September 2003

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Report from Yanoun

Adam Miles, who interned this last year at the AFSC Cambridge office, will be the Friends Comittee for National Legislation intern for 2003-04. He spent six weeks in the Occupied Territories and in Israel this summer.

Yanoun is a tiny, picturesque village--nine families and 94 persons--tucked into a lonely valley in the Nablus District, northern West Bank, Occupied Palestine. The valley holds about ten acres of rocky but fertile desert farmland. Surrounding hills send a cool spring that trickles slowly down beneath the village, collects in a shallow cave, and fills the village well.

Summer nights in Yanoun are pleasant and cool. The generator (financed by the United Nations and ‘protected' by a UN flag that has flown above it since the old generator was destroyed by residents of the nearby Itamar Settlement last year) is turned on at 7:30 each evening, bringing light to the village for the next three hours. Supper in the families' homes is wonderful and often lasts until the lights go out at 11:00. The hospitality and warmth towards internationals is incredible. The children are well-behaved, but energetic, and everywhere! (I think about 60% of the population is under 17.)

Yanoun and Itamar

Early one morning during my stay, settlers from nearby Itamar Settlement entered Yanoun, stopping to pray alongside a hill where sheep from the village graze. One of the flock wandered up the hill, prompting its owner, Yahir, to give chase.

Between 1996 and 1998 Itamar settlement claimed this hill--along with the entire mountainous perimeter surrounding Yanoun--as its own. Itamar settlers are well-funded and well-armed, and assert a god-given right to all of modern-day Israel and the Palestinian Territories without compromise. One Israeli I spoke with called Itamar "a cancer in our society."

Around Yanoun, Itamar settlers have established an ambiguous, constantly-encroaching set of boundaries that cannot be crossed by the villagers without a violent reaction from the settlement. The ‘off-limit' areas are the first points of orientation all internationals are given upon arriving in Yanoun. Because of these limits, it is now a dangerous act of resistance for a villager to chase his own sheep up his own hill.

Yahir's act of defiance prompted a quarrel with the settlers squatting on the hillside. There were five settlers, heavily armed. Another villager, Adnan, heard the argument and approached the hill with his brother, Chadar. Adnan speaks both Hebrew and English fluently. He argued with the settlers. The conflict soon escalated beyond words. Adnan struck one of the settlers on the shoulder with a stick. He was beaten severely with the butt-ends of the settlers' M-16s and shot in the foot and ankle. Yahir and Chadar were beaten less severely and managed to get away with minor cuts and lumps. Adnan was hospitalized for the next several days. Two dozen pieces of metal remained stuck in his flesh from bullets that had exploded near his leg. They could not be removed without risking further damage to the tissue. He was unable to walk.

Two trips to Huwarra

One week after being shot by a settler and one day after returning from the hospital, Adnan, a Palestinian from Yanoun village, left for Huwarra to file a criminal complaint with the Nablus area District Civilian Affairs Office (DCO), operated by the Israeli occupying forces. After an hour's drive on nearly impassable mountainous roads, and a wait of over five hours in the hot sun, Adnan, on crutches and bandaged on the right side from his foot to his knee, was told to go home. The captain who had agreed to meet with Adnan was "too busy" to take the report. He was told to return the following Sunday at 10:00 am with no guarantee, of course, that the captain's very demanding schedule would be less full.

Adnan asked me to accompany him to the DCO the following Sunday and I agreed. We were hopeful that my presence would make a difference; that somehow as an international I could help to ensure a meeting with the captain. I'm unsure what good, if any, it did. Still, the DCO is worthy of a description.

The Fortress of Civilian Affairs

We met in Lower Yanoun at 8:30, were in the car by 8:35 after a quick shot of tea, and arrived at the DCO--approximately 15 kilometers away--at quarter to ten (Some quick math demonstrates what it is like to travel in the West Bank.) At 12:30 pm, two and a half hours later, Adnan was finally beckoned by a soldier standing near a barred, iron revolving door at the front of the heavily guarded administration center. With its tanks, watchtowers, razor-wire, and heavy artillery, this place should really be called a "Fortress for Civilian Affairs." This is no office.

The soldier at the iron gate looked at me then and barked something else, which, I correctly assumed, meant for me to follow as well. When I reached the door a different soldier looked at me and asked, "What are you doing here?"

"I'm here with my friend," I answered.

"Who's your friend?"

I looked to my side. "His name is Adnan. He was shot last week and would like--"

He cut me off and looked at Adnan. "Go inside!"

