The cauliflower was delicious, but much too small. Our hosts offered
us the raw cauliflower and explained that Israeli soldiers told them that if
they wanted any of the produce in their fields, they would have to get it
immediately because they will no longer be allowed to go on to their
land. We were eating “the last fruits” of their land.
The cauliflower was delicious, but much too small. Our hosts offered
us the raw cauliflower and explained that Israeli soldiers told them that if
they wanted any of the produce in their fields, they would have to get it
immediately because they will no longer be allowed to go on to their
land. We were eating “the last fruits” of their land.
A road had just been bulldozed right behind a cluster of Palestinian
houses near the Israeli settlement of Harsina, just east of Hebron, cutting
off those small farmers from their land on the other side of the new road.
Their land now is Israeli land, stolen by settlers in broad daylight
as Israeli soldiers stood guard.
A group of about ten Israelis, Palestinians, and Christian Peacemaker
Team members, had just had tea together in the home of one of the families
whose land a few days earlier had been confiscated. We had just walked on
the new freshly graveled road that now covered their land. We had watched
as workers set posts in concrete and installed ten-foot high steel mesh
for the fence. We had seen many uprooted olive trees with their roots
facing
the sky.
As we stood on his demolished land, one farmer told us he had spent 50
years planting those trees and building up his land. Now he had lost almost
everything. We watched helplessly as his land was being covered with rock.
I questioned a settler as to why they were stealing all this land. He
explained that this was only for security. I wonder if he believed that.
How does moving the border fence around the Harsina settlement three
hundred feet down the hill increase security for the Harsina settlers? Yet
this is the explanation for the building of the apartheid wall that is
swallowing huge tracts of Palestinian land throughout the West Bank. One
Palestinian told me, “This will only increase the hate which will continue
for
generations.”
Another 250 acres are being stolen around the Harsina settlement in
this latest spasm of land confiscations. Just a few months ago settlers
confiscated around 750 acres on the other side of Harsina. This past year
the Israeli military prohibited many farmers from harvesting their crops.
They were told they could not go on their land “because of security for the
settlers.” The produce rotted in the fields, causing about ten million
dollars of loss around Hebron alone last year.
At the same time that half of the Palestinian population is dependant on
international food aid, these and many other families are being cut off from
the land that has sustained this people over the centuries. A huge
catastrophe is building as the Israeli government seems to be attempting
to starve out the Palestinian population. One elderly farmer said, “How
will I be able to feed my family now?”
Cauliflower will never a
gain taste the same to me.
Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical initiative to support
violence reduction efforts around the world. To learn more about CPT’s
peacemaking work, please visit our website at: https://cpt.org