resistance can only help organizations like CPT.
• Because I love Palestine. I've traveled to many different countries and this is still the one that I love the best (though Bolivia is a close second). It's a culture I love. It's food I love. It's olive trees and valleys and beautiful children. It's a gift.

Hope
(I was asked to talk about hope at my Quaker meeting. Here's what I said.)

Good morning. My name is Joy and I’m here to talk about hope. I’d like to start with cartoon:

At first glance, it’s easy to think that this woman is a bit of a jerk. Or maybe she’s someone whose privilege blinds her to the suffering of others. That may be true, but I think there’s an more interesting possibility. I think that this is a woman who has lost hope.

Like most people, I have a list of things that I’d rather not think about. Here's my list: global warming, the AIDS epidemic, the people who made the clothes I wear, and the Republican and Democratic nominees for president. When I think about things like this, I feel heavy. I start thinking about all of the things that I don’t do well enough, or often enough, or at all. I feel as though our problems are insurmountable. I lose hope.

But there are other situations in which I have tremendous hope. When I was asked to talk about hope, I started thinking about the differences between the situations and find depressing and the situations where I find hope. I realized the difference between hopelessness and hopefulness doesn’t lay in the situation itself. Against all odds, I feel a tremendous, deeply rooted, and thus far unshakable sense of hope for the situation in Palestine and Israel. And honestly, if there has ever been a situation that appears hopeless, it’s the Israeli military occupation of Palestine.

But I feel hope. I’ve found that the difference between hopefulness and hopelessness lays in my own willingness to become engaged. I don’t find hope by protecting myself from discouragement. The hope I feel for Palestine, has come from working in Palestine. Not from visiting or witnessing or learning, though those are all good things. For me, there is something special about working. As I have worked in Palestine, I’ve been able to see God working. God is doing some pretty amazing things. I’ve stood besides Palestinians who were willing to risk being beaten, jailed or shot to nonviolently prevent land confiscation. I’ve stood beside Israelis as they participated in Palestinian–led demonstrations. Because they were willing to face angry soldiers and because they were willing to openly call for a just peace, these Israelis were able to create real relationships with Palestinians. That’s real peacemaking. I know people who have put themselves on the line for twenty years to build a better future for their families. I’ve seen Palestinians graze sheep in places they used to be unable to walk a year ago. I’ve seen God working. And I have hope. I have the sort of hope that feels obvious, the same way that I have a faith of God that feels obvious. George Fox described his understanding of God by saying “and this I knew experimentally.” This hope I know experimentally.

It’s easy for me to give in to the temptation to preserve hope by sheltering myself from the realities that I believe will endanger it. It’s tempting to believe that easy, unthreatening answers are hopeful ones. But for me, hope flows from seeing God working in our world. That means that hope requires being willing to invite heartbreak. Experiencing the presence of God requires openness and if we are going to be open to the world, we’ll find a lot of heartbreak. And if we allow our hearts to be broken, I think we can find hope. We are blessed or cursed to be a part of a tradition that doesn’t pull at lot of punches. At our best, Quakers have been people who have been willing to take difficult, painful stands for justice, all the while being wildly hopeful.

I’d like to close with one of my favorite prayers:

May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that we will live deep in our hearts.

May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people and the earth so that we will work for justice, equity and peace.

May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer so we will reach out our hands to comfort them and change their pain to joy.

And may God bless us with the foolishness to think that we can make a difference in the world, so we will do the things which others say cannot be done.

At-Tuwani: "Palestinians are grazing in places they haven't set foot in years" (CPTnet)

The following blog entries by CPTer Heidi Schramm have been edited for length. To see her original entries and accompanying photos go to http://heidischramm.livejournal.com


4th March 2007
I've been thinking a lot about what it is that I am doing here, and I worry that this work is creating a sort of stalemate. The settlers are lying low, but they are still here. There is no pressing need for Israel to evacuate the outpost, let alone the major settlements in the area, as long as things are reasonably quiet. Unfortunately, there is no public outcry when children (and internationals) aren't being attacked. Without that pressing need, the government and military can continue to put off making decisions indefinitely. And while they do that, the settlers become more established. Look at the settlement block east of Jerusalem; it is not just right-wing Zionists who are now saying these settlements "are Israel" and must be on the Israeli side of any future border. It is the predominant opinion. It only got to be that way because the government intentionally neglected to take a stand, for or against, the settlement movement, allowing the radical factions to create the facts that are assumed today. And this is now happening within the occupation as a whole. It has become accepted that this is how it is and how it must be. And for all the speaking out I do against this occupation, I can't help but feel like I'm playing too big of a role in its continuation. Scanning through past entries, I see that I consider days when the settlers stay in the outpost to be "good" ones. But these people shouldn't be here at all, and I cannot allow myself to lose sight of that. They live on land owned by a man from Tuba; not in Israel.


7th March 2007
We went out near the Avigail outpost today because settlers were grazing their horses in a Palestinian wheat field. They did an incredible amount of damage in the few hours they were there. We are approaching harvest time here, and the wheat has finally begun to grow, so there is no chance that it can recover from the damage before it is time to pick. The landowner called the police and was told he had to come in to the station near Hebron to file a complaint. So he and a few family members went. After being made to wait for a few hours they were told to come back with evidence. Naturally, this is where we come in. It was late by the time we got back, so we uploaded the video, made some DVDs and they will return to the station tomorrow.

Our days have been full but relatively calm. I spend most of my time honing my shepherding skills and have even, on occasion, been charged with the task of retrieving sheep that wander away from the flock. The settlers have been out but not pushing much. The truth is, they have access to less land today than ever before. The Palestinians are grazing in places they haven't set foot in years. And the police and soldiers are allowing it.