“This day was like the 1948 war. Around 1 000
soldiers came down on the hills and surrounded our tents.”
It is midday and we are standing out in the sun, in
the middle of the Jordan Valley. It is above 30 degrees Celsius. Yet there is
no option for shade, as we are talking to one of the families who have been
forced to leave their land and had their tent demolished. On the 30th
of June there was a large military exercise in the area, and thirteen families
were forced to evacuate for 24 hours. Ibrahim Fakir’s family is one of four who
have not been allowed to return to their homes after the military exercise, but
have nonetheless done so through the support of the community.
“First in the morning there were ten jeeps full of
soldiers, and three bulldozers. They gave us two hours to collect our stuff,
before they demolished our home. Then they told us to leave, and we have not
been allowed to come back. I am still afraid they will come back and damage my
tent. I can see no future for us, only the end.”
We also meet Khalled Sahare, who was forced to leave with
his family for 24 hours. As we sit in his tent we see soldier after soldier
walking by, climbing the hill and disappearing in the horizon. It is a strange
sight, with the soldiers walking in the middle of the Bedouin community, a
Palestinian tractor driving in the mist of the soldiers.
”I see the soldiers every day, they come every day. I
ask why they tell me to go away from here, and they say ‘we will do training
every day.’ Where will I go? This is my area; this is where my father is, where
my children are, and my tent.”
“I want peace and to live here in peace with my
children, but every day the soldiers come here to train for war.”
When we express our concern for the children, and how
they are affected by the proximity of the soldiers he says: “You ask me a
question, but you already know the answer. The soldiers come here every day and
they train here with their guns. You know how our children are feeling. It is
the same as your children would feel.”
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| Photo credit: Simon Ming/ EAPPI |
Next we visit Yasser, who is a little more than a
child at the age of 20, but already scarred for life and tired of telling his
story. “Well I was grazing my camels, when I heard the shooting. Then suddenly
I was shot in the breast, but it was too far away I could not see the soldier
who shot me. First they took me to the military camp to check my blood
pressure, then I went to the hospital in Nablus, afterwards they took me to a
hospital in Ramallah where I had surgery.”
Yasser pulls up his shirt and show us his scars.
Besides a ten centimeter long surgical scar, there is another visible wound of
the bullet. Meanwhile a group of soldiers approach the tents, and we go out to
make our presence known. On the opposite hill we see Yasser’s 20 camels, and we
ask if he has gone back to his job. He
says: “yes I still graze them in the same fields, there is nowhere else to take
them.”
To go back to face the same dangers day after day,
always carrying the reminders of what can happen, is in my eyes rather
courageous. It takes determination and makes me wonder how he sees the future.
Yasser does not answer, but some of the other men do:
“It is very, very black. Every year is worse than the
year before. They took all of the water, they will not allow us to use our
springs, and they take our sheep and our tents. They take everything.”
“There is no vision for the future. Nothing. In the
nearby settlement of Maskiyyot they are allowed to build houses, but here they
do not allow us to build a tent.”
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