Until the police came and started barking orders and pushing people, or rather until the first stun grenade set everybody running, the morning in the South Hebron Hills seemed reasonably peaceful.

– 1 –

The day started about 7:00, well before the demonstration, in Jibrin’s field with his flock and his stories of the past.

Beneath the sprawling city of Yatta, where the Israeli government wants the inhabitants of Masafer Yatta to move, sit Jibrin’s family’s lands. They used to grow vegetables and sell them widely when he was a child, before the rains stopped coming.

Last night, settlers dug up three new trees he planted yesterday, leaving holes in the ground. He lost a total of 300 trees the same way recently, at 60 NIS per tree, he said. Some rubble still remains from the destruction of his relative’s house.

Today a settler shepherd led his own flock through Jibrin’s property, just to show that he could. The settlement barely visible behind him stole Jibrin’s aunt’s plot to build its synagogue 15 years ago. Settlers beat up the shepherds who were grazing there, Jibrin explained, and simply chased them away.

Eventually the settler moved on to another Palestinian plot, and the army, which had been called earlier, came. They did nothing, but at least it was all over quickly and peacefully.

Afterward, over tea at his home in G’wais, Jibrin talked of the past and the present, of coexistence in the future . . .

and of his son, a doctor in Venezuela.

– 2 –

The afternoon was less quiet.

At noon, demonstrators converged on the hill above Ar-Rakiz to protest the intended destruction of 8 villages in the so-called “firing zone 918” and the expulsion of their inhabitants. They carried with them a powerful weapon: a large Palestinian flag.

The flags have become a staple of the weekly demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, another center of the government’s zeal for demolition and expulsion and in other demonstrations all over the occupied territories. This past January I saw police reacting aggressively, even violently to the sight of small flags carried by demonstrators, although brandishing the Palestinian flag is not illegal.

Here in Ar-Rakiz, however, the flag is huge and it takes about 10 people to carry it, horizontally, up the hill and to hold it while two of the leaders of the demonstration make speeches.

The usual slogans are called out in unison, the kind that begin with “one two three four” or “five six seven eight.” Speeches are made.

One speaker, who drove me to the demonstration from the meeting place in Twaneh, calls out the slogan he has practiced in the car: “Palestinians plant olives,” he yells. “Israelis plant death and destruction.”

The officer, fed up with the slogans and the sight of the hated Palestinian flag, and getting impatient with the demonstration, barks out his orders: “twelve of you get over there. Now. unleash the . . . ” I don’t catch the word. But there is a loud explosion. It is the first of four stun grenades. Each time it happens, everyone jumps and starts running.

Soldiers force the demonstrators away and they go as fast as they can down the rocky slope where I, at least, have to pick my way with care. A demonstrator is detained. Stun grenades seem an overreaction to slogans and a flag. The first time, at Sheikh Jarrah, my shock (and fear) at the disruption of a peaceful demonstration prevented me from photographing.

Choreographed by the army, a routine demonstration becomes a melee. Eventually, the demonstrators kneel down, block the road and refuse to move until the detained demonstrator is freed. When she finally appears from behind the hill, waving, the show is over.

***

Postscript: Three months have passed since that day. Demolitions in Masafer Yatta have been disastrous. Demonstrations continue at various sites there, as do the demonstrations at Sheikh Jarrah.

With counter demonstrations.

But the police have grown accustomed to the sight of the Palestinian Flag

****

Meanwhile Jibrin continues to enliven the landscape on quiet mornings with his stories of the past, his thoughts about the present,

and about a son in a far away country.

In these posts I’ve often used the Arabic word Sumud (steadfastness) to express resistance. Demonstrations, which occur weekly, monthly, or sporadically, can motivate the demonstrators and capture the attention of other activists. They are unlikely to convince policy-makers in the Israeli government. Only the withdrawal of international support can do that. The daily struggles of people like Jibrin are seldom dramatic, although the possibility of drama hangs over him always. It is there when he does his chores and shadows him whenever he leads his flock to the rocky fields where the sheep scrounge for their meager rations. Perhaps if the consciousness of this kind of sumud could make its way into international discourse, it might inspire actions that will end the occupation.

text and photographs margaret olin © 2022

*Before I had a chance to upload this post about a day in Qawais and Ar-Rakiz, I witnessed the immense destruction in Massafer Yatta. What I saw there made what I said here appear trivial, so I withheld this post. Three months later, the events of Qawawis and the demonstration in A-Rakis in early June continue to pale next to the demolitions and many worse things happening in occupied Palestine.