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2017 Olive Harvest Delegation to Palestine/Israel

 

Overview: The Olive Harvest Delegation recently visited two refugee camps and learned about the plight of Palestinian refugees, who still have the keys to their ancestral homes which they are not allowed to visit as they cannot cross the checkpoints. They went to Jenin and participated in the olive harvest festival at Canaan Fair Trade Olive Oil factory. They stayed in Palestinian farmers' homes and were warmly welcomed and invited to join in their olive harvest. They met with many Palestinian human rights organizations. And we're learning about corporate complicity in the occupation.

This collection begins with Erica Terence’s reflection from Dheisheh Refugee Camp. Amirah Abu Lughod and Simi Toledano reflect on the delegation’s visit to the depopulated Palestinian village of Lifta. A trip to Tent of Nations is the subject of pieces by Lea Koesterer, Betsy Simpson, and Paul Hanawalt. Finally, Pat Petrucelly shares some facts she’s learned during the Olive Harvest Delegation.




 

A Feeling Like Home   |   Erica Terence – Somes Bar, California   

This place, atop a roof surrounded by partial walls and ceiling of cinder blocks, tin, burlap and tarps, has a feeling like home. It's not the physical surroundings that feel familiar, but the strong sense of community that clearly lives here.


On a walking tour of the narrow, bending roads of Dheisheh Refugee Camp in occupied Palestine, I don't see a single unpaved inch other than the dusty roads underfoot here and there. Yet the folks at Laylac (Youth Action Community Center) are growing something organic in amongst the hard edges of cement walls and the harsh realities of barriers dividing people and land.
Young people who bring their ideas here are encouraged, empowered, and supported to do projects that carry them out.

Laying around on this upper, open-air story of their community center are laundry lines, rainwater catchment buckets and tanks, a wide ring of benches and chairs made from recycled materials.

Political resolve is painted on the walls. Behind me on a concrete pillar is scrawled:
 "Freedom. We Shall Return."
A hand symbol for peace follows.


The ability of these people to still call for peace in the face of so much unjust, oppressive violence perpetrated on Palestinians on individual and systemic levels is humbling.


Back to the street tour. Barely half a block from the community center, our young guide explains that his left wrist and arm are bound in a cast because of a soccer injury. It doesn't hold him back. In an off moment, he is wrestling with a friend, and when we are crowded around him, he delivers a piece of his mind, once holding up his green ID card to make a point: "I want to throw it away. It's worthless. It's just so much trouble."

Israeli soldiers demand to see these IDs at checkpoints Palestinians are forced at gunpoint to pass through to reach school, jobs, family members, and medical help. You can see the dilemma our host and millions of other Palestinians face. Without an ID on their person, a Palestinian is subject to immediate and indefinite administrative detention by the Israeli state. Yet with the card, Palestinians are subjected to unjust racial profiling and inhumane treatment. Which is worse?


On a nearby wall is an artistic rendering of UN resolution 194, that affirms the right of Palestinians such as him and his family to "return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors..." This is important. Many Palestinians see coexistence with all religions in one state as the best - in fact the only - solution.

On the larger commercial street to our right, a burst of horn honking drowns out our guide for a moment. He pauses, then explains that the noisy outburst is celebrating "either a wedding or someone getting out of prison." Both causes for celebration, clearly. Sixty percent of Palestinians have been imprisoned, locals say.


Further up the hill, in a maze of bending residential alleys barely wide enough to squeeze a car, let alone a delegation of 28 people hugging the walls while a car winds through, our guide tells us two stories that stick with me.


The refugee camp has a vertical character, with many people stacked on top of each other in close quarters. Situated on nearly every rooftop is a laundry line and at least one large black rainwater catchment vessel and water storage basin.

When Israeli military forces raid the refugee camp, routinely in the middle of the night or early morning, hauling people out of bed and off to prison for asserting their internationally recognized rights, Israeli soldiers like to shoot holes in these rooftop water storage tanks. When this happens, people on the floors below wake to water dripping down on them. If they wake in time, they rush to fill household containers and do their dishes while they can.

The tanks, once damaged are difficult to repair and even more difficult to replace. And life without this precious water supply, once drained, is extra challenging. "Our people are a very clean people, so when we can't wash, it's hard," our host says. "Fortunately, people here (with intact water tanks) have always helped each other when this happens."

