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Families fear bitter harvest Palestinians struggle to tend their olive crops as Israeli settlers and soldiers pose an ever-present threat to their security and livelihoods. Jessica McCallin reports from Nablus The Sunday Herald, 20 October 2002 It's 2.30pm and so far, so good. No soldiers, no settlers. The olive harvest began more than a week ago and this, October 17, is the first day the villagers of Awarta, just south of the West Bank town of Nablus, have been left alone to work on their trees. With appetites satisfied after lunch, the tense calm is giving way to joviality. Ahmed, the 60-something head of the Awad family, is putting pink hair-clips in his donkey's mane, to the delight of his baby grand-daughter. Then the mobile phones start going. The Abu Mahmoud family, harvesting about half a mile up the road, closer to the illegal Israeli settlement of Itamar, call to say they've spotted settlers coming down the hill. Normally the family would stay in the fields until 4pm, but now they're calling it a day, too scared of what might happen. On October 15, settlers handcuffed and beat Badawe Awad while he was harvesting his crops in these very same fields. He said the settlers used the butts of their machine-guns to hit him around the head. They also stamped on his back, set their dog on him and kicked dirt into his mouth, nose, eyes and ears. His wife was shot in the back and leg on the same day. The couple, parents to four young children, are badly bruised and shaken up, but both will be okay. Badawe says it was the second time in four days that he was attacked. On October 12, settlers handcuffed and blindfolded him and his two brothers and drove them, in their tractor, to the local Huwara military base. There, he says, they were beaten by the settlers and soldiers and fined more than £200 for not having a proper licence for the tractor. Badawe said the settlers, who also didn't have a tractor licence, were not fined. Last week a 24-year-old man from the neighbouring village of Akhraba was shot dead in his fields. Last year, Israeli settlers killed two Palestinians during the olive harvest. Nobody has been arrested for the murders. Activists from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a loose-knit organisation which brings Western civilians to the Occupied Territories in the hope that, by their presence, they will provide an element of protection to Palestinians in the fields, go up the road towards where the settlers have been spotted. I accompany them. On the way we pass around 15 to 20 members of the Abu Mahmoud family, their donkeys laden with olives, returning to the village. 'There are at least three of them,' says Hani Abu Mahmoud. 'We saw them coming down the hill, but then we lost them. I don't want to take the risk of staying. They have guns, we don't. We have no way of defending ourselves against them. Maybe we'll come back to the fields tomorrow if you internationals will join us.' His 10-year-old son Mohammed points to where the settlers were last seen. He thinks he recognises one of them. 'It's Jadon,' he says. 'He always comes to the fields.' We scan the horizon, trying to locate them. Eventually we make out a red blot, one of the men's shirts. Then two more shapes are deciphered. The settlers are hiding among the trees, about 500 metres away, observing. They move from tree to tree, trying to get a better look. It feels like a game of hide-and-seek, or rather cat and mouse. After about 20 minutes they decide to leave and we watch them walking back up the hill towards their caravan homes, peppered in groups of four or five on the hilltops over-looking the Awarta village fields. We chat to the Abu Mahmoud family for 10 minutes until a white jeep appears, driving fast towards us. The family get nervous and motion for us to leave. 'It's settlement security,' says Hani. 'They are crazy. You must come with us.' The ISM activists stand their ground and cautiously approach the jeep once it has stopped. The driver queries what they are doing there. The two men in the jeep are in army uniform, but won't say which security force they are with. Palestinians say both settlement security and the Israeli Civil Administration for the Occupied Territories both use white jeeps, and they never know which is which. They add that settlers who attack them are often dressed in army uniforms -- the settlers who attacked Badawe, for example, were dressed in the army's khaki apparel and used M-16 machine guns, the official army weapon. They never know whether they are just wearing them, or if they are actually doing their official Israeli army service. I ask Badawe Awad how he can be so sure that the people who attacked him were settlers, given that they were dressed in soldiers' uniforms. 'I don't think soldiers from inside Israel would do what they did to me,' says Badawe. 'Besides, one of them looked very familiar. He was one of the ones who beat me and my brothers the first time. I'm sure he's from Itamar. And they both had hair ringlets and beards, which all the Orthodox men wear.' Itamar is a very Orthodox, some would say extremist, settlement. Israel lets settlers do their army reserve service in the regions surrounding their settlements. It is adamant that letting them do their service near their homes, protecting Palestinians from attacks by people who could be their neighbours in the settlements, doesn't give rise to a conflict of interest. 'I won't specify the nature of the soldiers,' says an Israeli Defence Force (IDF) spokesperson. 'It doesn't matter if they are from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or Itamar. They are IDF soldiers and will follow army orders as closely as possible.' We return to the village with the Abu Mahmouds and on the way spot another white van, stopped on the road near the settlement. 'It's been driving in and out of view for about an hour,' says Hassan Awad. 'I think it's trying to make sure we don't start picking the olives from the trees closer to the settlement. The army has told us we can't harvest those trees.' I call the Israeli Civil Administration spokesman for more information on the nature of the white vans and the order that Palestinians can't go into the fields nearest the settlement. He doesn't return my call. Around half of the Awarta village's olive trees are located near the Itamar settlement. The villagers, already suffering economically because of the intifada, say it will be a disaster if they are not able to harvest those olives. A few of the villagers work as shepherds, but olives are their main source of income and the trees, which produce fruit only every other year, sustain them for two years. The rest of their time is taken up with pressing, processing and selling the olives. Olives account for up to 20% of Palestinian agricultural output and just under 5% of its GDP. The Palestinian Authority says the olive harvest was reduced by 80% in 2001, mainly due to Israeli military action -- an economic loss of $10 million. Since October 2000 soldiers and settlers have uprooted or burned 200,000 olive trees. The harvest season continues until the end of November. _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
