Last week, I took a trip to Yanoun, the site of another EAPPI placement. All EAs are encouraged to visit other placements, in order to learn about the occupation’s impact in different regions of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem).
Six families live in Yanoun. The village consists of nothing more than about a dozen dwellings – no grocery, no gas station, no park, no café.
What Yanoun has a lot of are sheep and goats and chickens, plus a spectacularly beautiful setting. I watched one of the women of the village milk her sheep and then turn that fresh milk into cheese, along with the aid of some of her six daughters. The cheese they produce helps feed the family, and the excess is sold in Aqraba, a nearby town of 14,000. The setting and methods weren’t sanitary, by American standards. But I had no doubt that the cheese was perfectly safe to eat and enjoy.
I also helped plant 150 olive trees with a group of Palestinian men and one Palestinian woman. There was a real sense of joy and shared purpose as the group worked together. For me, it had the feel of American farm communities of a century ago, pooling their manpower to build a barn or bring in a crop.
Because of threats and hostile acts against Yanoun residents from nearby Israeli settlements, EAPPI has maintained a round-the-clock presence there since 2003.
In the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, nothing looms larger, both literally and figuratively, than Israeli settlements in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem). Fresh from my visit to Yanoun, today seems like a good time to address this difficult issue.
From almost anywhere within the Bethlehem Governorate, I can look up and see settlements. Settlements are Israeli communities located on land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The settlements sparkle like Oz on their hilltops, gated and inaccessible to Palestinians, built on land confiscated from Palestinians, surrounded by security buffer zones closed to Palestinians.
There are some 250 Israeli settlements in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem); 611,000+ Israeli citizens live in them. The settlements cover more than 10% of West Bank land (including East Jerusalem). The separation barrier’s path meanders deep into West Bank territory to include these settlements on the Israeli side. Some 250 miles of roads serve settlers; the use of many of these roads is prohibited or highly restricted for those driving Palestinian-plated cars. The loss of land to settlement construction and the surrounding buffer zones affect Palestinian farmers’ and herders’ ability to maintain their livelihoods (Occupied Palestinian Territory: Humanitarian Facts & Figures, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs). Israel controls the water sources in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem); settlement needs are met, while Palestinians’ access to water is sharply limited.
All of these settlements are illegal, in the eyes of the international community (see, for instance, Article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention and UN Security Council Resolution 446).
Several of the EAPPI teams serve in rural communities where providing a protective presence against settler violence is their main task. No doubt most Israeli settlers desire only to live quietly in these comfortable communities. But attacks on Palestinian farmers and herders by a minority of the settler population are common. Some of the members of my group routinely accompany shepherds and their flocks as they go out to graze each day. Some routinely do “sleep-overs” in the tents of Bedouin families, to discourage settlers from harassing the families in the night. Sheep are killed. Olive trees are uprooted – over 800,000, by both settlers and the Israeli military, in the 50 years of the occupation, according to The Holy Land Trust.
Settler attacks on Palestinians had declined since 2013 but are on the upswing again. And the attackers are rarely arrested or prosecuted. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, over 90% of the settler attacks reported to the Israeli police between 2005 and 2016 were closed without any indictment.
The settlements are often referred to by political figures as “facts on the ground:” seemingly permanent realities that stand, quite literally, in the way of the elusive “two state solution” through which both nations could live side-by-side within secure and recognized borders.
Susan Brogden serves on the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) as an Ecumenical Accompanier. CMEP is very thankful for the writers who contribute to our Prayers for Peace blog. However, CMEP does not necessarily agree with all the positions of our writers, and they do not speak on CMEP’s behalf.