Glance around these streets and it's immediately obvious that there's truth to his statement about cleanliness. In the midst of so much repression, poverty and political and physical discrimination, these people go to great lengths, and manage their garbage better than most. When you are left with so little, what choice but to get organized and help each other?


We continue on our walk as dusk wraps around our heads, drapes over our shoulders, and sinks down to our feet with bougainvillea and grape vines slinking up structures and spilling out overhead.

Again we halt, this time to talk about the brave history of writing and art on walls all around us. During one of the Palestinian uprisings against displacement and genocide perpetrated by Israel, the state outlawed books and other written materials in refugee camps. Refugees in Dheisheh took to leaving messages and exchanging ideas on walls, until that was also declared illegal. When Israel sought to punish wall artists and writers, elders in the camp conferred, and decided to cover every wall in the camp with words and images. Strength in numbers exemplified. They were betting that Israel wouldn't be able or willing to haul every last refugee in the camp to jail. And the elders were right.

The walls here are still covered with resistance art at every turn, and this story gives me new respect and deeper appreciation for its meaning and its role in local culture.
The most heartbreaking story we hear of this place is still fresh and raw for residents of Dheisheh. A Palestinian youth named Raed As-Salih contributed his idea to create a public library by fastening bookshelves to walls in the street and furnishing them with books.

For no good reason, Israeli soldiers came for Raed in a nighttime raid on the camp earlier this year. As he ran from them, Israeli soldiers shot him. Six bullets entered his back, hitting his liver and kidneys. While Raed laid there, with family and friends witnessing from a distance, unable to go to him or be with him for fear of also being shot, an ambulance came. It delivered an Israeli soldier hit in the knee by some of the bullets immediately to a medical facility, but left Raed behind to bleed. Half a day later, soldiers transported him to an Israeli hospital off limits to his community. He died in intensive care, but Israel refused to release his body until it had decayed beyond recognition, 21 days later. When Raed's body finally came home, many vital organs were missing, leading to the belief that they had been harvested without consent to supply a growing black market for transplants.
Cases like Raed's are routine, our hosts report. Raed is gone and the pain of losing him in such a horrific way is palpable, but his peers assure that they will redouble efforts to create his street library, and in that way he will live on.


Before bedding down here in this community center, multiple people warn us to keep the lights off and stay away from the windows if Israeli soldiers pay a visit in the night.

Almost ready to leave the rooftop, I move a bucket I had shifted over to make room for an activity. I place it back in its original resting spot to catch drips from the tarp overhead.

What can we really do, I ask myself. The answer is simple: every drop of resistance to this unjust regime counts.

And just as at home, the drops add up to make a reservoir we'll need to get through this together.

A version of this reflection appears on Erica’s blog.

 




 

Sabr Means Patience   |   Amirah Abu Lughod - Stony Point, New York

We witnessed the village of Lifta today - a village attacked by Zionist militias in 1947 and soon abandoned by its people as not to experience the reality of neighboring villages like Deir Yasin whose people were massacred. This story is similar to the story of over 500 Palestinian villages destroyed between 1947 and 1948.

Lifta's homes and land were used by Israeli families from 1950 to 1970. Once the homes were no longer needed the village was destroyed. Lifta is now a nature preserve. Homes still stand half erect while refugee families live only miles away.

We walked amidst the rubble of what was most definitely a thriving village - we saw large homes partially intact, a gathering space next to a spring fed pool, congregated in their masjid (mosque) and looked over the beautiful landscape covered in greenery.

The greenery most prominent in the landscape were large clusters of cacti. Our guide, Umar, explained that the cacti were planted as borders between homes. Now the cacti are an indicator of where Palestinian villages used to be.

The cacti continue to grow, quite abundantly and spread across the land of those people whose hands planted them. Growing no longer as a border between neighbors but as a reminder for all who see them growing that there were people who lived on and loved this land.

The word for cactus in Arabic is Sabr. Sabr also means patience. I've witnessed over and over again within each person we've had the privilege of meeting a steadfast presence of patience. The plants embody in the natural world the continued patience and resilience of the Palestinian people.

The plants growing on this land seem to be telling the story of the people who once loved and cared for them. Their poetic language keeps beauty and resistance alive.
 




