11/28/2009
Hi ,
In the four trips I have made to Palestine I really thought I had seen everything. Israeli soldier abuse, Palestinian humiliation, home demolitions, evictions, land confiscation. Apparently I had not. I will explain...

I first thought our Thanksgiving day visit to the tiny village of Yanoun would be the email of the day. Yanoun, about a hundred people has experienced so much settler violence over the past few years that at one point the village emptied and even the Israeli courts sentenced a settler to jail for repeatedly driving his ATV into town and shooting off his automatic machine gun. Briefly we walked, met bossy sheep, shy donkeys and one settler who approached us ( to be followed by his gun-toting sidekick) with his hand out saying he was causing, "no problem, just cultivating Israeli land".(Yanoun has lost 80% of its land to settlers.) A week earlier this same settler had lead a "tour" of Israeli hikers through the town where they went for a nude swim in the wells of the Palestinians. Contaminating the well water must have taken some effort as the openings to these wells are barely a 3'by3' hole covered by a heavy lid. This settler took credit for stopping the young tourists from swimming, after all, "they are only young and don't know better."

However this morning was nothing..About 7 pm as we( 5 international women in Hawara, on the way to the large city of Nablus, one is Lois, my friend and neighbor from Watertown,) were cooking our Thanksgiving meal, we got a call saying the main road between Hawara and Nablus was blocked by the army. Since it also happened to be the evening before the Palestinian three day holiday of Eid and many were doing last minute shopping, traveling to family, so this main road should be carrying an incredible amount of traffic. The road also used to have a permanent very nasty checkpoint. The Israelis recently said, with a great deal of fanfare, that they had dismantled it. Not completely true as it reappears during especially inconvenient times for Palestinians..

So we walked at least mile through the dark town and eventually came across hysterical Palestinians who said the Israeli army was giving free rein to Israeli settler youth who were attacking Palestinian cars, banging on them and spitting on the Palestinians the Palestinians thought we were from Maschom Watch, the Israeli women checkpoint monitoring organization and pleaded with us to do something. Walking further down the road we met Israeli army forces who were blocking Palestinian cars from continuing through and leaving the groups of settlers in control of the road. Three of us continued down this empty road about 100 feet and the dozen or so settler male youth between the ages of twelve and twenty mostly dressed as Jewish Orthodox walked up to meet us. Harrassment began, aimed especially at the one male international who had joined up with us and I was truly alarmed at being alone with this group; even more so when nine very upset settler girls appeared and also walked towards us. Through social work experience I know thug girls often like to put on a special show for a male audience. Thankfully the Army must have seen this approach and drove their vehicles up to meet us.

Much to the dismay of the young settlers the army moved them back to their original position and then tried to get us to leave the area. We told them we were not the problem, the settler youth were and they should stop them from attacking Palestinians and their cars. The soldiers told us they had no authority over the youth and would call the Israeli police to drive them home. Eventually the police came but also told us they had no authority over the settler youth but would ask them to call their parents to come pick them up. I cannot imagine any American teen or gang, much less Palestinian, being able to bring a major road to a stand still, and act with utter impunity as the Army and Police stand by.

One Israeli young man came over to us and began swearing, told us exactly what he would like to do with a knife to Arabs. He proceeded to tell us no one could tell him what to do, suggested what Obama should do to Michelle, and added that his parents were American. Make no mistake our unquestioning support of the behavior of the state of Israel leads to such societal behavior. These kids are given free rein and at this point, we can't but assume that they will be the leaders of tomorrows' State of Israel ..certainly a disastrous situation for the United States' image if not security. This group was composed of young thugs, bringing to mind Lord of the Flies, aimed at Palestinians and anyone else in their way..despite the press spin the next day that the "settles were protesting the difficulty they were having getting to Jacob's tomb"

We maintained our presence and the Army eventually created a space for the Palestinian cars to resume their passage..even though the Israeli youth would sit in front of the cars. At one point some of the Israeli girls approached us with long swaths of spit running down their chins. We stayed for several hours until most of the settler youth had been picked up and the Palestinian road traffic had diminished considerably since, as we suspected, once we left the area the police and army immediately packed up leaving the road unsecured.

I hope this email has at least, successfully conveyed my outrage and hopefully, sparked yours,
Ridgely