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"Many West Bank Palestinians Are Being Forced Out of Their Villages. Is My Family Next?" [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-11-21
by Ali Awad, New York Times, Nov. 20
The Palestinian writer Ali Awad was born in 1998 in Tuba, a village of 80 in the South Hebron Hills on the West Bank, where his family has lived for generations. He describes life there:
Since I can remember, life in Tuba has been difficult, but it has also always been full of beauty and calm. It is the life my family has known for generations, and the traditional lifestyle we live is deeply connected to the land around us and the animals we care for. The hillsides are stamped with our footsteps and those of our flocks, the rocks on the top of the hill neatly arranged so we can watch the sunset over the desert.
Their peaceful life, however, has been disturbed over the years by the repeated attacks of Israeli settlers. Since Oct. 7 the settlers’ attacks have caused more than 1,000 people from at least sixteen Palestinian villages to flee from their homes.
Awad quotes the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: “settlers have attacked Palestinians in more than 250 incidents in the West Bank. So far, 200 Palestinians have been killed, eight by settlers and the others during clashes with Israeli forces.”
He provides more details of recent violence:
On Oct. 30, settlers set fire to several homes in Khirbet a-Safai, a village less than a mile east of Tuba. And residents in the neighboring village to the west, Umm al-Khair, told human rights activists that armed settlers in uniform held people there at gunpoint and forced them to condemn Hamas and promise to raise Israeli flags in the village or they would be murdered.
Awad calls these attacks part of “a long string of attempts to force us to leave our homes.”
And it’s not only the settlers who want us out: Successive Israeli governments have also tried to get rid of us over the last decades. In the early 1980s, our village, along with a group of others in an area called Masafer Yatta, was designated by the military as Firing Zone 918, land that Israel decided it wanted for training its forces. We have been fighting for the right to remain on our land ever since.
Awad explains that the people of Tuba live in Area C, “which means the Israeli military has complete civil and security control” over their lives.
Israel has tried various tactics to get us to leave, including enacting policies that prevent us from building homes in our own village and not allowing us to be connected to the main electrical grid or water infrastructure.
In 2002, settlers cut off the main road that connected Tuba to the surrounding villages, to the children’s closest school and a city where the villagers bought their food and medical supplies. Awad says in 2010, nearby settlers stabbed my uncle. In 2015, they attacked my cousins with stones, and in 2021 set fire to a year’s worth of food for our flocks of sheep. Earlier, this happened:
“In November 1999, when I was a year old, the Israeli military loaded all of Tuba’s residents and livestock onto trucks and dumped us on the side of the road several miles away. We spent the following months crowded in makeshift tents, fighting to shelter ourselves and our livestock from the cold winter rain. We were eventually allowed to return to our village “temporarily,” pending a final court decision about whether the Israeli military could force us to evacuate.
Last year, the court ruled in favor of the state, allowing Israel to evict about 1,200 Palestinians, including those in Tuba. Awad says :
We have remained steadfast in the face of this pressure and refuse to abandon our land and our traditional way of life. But in recent weeks, attacks by settlers have rattled our resolve….. Settlers and soldiers together patrol our communities with their M16s and threaten anyone who tries to bring his flock to graze or leave the village for work or errands.
Awad reports that settlers have also targeted the water systems and solar panels. The local Israeli authorities claim they are investigating, but the attacks continue.
Awad quotes from a letter signed by 30 Israeli human rights NGOs:
The only way to stop this forcible transfer in the West Bank is a clear, strong and direct intervention by the international community.
Meanwhile, he says the fear felt by the people in Tuba “now hangs heavy over this landscape. I don’t know if we will be able to stand it.”
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