Listening to My Ancestors   |   Simi Toledano - Brooklyn, New York

My ancestors spoke to me. No, they yelled at me, pulled and pushed me, argued and turned their backs on each other in my tense body.

Our Olive Harvest Delegation visited the Palestinian hillside village of Lifta. Just outside Jerusalem, Lifta was attacked by the Haganah Zionist militia in December 1947, 5 months before war officially broke out. The Palestinian residents of Lifta were expelled, forced to leave their houses, Mosque, recreation centers, and the landscape of their memories behind. This story sounded all too familiar to me, and the sorrow personal.

Our group was guided by Umar, a softly spoken Palestinian man who works with Zochrot, an NGO whose goal is to introduce the Palestinian Nakba, or Catastrophe, to the Israeli-Jewish public "to promote an alternative memory to the hegemonic Zionist memory." Zochrot is the Hebrew word for remembrances.

As a multi-ethnic 1st generation American Jewish woman, I know some things about memory and the importance of holding your heritage and history of oppression close.
Today, Lifta is a national Israeli nature reserve and looks like a UNESCO world heritage site, with stone houses standing amidst rubble and cacti, a natural pool of water in the center of town where we witnessed men bathing and washing their feet, and graffiti with mixed messages of love and violence.

It’s hard to believe that only 70 years ago this was a thriving Palestinian village and not a site of ancient ruins of a distant history. It is a stark reminder of Palestinian life and existence prior to the Nakba, which displaced and exiled 2/3 of the Palestinian Muslims and Christians, close to 750,000 people, living on the land - but only if you're looking for it.

As we walked through the village, taking care not to stumble on loose stones down the steep hillside, I picked a stone up and held it for the duration of the tour. Perhaps this is a natural thing for me to do when I am in an environment rich in memory and ancestral prayer. In Jewish culture, we are taught to commemorate the memory of our loved ones by placing stones on their graves and it felt appropriate for me to seek the guidance of my ancestors in a Palestinian ghost town.

We stopped in the old mosque and as Umar was talking to us about the role of this place of worship in Palestinian life in Lifta, my Spanish Jewish ancestors woke up and spoke up. "Pay attention," they warned. "You know what it's like to be expelled from the land you grew in, to be a refugee. Listen to the prayers in these walls, you've heard them before." My Sephardic roots were shaken and I squeezed the chalky stone in my hand. "Remember us as you serve justice in Palestine and the collective liberation of all oppressed peoples."

My Sephardic ancestors, who were rabbis, mystics and poets, were driven out of their homeland after the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain in the 15th century. As refugees they continued to reach towards the sun as all life on earth does, and re-planted their torn roots in Morocco where they became Arab Jews.

As we continued to walk through Lifta, Umar exposed the reality of the devastation of the Nakba. He told us that when a nearby Palestinian village was attacked about 115 people were killed, the women raped and maimed for their jewelry, and children made orphans. This time my Jewish Palestinian ancestors woke up and spoke up. "It's time," they surrendered. "Its time to speak truth, confront what we did, the wounds we caused to our fellow Palestinians, and heal."

My Jewish ancestors on my matrilineal side go back in Palestine over 10 generations. My uncle joined the Haganah and was killed in 1948, in what Israelis and Zionists call the war of Independence. My uncle believed he was liberating Israel and died for a Jewish homeland while uprooting Palestinians from their homes and villages. The loss devastated my grandmother so deeply that she needed to believe that her son moved to a country far away and could not contact her. She could not cope with the truth of her loss, which in my heart seems deeper than losing a child. Her newfound privileges, which helped bring her and her family out of poverty, blinded her from the truth of the fact that Muslim and Christian Palestinian mothers were crying too.

"Pray for us," they humbly urged. "Know how you got your privilege here and remember us and our Palestinian neighbors and friends as you serve justice in Palestine and work towards the collective liberation of all oppressed peoples."

I hung my head low in sadness and confusion, hoping for relief. We continued onward, past indigenous trees and plants, and the cacti that Palestinian families planted between their homes to mark the separation of property.

As we gathered around the communal water pool sourced from a natural spring Umar walked us through the demographic history of Lifta post '48. He told us that after the Palestinian families were expelled and the Israeli state established, Mizrahi Jewish emigres from North Africa were placed in Lifta to reside in the abandoned houses. Then, in the 1960's the Israeli government drove them out so that wealthy Ashkenazi European Jews may move in; an unfortunately common experience for brown, black and Arab Jews and a reflection of a structurally racist society that makes Mizrahi and Jews of Color second class citizens.

