On Tuesday, January 31st, Yousef’s friends and family were attacked by the Israeli army as they marched towards the military watchtower at the entrance of Beit Ommar. Four people were injured after soldiers unleashed tear gas and sound bombs and began beating the demonstrators. One Palestinian activist had his nose broken and several others were roughly hit with the butts of the soldiers’ guns.

On January 28th, 2011, settlers from Bat Ayn, one of five Israeli settlements built on illegally taken from the Palestinian residents of Beit Ommar, rampaged through the village and shot 17-year-old Yousef while he was on his family’s farmland with his father. To date, no settler has been investigated, let alone arrested and charged, for his murder. The lack of justice in Yousef’s case is part of a wider pattern of impunity under which settlers are allowed to steal from, terrorize, and even kill, Palestinians in the West Bank.

In a hazy room, clouded with cigarette smoke and steam from hot syrup-sweat tea, residents of Kafr ad-Dik and its neighboring villages, along with Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists, excitedly gathered together waiting for the midday prayer to finish. The twenty-seventh of January marked the fourth Friday during which the village of Kafr ad-Dik has staged a nonviolent protest against the annexation of its agricultural land by the Israeli Occupation Authority (IOA).

The village of Kafr ad-Dik, and the greater Salfit District, is located on top of the largest water table in the West Bank, thus providing it with some of the most fertile land in the region. Home to generations upon generations of farmers, Kafr ad-Dik, and the neighboring villages of Rafat, Balut, and Bruqin, have had the majority of their agricultural land stripped away from them in the last ten years by the IOA. In turn unemployment and poverty rates in the farming-based community have skyrocketed.

In a village of which 99% of the inhabitants are olive farmers, the IOA’s annexation of the majority Kafr ad-Dik’s groves has been devastating.

Approximately 4,000 dunams of vital agricultural land, shared by the four villages, has been appropriated by the IOA over the past ten years. Last month, the IOA significantly increased its total of annexed land in the area when it earmarked an additional 1,000 dunums for the alleged expansion of the nearby illegal Israeli outost, Ale Zahav. Kafr ad-Dik residents, however, are convinced this latest annexation of land will be allocated to the construction of an entirely new outpost.

Left with no land to farm, and consequently no source of income, Kafr ad-Dik’s farmers have been forced to either rent out small plots from farmers who still have access to their lands in neighboring villages, or work their own land, now owned by the illegal Israeli settlements, for a paltry wage of around $13 a day.

Popular resistance, in the form of weekly nonviolent marches and demonstrations, has become increasingly commonplace in many West Bank villages since the beginning of the IOA’s construction of the Separation Wall and its subsequent seizure of Palestinian land. Villages such as Bil’in, Ni’lin and, more recently, Nabi Saleh have been the vanguard of the West Banks popular resistance movement over the last few years, with the media giving little to no focus to villages outside the spotlight.

As illegal Israeli settlements continue their unhindered expansion with impunity, robbing Palestinians of their land and livelihood on a daily basis, similar popular resistance demonstrations are popping up in villages all over the West Bank. In order for the new popular resistance efforts to be effective, it is imperative that media sources lend their ears more equitably to the growing number of villages cooperatively combating the occupation.

Nasfar Qufesh, the coordinator for the Popular Committee in the Salfit District, is insistent upon the fact that widespread, disciplined popular nonviolent resistance, represents the strongest means by which West Bank villages can resist the occupation. He says the aim of popular resistance is to, “create awareness in western countries, particularly America, of how, and for what purposes, their hard earned tax money is used.”

The Israeli Occupation Force’s (IOF) blatant use of excessive force during the weekly nonviolent protests throughout the West Bank, via mass amounts of tear gas, rubber bullets, sound grenades, and live ammunition, is an excellent example of American tax dollars hard at work. The US furnishes Israel with over three billion dollars a year in military aid alone, most of which is made up of non-repayable grants.

Although still in its nascent stages, the popular resistance in Kafr ad-Dik is growing. Community leaders predict similar movements to fan out across West Bank villages as a main method of confronting the occupation and its confiscation of their land.

About 50 cars made up a motorcade procession during the action. As soon as the cars arrived at the Israeli checkpoint at the edge of Jericho, Israeli Forces would not let the cars advance. The activists flew Palestinian flags from their cars and asserted their rights to travel anywhere they wished on their own lands in the West Bank. Israeli soldiers detained 5 people during the action, including a 15-year-old girl.

Young Israeli mothers from Tel Aviv and Jaffa and their children joined the Palestinian families for creative workshops and joint games in a public park. The mixed group of almost 80 Israelis and Palestinian women and children enjoyed a delicious picnic meal based on Palestinian cooking. Many Palestinian women activists from Beit Ommar have taken the led in organizing these actions to challenge the occupation.

Asked by a correspondent how they feel about this action and the risks involved, as well as the idea of cooperating with Israelis, one of the Palestinian organizers said: “Our life is hard. We and our children need a break, this is a good opportunity to feel free and happy. Just like the Israeli women, our goal is to make a political statement against the occupation of Palestine. We defy the illegal, inhuman, Israeli system that constantly oppresses us”.

