A little news letter

Why I am here?

I am here to learn more about Israel and Palestine. I am her e to observe and document.

I am here as en EAPPI

The vision of EAPPI:

The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) seeks to support local and international efforts to end the Israeli occupation and bring a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a just peace, based on international law and relevant United Nations resolutions.

(see www.eappi.org)

I will stay here for 3 months and I am living in a little village called Yanoun. Northeast in the West Bank. Or as some people refer to “the OPT”, Occupied Palestinian Territory or as I like to call it Palestine. This village lies in the bottom of a valley. On the top of the valley are the illegal outposts of Itamar settlement. And because of that they have some troubles. The troubles involve settlers coming to the village harassing them. Both verbal and physical. I have experienced it a Saturday, last week. First 6 children accompanied with three older youths came down. One of them was caring a machinegun. They just walked through, washed them self in the well, played around on the fields. And then left. Than later came 4 older boys, 3 of them were carrying big machineguns. I think I have never seen such big machineguns. They came running from downhills and towards the village. All the people in the village run inside their houses. We stayed outside to show our international support. They started talking to us, and asked one of my colleges in the team if he wanted to die. They started asking us why we are here…. And if we were afraid of them. They stayed for a while, making sure that we understood that they had no troubles using the guns they were carrying. Then they left. Luckily nothing more happened this day. But back to the village, it is beautiful and the people who live here are so nice and friendly There are about 100 people living here.

And most of them are farmers. . Around us we have a lot of olive trees. (There used to be many more, but the settlers has burned down and taken the fields)

It could have been such a relaxing place here, but people here are not that relaxed. They live everyday in the fear -of what can happen. Will the settlers come down today, will they burn down fields, will they maybe kill some of the animals, or will they come and harass the people physical. One of the young boys here gets really nervous when he sees the settlers, he can not forget the day, a settler came and pointed machinegun to his face. He could not stand on his feet for half an hour afterwards.

Since 1996, the settlers have come down here to harass the villagers. But still they are here. This is their land, and here they want to live. As long as it is possible. In 2002 it became to dangerous here. (It seems like the aim of the harassment of the settlers is to scare the villagers away, so they can get the land for them self.) on the 18 of October 2002 almost all of them left the village.

From this day there has been internationals in this village. And EAPPI has had people here since 2003. There always has to be some international present here.

So now I am present here, in this village that never gets dark, because of the 6 big spotlights that have been put up on the hilltops. (They monitor everything that happens here from the hilltops, and the Israeli authorities allow them to do it.)

Upper Yanoun is located in what became area C (Oslo agreement) It means is it under full Israeli control. They are being monitored by the same people that are supposed to protect them. Ironic? For a long time there has been a building stop here in Yanoun. They cannot even build an extra room in one of the houses to make a little “hospital” But every day the settlers build new houses. They have no restrictions.

Area A- under full Palestinian control
Area B- under Palestinian civil control and Israeli security control.
Area C – under full Israeli control.

(according to the Oslo Agreement)

To get back to the situation here, I put in some photos. One of them is me in front of “the doom of rock” and the Wailing Wall in the Jerusalem. The holy city in The holy land. The place that has so many holy places but peace is not present.

The short version of what is happening is that you have an occupier and the occupied. One country in control and one under control. Israel has full control here. And were they do not have the full control, they make sure that they surround the area with walls and checkpoints.

Every day thousands of Palestinians has to cross checkpoints. They are being searched for bombs and their ID is closely looked at. To get from one place to another might take hours, compared to the 20 minutes it should have taken, if there had been no checkpoints and no closed roads. There are several different ways of controlling the movement of the Palestinians. The physical closures (around 600+) are checkpoints, road gates, observation towers, earthmounds, roadblocks, tunnels, earth wall, road barrier and trenches. Then you have closed and restricted areas, as Israeli army bases, Israeli closed military area, projected closed areas. Then you have the road system, there are different roads for Israelis and Palestinians. and then there is the 149 settlements and around 100 outpost. Leaving the Palestinians left with almost nothing.

And then there is the wall, 723 km surrounding the West Bank. Also called the barrier. The wall that has been put op for the safety of Israel. The country that’s occupied Palestine. The wall does not follow the green line from the Oslo agreement. But is taking a whole lot of more land. The wall has separated families, demolished houses and somehow put all of Palestine inside a “jail” letting the wall be grey as a prison wall on the Palestinian side, but having a nice architecture on the Israeli side.

The humanitarian law says: Everyone has the right to freedom of movement.

I think this enough for this first little report. If you think this is interesting and want to know more you could have a look at these links:

www.unocha.pal - UNOSCHA

www.showrimshtika.org – breaking the silence

www.machomwatch.org – Machom watch

www.icahd.org - ICAHD

Hope you liked reading this little report from me.

-Simi in Palestine-