"Fight for us," my Mizrahi ancestors empowered.  "Remember our struggle and the struggles of brown and black people across the world in your service to justice in Palestine and work towards the collective liberation of all oppressed peoples." 

I started to feel invigorated, yet with a lingering discomfort in my gut. The feeling in Lifta was familiar and I couldn't quite place it. I had been on a number of Jewish heritage tours in Poland and Germany and walked through numerous ghost towns like Lifta. Entire towns wiped off the map because of seeds of hate planted in the minds of otherwise good people armed with dehumanizing beliefs and guns. I didn't want to believe the comparison until Umar pointed to a spot where a tree was uprooted. My heart broke and my tears recalled the somber stories of the trees and forests in Poland, who witnessed human crimes of the highest order. Why would they uproot the trees here?

Finally, my Belarussian ancestors spoke to me "Never forget," they implored. "We have been to the forest, we have been witnessed in the attempted extermination of our existence. Now you bear witness where the trees do not. Remember us as you serve justice in Palestine and work towards the collective liberation of all peoples."

I stood silent before the land where the tree once stood and promised my ancestors that I will remember them and bear witness to human pain and suffering. I promised them to listen for hope, resilience, and truth. I promised them to honor the lives and ancestors of the Palestinian people, who continue to dream and mobilize around their right to return to their homeland.

I looked down at the stone in my hand, and placed it on the earth where a tree once stood in Lifta. I whispered a prayer for justice in Palestine and the collective liberation of all oppressed people's. I walked towards our bus and felt my body relax with the secure knowledge that my ancestors have my back, and my roots, here in Palestine.


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Tent of Nations   |   Lea Koesterer - St. Louis, Missouri

It is tempting to think of the word 'tent' as a metaphor for a gathering of peoples together. In the case of Palestinian Daoud Nassar it also has a literal meaning.

The Nassar family is one of the few Palestinian landowners who have an official paper deed to prove ownership of their land near Bethlehem. A hundred years ago, Daoud's great grandfather planted olive trees and lived in a cave to work and to be with his land. The family has lived there continuously for generations to this day. None the less, for the past 26 years they have borne the repeated legal fees incurred fending off challenges by the Israeli settlement that covets the land.

Our delegation visited Tent of Nations yesterday after climbing over the huge boulders that the settlers had placed in the middle of the road.

 

 






 

Refusing to be Enemies   |   Betsy Simpson - Easton, Pennsylvania

Last week we visited the Tent of Nations south of Bethlehem. Daher Nassar greeted us so warmly with the biggest, most genuinely joyful smile, and showed us his family’s farm. Though almost completely surrounded by large, growing settlements, his family has legal papers documenting their title to the 100-acre hillside farm dating back to the Ottoman Empire.

Their quiet, non-violent resistance to Israeli annexation of Palestine land offered an integrity to their guiding principle that is displayed on a large stone at the entrance - “We refuse to be enemies.”   

Daoud Nassar, who spoke to our group, told us that while he does not know exactly how or what the future may hold, he believes the only way is for all the people, Israelis and Palestinians, to find their way back to living peacefully together as they did not so long ago.

They tell the story of one of their settler neighbor’s, an Israeli woman, who needed help near the road to their farm. After they helped her and gave her hospitality at their farm, she learned that they had no running water or electricity because the government wouldn’t supply these basic services despite the taxes the family paid on their land.

The woman was astounded. She went home and told her husband. The settlers had no idea who their neighbors were or how they were so badly their government treated them. The husband visited the farm also and now they are friends.

All this gives credence to the Nassar’s credo to refuse to be enemies and to be welcoming to all people.

 


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I saw Palestine   |   Paul Hanawalt - Cleveland, Ohio    

I saw Palestine today.  Endless foothills without many signs of life.  I can tell that someone lives there because the hills have been sculpted like steps leading to somewhere. 

It looks like a massive undertaking, carving steps from bottom to top, the full circumference of the foothill of a mountain.  The horizontal parts of the steps are wide enough to plant rows of olive trees or orange trees or any other crop.  The shorter, vertical part of the step goes up to another level for planting.  This goes on and on until it reaches the top. 

