Resistance in the West Bank

Youth Watching Land being Demolished by Bulldozers

Monday, June 2

By Gerald Lenoir

The Village of Nal’in, West Bank

The twelve of us in the delegation, two guides and the tour bus driver traveled to the village of Nal’in in the West Bank. The community originally consisted of 58,000 dunams (1 dunam = 1/4 acres) of land. With the establishment of the Green Line, delineating the Israel-Palestine border in 1948, 40,000 Dunams of Nal'in became part of the Israeli state. On the hillsides surrounding the village on three sides, we saw Israeli settlements that take up another 8,000 dunams of Nal’in’s land, leaving the village with only 8,000 dunams.

Now the village of 5,000 people faces another immediate threat—a land grab by Israel in order to build a section of the infamous apartheid wall to separate the village from the Israeli settlements. The mayor of Nal’in explained that the community is confronted with three forms of aggression. First, the wall will consume 2,500 more dunams of village land. Secondly, the wall affects villagers economically. We walked with him through the area and he showed us the red Xs on many of the 500- to 700-year-old olive trees, marking the route of the wall through a fertile field that provides the livelihood for many of the residents.

Finally, the main road to the village will be closed to Palestinians and open only to the Israeli settlers. The part of Nal’in that is on the other side of the road will be connected by a tunnel, the access to which will be controlled by Israeli soldiers. They can open and close it at their discretion, potentially cutting off the access of some villagers to services and schools.

In the shallow valley below the field of olive trees, we watched the Israeli workers operating huge earth moving machines digging out the path of the wall. We stood and took pictures of the intruders breaking up the soil and rocks that did not belong to them.

The people of Nal’in are actively resisting the construction of the wall and the occupation. They hold regular demonstrations against the wall that involve villagers and the local and international supporters.

As we watched the Israeli workers preparing the path for the wall, one enraged villager shouted to us about the insanity of the situation. “They are stealing our land!” What about my children!” he yelled. He introduced us to a teenager in the group of 20 or so villagers that accompanied us. Under the yellow baseball cap that the youngster wore was a white bandage wrapped several times around his head. He had been shot the week before by an Israeli soldier for throwing rocks at one of the earth movers.

After a while, we made our way to the home of one of the villagers whose house was under a demolition order. Israeli solders could come at any time with a wrecking crew to demolish his home because it was built without permits, a daily occurrence in villages throughout the West Bank. We sat on the patio in a circle with the Mayor and other villagers, sipped fresh mint tea, and talked about the occupation and the resistance. Many of them felt that the Palestinian Authority, the administrative body of the Occupied Territories, was corrupt and ineffectual. Several of them also felt that the Palestine Liberation Organization was “on life support” in the words of one villager and needs to be resuscitated.

The Village of Bil’in, West Bank

After leaving Nal’in, we went on to the village of Bil’in, another community under siege. Like Nal’in, for years, the Israeli settlers have been confiscating thousands of dunams of land that were once part of the village. A section of the separation wall is also slated to cut off their village and consume large portions of its land. Bil’in residents have been the most vocal and militant in their opposition to the wall. Some of the villagers invited us to come to the next demonstration on Friday.

We split up into three groups of four and stayed overnight in the homes of three brothers who were born and raised in the village. Four of us stayed with Emad Bornat, a filmmaker who lives in a two-bedroom house with his wife and four sons, ages 3 to 12 years old. Fortunately, Emad spoke English fluently.

Emad’s kids were kids. They sat in the living room with us and gawked at us, asking us questions and playing with each other. When I asked the oldest boy, Mohamed, if he liked to play soccer, his younger brother corrected my American accent and told me the correct way to pronounce soccer. The youngest boy, Jibril sat across from me and made faces at me. I returned the favor, to his delight. We laughed for awhile and when he got tired of the game, he wandered away to play with his brothers and to crawl in and out of his father’s lap.

Emad said that he had been shot with rubber-coated bullets 15 times by Israeli soldiers while he filmed the weekly demonstrations. He showed us two video cameras that had been destroyed by the soldiers, one with a bullet still lodged right below the lens. He joked that maybe he should bring two cameras to the demonstration, one to film with and one for the soldiers to destroy. We laughed but the sight of the bullet in the camera that could have been in Emad’s face was not funny.

Emad also told us that he had been arrested several times and that soldiers could appear at any time and drag him off to jail. That is the reality that he lives with everyday.

Emad’s wife prepared a delicious meal of what she called French chicken, a salad, pita bread, hummus and French fries. One of the members of the delegation, Fulani Sunni-Ali, spoke to her in Spanish. She is a Palestinian from Brazil who moved to the West Bank. She spoke Portuguese and Spanish, besides Arabic.

After dinner, the other members of the delegation joined us and Emad showed us footage from the documentary he produced about the wall. It showed villagers and international supporters actively challenging Israeli Defense Forces. He captured footage of soldiers beating, tear gassing and firing at demonstrators. He filmed the demonstrators pushing back against a wall of defense forces. It was scene after scene of intense actions and counteractions. Many of us bought copies of his documentary, “Bil’in Up Against the Wall” to bring back with us.

The next morning, we ate breakfast and took pictures with the family and said our goodbyes. Emad shouted to us as we walked away from his house, “Let’s keep in touch!” We all agreed that we definitely would.