Zuwarta village: Thursday

Today we went back to the village of Zuwarta to support the farming family who had been held on the military road the previous week (see post for Monday 22nd). Four of us were allocated to accompany the family, including Chris who is a 6ft 4in Londoner who has a cowboy hat to protect him from the sun, and as you can imagine attracts quite a lot of attention wherever we go.

The village co-ordinator was there to meet us as we arrived in the village, and we met up with the family. Ali's brother in law was joining him to harvest and we were also joined by Ali's mother, his wife and their two year old, plus a sister with a toddler and a baby. To my relief the 11 and 12 year old sons who had suffered the ordeal of thier five hour wait on the road the previous week, plus seeing their father assaulted, did not appear. They had been sent off to school for the day.

A combination of toddlers, women and gear was squeezed into a car and Ali drove us really carefully down the track towards the groves. We then all joined up and walked for about 20 minutes over rough ground and through olive groves, the baby being carried in a car seat. Eventually we stopped by some trees that lay directly next to a tarmaced road. This was the military only road, used by the army and police to move back and forth from the Army base, which lay somewhere out of sight over the hillside. This was another graphic example of how the Israeli occupation literally entwines Palestinians - you are never ever far from some evidence of the occupation. And this was the spot where Ali had been assaulted. Some army vehicles passed by us almost immediately and there was a steady flow of them throughout the day. At first we would all tense up as they passed - but as the day wore on and none of them showed any sign of stopping we soon scarcely noticed them.

A family day out: almost

This, was, I guess olive harvesting as it should be, a real family day out with everyone working together from the youngest to the oldest. As soon as we stopped the two year old grabbed a branch and started trying to pull some olives off - he know what to do! However, although the day went smoothly there was also a real sense of urgency - Ali's brother-in-law scarcely stopped all day as they both wanted to finish their work in one day. He spent a lot of the time pruning trees and generally tidying up the groves, getting rid of undergrowth and so on. Now this pruning work would normally take place about a month after the harvesting had finished. But because of the dangers of the family visiting the land, they were simply getting as much done as possible on this one day, and would probably not  return to the groves again.

As we started to clear up at the end of the day, Ali's younger brother, a young man of I would guess, 19 years, who had joined us during the afternoon, couldn't resist one small show of resistance. He walked out onto the military road and started to walk down the middle of it. In a split second Ali was there, yelling at him to get off the road. Nobody sadi anything - there was nothing tosay. Why shouldn't a young man just walk down an empty road - a road that lay on his village land?

Palestinian generosity

We made our way back to the village and Ali and his wife invited us in for a drink. We were acutely aware that this was by far the poorest family we had spent time with - their home was little more than one room with a bare concrete wall and floor. It was good to be able to accept their hospitality and very good to drink strong sweet coffee. It was clear that the family had eaten their one good meal of the day out with us in the fields. While we drank we saw again the smashed window in their room and the smashed door lock that we had seen on our first visit. We had been told that these had happened a year ago when the Army had raided the village to arrest a neighbour of Ali's. As is Israeli army practice, they had broken into the neighbouring houses as well, to 'dissuade' any resistance. Ali was left, of course, with the damage caused by the Army and he had no money to replace the glass or the lock.

We also spoke to Ali's nephew - he was one of those young men that I was beginning to recognise in Palestine, with restless eyes that are always on the move, never relaxed or at peace. I was not sure what he made of us and whether he trusted us, although he, like almost everyone we met, was really polite and open. We learnt that he had been in prison in Israel for 3 years and had been out about a year. Life for someone in his position would be really hard - he would be unlikely to be able to travel out of the Nablus area and getting work almost impossible. As we left he rose to accompany us and make sure we found a taxi to take us back to Nablus. In a minute he had found a driver and car and I guessed that his eagerness was to make sure that a relative or friend of his got the much needed fare. And then I realised why he had hurried - he had paid the driver for our fare - and however much we protested, he insisted that the fare was paid.