At the top of this very large hill is a small wooden home, 2 caves, 2 outhouses made out of scraps of wood, a cow and a horse, two scrawny dogs and a litter of pups.  Most importantly, there is a family of six that work the land and care for each other.

Half of the surface of the top of the hill has been plowed flat and planted with olive trees.  There are rocks everywhere.  So many rocks that I can barely see the soil through the rocks.  It seems like an unlikely place for anything to grow, but life is good and things do grow and food is plentiful.

This one hundred-acre piece of land is everything to this family.  They organize their lives around this land.  This land brings forth their food supply.

This Palestine I am describing is a rare look at the way Palestinians have lived for hundreds of years.  This is a unique family that has fought hard to maintain this life.

The problem is that someone else wants this land that has been in their family for many generations.  An army of Zionists, hundreds of Israeli settlers, have set up hostile camps the next hills over, surrounding the family’s hill.

The Zionist battle banner is a 100-foot tall flag with the star of David on it.  The flag is facing the family.  Zionists have uprooted hundreds of family olive trees.  They have blocked the road leading to their home and their land.  Israeli settlers have poisoned the land and attacked family members with one objective in mind; drive them off and steal their land.

This is Palestine today and for the last hundred years.  Most Palestinian land has been stolen by the Israeli government and settlers.  The Israeli government is working out laws and tactics to take the rest.

The star of David banner reminds me of the David and Goliath analogy that Israel uses to rationalize their assault on the Palestinian people.  Poor little Israel (David) against this overwhelmingly powerful Arab army (Goliath).

Looking at this family of 6 Palestinians on a hill surrounded by hundreds of Zionist settlers preparing to steal their land exposes the truth about who is the David and who is the Goliath in this picture.

We just left the house of Nomika, a Jewish lady in Sderot, a kibbutz close to Gaza.  Her Kibbutz has had many Hamas rockets rain down on it, yet she refuses to let that destroy her humanity.  She says that “when you stop seeing the other as a human being, you stop being a human being yourself.”  Nomika’s parting words were “my deepest felt goal is to make the invisible visible.”

In the United States, the masses don’t have a clue about what is going on in Palestine or that the United States government is paying for it.  A major part of our job as we return to the United States and Canada is to make visible the Palestine of today before the Zionist state of Israel completely erases the Palestinian civilization.



 

What I didn't know   |   Pat Petrucelly - Cambridge, Massachusetts

Things I’ve learned on this Interfaith Peace-Builders delegation:

Any Jewish person has the right of return, return to a place she or her family has never been. No Palestinian person has the right to return to the place of her birth or her family home. 

Opposing the expansion of Zionism is not anti-semitic. Zionism is based on land control by one group and displacement of another. The problem is Israeli Zionists came to Palestinian land and claimed it was theirs. Before Zionisn, Muslims, Christians and Jews got along.  There is enough space for everyone to live together.  The struggle is political, not religious. 

A settlement is a large new town/city on a hilltop spreading down the sides. It has street lights and smoothly paved roads. It has electricity, running water, a swimming pool, play areas. 

Many Palestinian refugee camps look like poor city neighborhoods with unpaved uneven streets, ramshackle lighting, rooftop cisterns for water that has become more or less permanent because the people long for but are barred from going back to where they or their families came from.

What I see 

Things I’ve seen on this Interfaith Peace-Builders delegation:

A farm family that time and again has had to prove its legal rights to the land they have worked for generations.  They have no running water or electricity.  They look out and all around see the new houses of the new towns creeping closer.

We are told they are all terrorists, that we need to be protected from them. I see and hear from women and men who speak of peaceful resistance. People who are earnest, compassionate, thoughtful, committed to justice, freedom, hope.  People who are humane and smart. People who say "EXISTENCE IS RESISTANCE." 

And what they ask is to "tell our story."


 

 

We invite delegation participants to comment on and react to the experiences they have during our Israel/Palestine delegations in written Trip Reflections. 

Individual delegates contribute pieces to these reflections.  As such, reflections are not comprehensive accounts of every meeting or experience, but impressions of those things that most impact individuals.  Submitted reflections may be edited for clarity or brevity. Trip reports do not necessarily reflect the views of Interfaith Peace-Builders, American Muslims for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, trip leaders, or delegation partner organizations.  We hope you enjoy reading and we encourage you to share these reflections with others.



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