The group issued a statement helping to contextualize the political implications of these actions which read:

“We hereby, publicly reassert, that we do break and shall continue to break the laws and orders that limit the right to freedom of movement of the civilian population in the West Bank. We challenge the wisdom, morality and legality of such decrees. We seek the path of civil disobedience against an arbitrary system that, for the past 44 years, has deprived millions of people of their human and civil rights, placing them under a military regime and behind walls, barriers and checkpoints.”

As the demonstrators walk towards the settlement with their slogans against the occupation, they discovered that garbage from the settlement had been thrown on their land.

Many soldiers stopped the demonstrators before they even could walk up to the settlement fence. “This is a closed military zone, you are not aloud to walk here,” said the soldiers and showed a paper confirming their message.

The illegal settlement of Karmei Tsur was established in 1984 and has confiscated several hundred dumunms of Beit Ommar land. The illegal settlement is expanding with the construction of new buildings and an outpost further down the hill.

Settler buses run by the companies Egged and Veolia, connect Israeli settlements which are built on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank, and deemed illegal under International Law, with cities within Israel proper. Palestinians are not allowed to ride these buses, one of many separate and unequal and policies which constitutes apartheid. The Palestinian Freedom Riders waited at a settlement bus stop in the Ramallah district in the late afternoon of November 15th, surrounded by international media and supporters. Several settlement bus drivers saw the crowd gathered at the bus stop and did not stop their buses to let the passengers board.

Finally, a settlement bus stopped at the six activists boarded wearing keffiyehs and carrying signs that said things like, “we shall overcome.” After a fifteen minute ride as the bus approached Hizma checkpoint, Israeli Forces boarded the bus and demanded to see the IDs of the six passengers. On seeing that they were Palestinian, they ordered the activists off the bus and threatened them with arrest. The activists refused to leave, and were roughly dragged off the bus one by one and placed under arrest.

Unarmed campaigns such as the Freedom Rides are only expected to grow across Palestine as Israeli apartheid policies continue to be challenged.

October 28th 2011. Loads of teargas was shot into the town of Beit Ommar. Residents of Beit Ommar followed a funeral procession from the mosque in the middle of town to the cemetery close to Route 60 and the Israeli watchtower to burry one of the residents who died of cancer. When the procession arrived at the cemetry, Israeli soldiers surounded it and Israeli jeeps gathered at the entrance of town. The Israeli soldiers closed the main entrance to town and at some point they started to shoot teargas.

After some time the soldiers came further into town and shot more teargas.

At 4:00 pm the israeli army brought a bollduzer and blocked all the side entrances and exits of the town with cement blocks and closed the gate at the towns main entrance as a part of the collective sanction policy the Israeli occupation usually impose on the Palestinian population. When a lot of people are gathered it almost always opens up for an opportunity for the army for confrontations with the villagers.

22th October 2011: Accompanied by a big crowd of international and Israeli activists and residents of Beit Ommar, PSP had a peaceful demonstration towards the illegal settlement of Karmei Tsur.

The internationals carried slogans for “justice,” “freedom for all”, and “dignity for the Palestinians”.
Slogans supporting freedom for the prisoners and the occupation were also present.
Speeches were held in Arabic, English and French.

The internationals were impressed by the engagment and endurance the residents of Beit Ommar show by arranging the weekly demonstrations against the ongoing occupation.

A spokesman for the Popular Committee of Beit Ommar thanked the demonstrators for their attendence by saying: “We want to decide for ourselves when the demonstration begins and when we have got message through and want to finish it”.

October 19th, 2011, PSP, members from The Popular Committees of Beit Ommar and Surif, several international volunteers, and boy shouts from the area supported Palestinian farmers from Abu Shook in Surif while they harvested their olive trees.

The olive grove is in area C, only a few kilometers from to the segregation wall, and the farmers prefer to be accompanied, due to earlier harassment from Israeli settlers or the army.

Several farmers from Surif, Beit Ommar and the nearby villages face continual harassment from settlers. Report here

This time the harvest passed peacefully. After some nice hours in the fields, the representatives from PSP were happy to visit the olive factory and watch the processing of the olives.

The Solidarity tour programme offers an introduction to the different geographical and cultural regions of the West Bank. The tour is providing its participants with in-depth social, political and historical insights on Palestinian life. Read the full program here. (the program is also available in French, Italian, Spanish and Norwegian).

Watch a short introduction from the Beit Ommar area:

Justice?
Human rights?
Freedom?

Come and see for yourself.

Use the important and unique possibilty:
Visit Palestine!

For further questions or information. Do not hesitate to contact us.
center4freedom@gmail.com

Take a look at other recently published documentaries by PSP:

Watch a summary of a French groups`s experiences in Beit Ommar here:

”For what reason? House demolished in Al Jab`a …

”Land grab” a documentary about the Israeli occupation and a new bypass road.