The Trees are also victims
A short story about everyday violence for
those who reside
next to the "security fence"
and the meaning
of Olive trees to palestinians.
On Friday July 25th, a few of us
with the Boston delegation visited
the newly constructed fence on the southern
tip of the village of Jayyous.
The road that leads out of the village
has been barricaded with massive tunnels
of razor wire making continuing on the road
impossible. Unfortunately
for one family, the barricade means that
they are no longer able to travel to
and from their village. The family
on the other side of the fence
is
effectively in “no-man’s land”
as they live on the Israel side and are not,
and never will be, Israeli citizens. (See
other recent detailed reports
about this particular situation on the B2p
website: bcpr.org/b2p).
As we surveyed the scene, we were approached
by a couple of young men
who wanted to show us their home.
We walked to their family’s land, which
sits
immediately next to the new barbed wire fence
and which has cut them off
from accessing most of their property.
The family, along with other families
who live next to the newly constructed wall,
also suffer from late night
military incursions. The military would
arrive
at their home late at night,
bang on the doors and walls of the house,
force the men out into the yard
and then interrogate them. They took me
over to the exact spot
on the property where two of the teenage boys
were beaten last month. They pointed
to the ground to show where they had been
brought to by the soldiers.
They
recounted the story of when they were pulled
from their beds and brought
there to be beaten by the soldier’s
rifles in front of their father
(a common form of intimidation targeted
toward all young men in Palestine).
Such are occurances all too common
for Palestinians
guilty of nothing,
besides being an "arab", in the
hands of the Israeli military.
They next brought us to dead
olive trees lying on the ground. They pointed
at them and told us “the Israeli’s
cut off the branches and uprooted these
trees.
They threw them on the side of the
road”.
One could see that such was
incomprehensible to them. Every tree
has a history to Palestinians.
They can draw a genealogy of when the trees
were planted and by whom. Most often
each one
was planted and cared for
over many generations and is seen
as contributing to their individual
and family’s lives and thus a
continuation
of a family’s connection to the land.
So when the family found the uprooted trees
tossed
like trash on the side of the road, they
retrieved them and brought them
to their land. Though the trees are dead
and cannot be replanted,
the family
seemed to bring them to their home
out of respect for them. It seems that
they required a proper burial.
As we looked at these dead trees,
and trying
to understand the families attachment
and concern for them, Michael R. made
the comment that perhaps the reasons
for them bringing them here
is that
they see the “trees as victims
of the Occupation as well”. It seems
entirely
plausible this is indeed the case: they
identify with the trees as
suffering from and victims of the occupation
in as much the same way
as they are.
John Petrovato in Jayyous, the West Bank.From
Raffi Berg