He was allowed to pass.

"Good enough," I thought to myself, before the soldier shot a look back at me and asked again, this time more harshly, "What are you doing here?"

"Like I said, I'm here with my--"

"Open your bag!"

He found my camera and screamed: "This is a military area. It is forbidden to take photos!" And then he turned around and went inside.

It's not surprising that the Israeli military doesn't want any photos or video taken of the DCO. It's a terrible place.

I'm not a Christian, and I haven't spent a great deal of time imagining Purgatory, but after a day at the Nablus DCO, I'm quite certain that the Israeli government has a much better grasp on the concept than did Milton. Imagine any Department of Motor Vehicles in the US at its very worst. Then place it outside in 100-degree temperatures, with dust and dirt and no place to sit, so you stand in the oppressive heat for hours kicking rocks. Add the humiliation of being ignored and mistreated by occupying soldiers: 18- to 20-year-olds who demand you stand in straight lines; lose your information; "forget" your requests. Add the hopelessness of knowing that the wait and the abuse will continue for many hours and very likely will have to be repeated more than once before any progress is made. Add the weight of the occupation--35 years--like a boulder, compounding your frustration many times over.

Most of the men at the Nablus DCO are not there to file a criminal complaint, but to request a permit, formal permission from the Israelis to travel from the surrounding villages into Nablus to work. A line forms at the window usually around 7:00 am, and usually takes about 90 minutes to pass through. Each man gives his ID card, explains his request, moves to some hard benches nearby, and waits to be called again. The benches fill up very quickly. The wait is completely arbitrary, it seems. One man told me he had arrived promptly at 7:00 am to fill out his request. He sat impatiently and watched as countless men, who arrived long after he did, were called ahead for further processing. At one point, he re-entered the initial line and cut to the front to demand more information from the soldier behind the window. This did him no good. He was ordered immediately to sit back down and wait his turn.

Some were more "fortunate." With some expediency, they were given permission to travel through the army checkpoints that cut off their home villages from Nablus. (Of course, even if someone has permission to pass, the checkpoints themselves are another, even more oppressive, everyday reality of the occupation.)

The DCO closes at 3:00 no matter how many "cases" are still pending. If your name is not called before 3:00, you're forced to spend another day waiting in the sun. The process then starts over; again with the dim hope that your name will be called, again with the realization that even if you are called there is a good chance your request will be denied, again without a clear understanding of how the system works.

Choices

If you don't go through this process, you cannot work, or you try to find work in the economically downtrodden villages. You can try to go around the checkpoints illegally into Nablus through the fields, but if you're caught, your ID is taken and you're detained for the day at the checkpoint; again in the sun without food, water, or bathrooms. If you're caught more than twice, you're arrested for three days. After that, imprisonment is up to six months.

I talked with two men from the ‘wrong side' of the Ahwarta checkpoint. Like the others, they work in Nablus. They told me this was their fourth or fifth attempt with the DCO over the past two weeks. Somehow, they were still good-
natured, more interested in the novel I was reading and my terrible Arabic, than in complaining about their unpleasant situation. They were still waiting patiently, cracking jokes to each other, when Adnan stepped out of the ‘fortress' two hours after he had entered. The man who had been waiting since 7:00 was also still there; waiting not so patiently. With only a half-hour left, knowing how unlikely it was now that he would be called before the 3:00 deadline, he stood red-faced and grew visibly more agitated. Dozens and dozens of others stood alongside him waiting sadly and desperately to go home shortly with nothing.

Adnan emerged. He had given his report. The captain told him it would be sent to the police station at Ariel settlement for processing. They would call him if they needed more information and set up a time for him to look at photographs.

Two weeks later, as this article goes to press, he has heard nothing. He still cannot walk, but the leg is healing well.

Not long after we arrived back in Yanoun, I learned that Yahir, the man who was initially arguing with the settlers the day Adnan was shot, had moved his family and his flock of sheep south to a village called Jift-lik. With no protection from the Israeli government, Yahir, like many villagers from Yanoun before him, is simply too afraid to raise his family there. Attacks from Itamar continue and nothing is done, there is simply no response. Adnan's situation reinforces their own vulnerability in the minds of the villagers and, I can only assume, in the thoughts of the settlers as well.

The situation in Yanoun, as I write this, grows continuously more uncertain. Settlers have returned to the village more frequently and now at night. It appears as if a major act of violence--perhaps against the generator, perhaps against the villagers--is being planned.

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