Planting Olive trees as an act of resistance

As mentioned, we were recently in the village of At-Tuwani in the south Hebron hills (see earlier post for the pictures). On Saturday the community invited the delegation I’m with from Christian Peacemaker Teams to join a tree-planting action, along with other internationals and Jewish supporters.

The background is ongoing harassment by a nearby Jewish settlement and it’s ‘outpost’. (The dozens of Jewish settlements across the West Bank are illegal under international law. The outposts are even more zealous settlers who set up temporary residence beyond settlements in defiance not only of international law, but their own Israeli laws. Unfortunately, Israel refuses to do anything other than give support to these provocative and aggressive settlers.) This harassment of Palestinian villages includes beatings, theft and damage to crops and trees.

In response to the cutting down of several mature olive trees, the village – which has a determination both to remain on it’s long held lands and to non-violence – decided to plant more olive trees as an act of resilience and resistance.

So it was that Saturday morning 70 – 100 Palestinian villagers were joined by Jewish supporters and internationals such as us. However, within minutes of reaching the olive grove, nearby settlers arrived and began harassing and chasing village sheep, and the army began to intervene.

In a bizarre situation, as Palestinians are under military occupation, they can be forced to leave an area by the military, and/ or detained or arrested. However because of their citizenship, Israeli Jews cannot be instructed or directed by the army – this is a police role. So, as often happens, the police are nowhere to be seen, but the army shows up in force creating a situation where the settlers can act with impunity, while the Palestinians (and internationals) can be arrested.

And indeed, the army arrived before the action even started, and within minutes there were four army jeeps. While they did try and dissuade the settlers from harassing and chasing the various herds of village sheep and harassing the villagers themselves, they continually split up to dissipate the soldiers and to find a new target for harassment.

Meanwhile a number of us continued to plant new olive saplings, though whether they remain for long is hard to say. With the soldiers unable to move the settlers, they chose a commonly used tool and declared a ‘closed military area’ even though the area was the Palestinian village olive grove and surrounding grazing land. This meant that the settlers could hang around, while the villagers and internationals faced arrest if we continued to plant trees or to remain. The village people resisted to some extent, and much to the delight of the settlers - who had come determined to provoke and derail the peaceful tree planting - three villagers and an international were detained by the army, along with the use of percussion grenades and ridiculous number of vehicles and personnel.