Israel has indicated that it means to keep all the land it has confiscated with the "security" fence in the West Bank. What does that mean in an agricultural area? Andrea Whitmore, a Missouri activist, supplied me photos and a description brought back by her husband Doug, a volunteer for three months in '07-'08 with a peace organization that opposes the occupation.
Says Whitmore:
Falamya is a village near Jayyous (in the northern West Bank). My husband and his fellow volunteers had to monitor the Falamya
agricultural gate among other duties.
The Israelis
have cut an army road through Falamya fields–the farmers, who live in
the village, are cut off from their own land–now on the other side of the road.
You can see in the top left picture (the smiling woman is an international volunteer) the double roll of razor wire, maybe 5
feet high. Then there's a ditch you can't see in the picture, about ten
feet wide, then a gravel patch to show footprints, then the barbed wire
electrified fence– not to kill but to send a signal to an army command
post somewhere that the fence is disturbed. Hence the soldiers'
annoyance when boys throw stones at the fence, which means they have to
get in their jeeps and investigate.
Then more gravel, then
the road, then more gravel on the other side and some of the fencing
repeated. You can only imagine how much cherished farm land was seized
and destroyed and what an awful deprivation it is for the people who
are living in their own land and being treated like criminals. [all emphases Weiss's]
The
farmers must get a permit (not so easy, often denied or not renewed) to
farm their own fields, or to graze their herds. Every day they have to
go to the gate and wait for the soldiers inside the
building to open. You can see in the bottom picture that a man is
standing at a door looking up. He's waiting for a light to indicate
that he can come through. There's another man on the right waiting to
go through a turnstile to go up to that door, which houses a metal
detector and where the farmers must show their IDs, their permits, and
go through the metal detector. All to go to their own land.
If
they want to take their tractor across, they have to go through and be
checked, then go back through, then get on their tractor and drive
through, stop and have their tractor inspected. It's outrageous, and in
contravention of international law in every possible way.
