Daily settler attacks on Ras al-‘Ain are becoming tougher, also more dangerous; more settlers involved, more outrageous acts, more physical violence, a surplus of arrogance and burning hatred. Every day they invade the village, on horseback, on donkeys, in their vehicles, with their herds of sheep and camels. It feels like something bigger is boiling, about to spill over.  They know they are completely immune to punishment of any kind; the police and soldiers stand with them. As for the government, the extremists, including the prime minister, initiate, fund, arm, and fully support lethal settler violence everywhere on the West Bank, with the unmistakable aim of expelling the entire Palestinian population of Area C.

By the time we arrive, around 2:00, the activists of the morning shift have already been through convoluted confrontations with settlers and police; settlers entered the nearby village of Mu‘arrajat. No sooner do we unload our bags in the madafeh than we are summoned to the water. A small group of young settlers are sitting by the stream. When they see us, one of them masks his face (with a blue-and-white men’s bathing suit); they curse us, spit at us, and attack; Peg gets kicked (not too hard). It’s their new tactic: it’s harder to photograph a sudden kick than blows to the upper part of the body. They are still wary of the photographs, which they know can, in theory, be used against them.

Then they’re gone, for the moment. We go back to the village. Muhammad greets us with relief. Within minutes, another urgent call comes through. The pipes carrying water to the village have been cut. We rush back.

At first we are alone, following the pipelines eastward over the rocks; no sign of damage. The malevolent settler Gavriel Kalish, now the security officer for the settlement of Mevoot Yericho, turns up. We have known him for many years and seen him harassing the shepherds, charging into their herds and scattering them, among other creative forms of harm and hurt. He is all smiles today, smug as usual, Pangloss Redivivus. All is right with the world, the best of all possible worlds. He identifies Peg and demands to know why she has written bad things about him.

 “You don’t really know me,” says Pangloss to Peg, whom he calls Margaret. “We haven’t ever had a real conversation.” The smirk lingers.

Peg: “Actually, we have met and even conversed.” She has to repeat this several times; he is not a good listener.

I butt in: “We know you very well, and we’ve seen the things you do and the damage you cause.”

Pangloss: “You, too, don’t know me at all, we’ve never had coffee together.”

Then back to Peg: “Why don’t you come live in my place for a month? You’ll get to know me. Or let me take you now to have tea with my Bedouin friends.”

Peg (calling his bluff): “I’d gladly come but I can’t right now. Just give me your contact information, and I’ll let you know when I come back in the spring.”

No contact information is forthcoming.

I’ve lost interest in this “dialogue,” but still I say, out of some weary sense of duty, “You know very well that you are stealing land—the land you live on, and the land this village sits on.”

“What,” says Pangloss, “me steal land? I don’t own the land. No one does. It is our mother earth. She gives herself to us.” “

“Well,” I say, “these villagers have ownership; the land is theirs.”

“No,” says Pangloss, supremely confident, “how long have they been here? Two thousand years? No way. They don’t count. They are new-comers, unlike us; they have no claim at all. The earth, our mother, has given us the land.” And so on. Useless words. He is locked into a cosmology of his own concoction. I guess it makes him happy, so that he never even feels the pain he is inflicting (or perhaps he enjoys it). If you want, you can see him enacting his vision in ecstasy, standing ominously in front of the Dome of the Rock.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yraPwm1diWk]

A heavy-set policeman arrives with two armed soldiers and embraces Gavriel like a long-lost friend. He asks us some questions; we answer; we tell him Peg was attacked and that we’ve heard that settlers have cut the pipes. He seems bored on both counts. Who knows who summoned him? Probably the settlers, reporting that several unwanted anarchists have arrived.

We resume our search, and suddenly we see water spraying from one of the pipes farther west. We check it out. It’s been cut in two places; someone has tried to stem the hemorrhage by tying plastic bags around the pipe—to no effect. The sand underneath it is soaked.  At first it looks as if this is an old leak, from the time, some months back, that settlers cut many of the water pipes to the village; but Muhammad is certain it’s from today, and he must be right.

Some more solid repair has to be made. Nice work, isn’t it, denying water to a desert village, to the lovable children who greeted us just an hour ago. Just as we’re finishing photographing the cut pipe, the same teenage thugs we saw before come back, racing their car in a mad zig-zag toward us, as if to run us down. It’s a little scary. The car careens sharply on the road. They are shouting through the window, in glee: “We cut it! (chatachnu oto).” Then they’re gone.

The sun sets early, and suddenly it’s cold. We watch a diaphanous full moon rise over the mountains in Jordan as the sky turns dusty pink or violet and then, slowly, deep black. Muhammad and his friend join us for food and tea. For once, there is good news. Last night after midnight a baby lamb was born, and in the early morning another one arrived. Muhammad softly announces this happy event; he smiles only rarely, but today he is like a new father.

He takes Peg, Moti, and Max to see the newborns in the dark. In the morning Peg says to me, “It’s remarkable that these people from Ras, with their amazing, silent courage and perseverance, put their trust in us, this odd mix of activists, academics, psychologists, architects, photographers, rabbis, former soldiers, pensioners, fix-the-worlders, just ordinary people.”

We are, however, there to share the terror and the rare bursts of joy.

Text: David Shulman © 2024; photographs: Margaret Olin © 2024 .

Margaret Olin and David Shulman, The Bitter Landscapes of Palestine 2024. Order from Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press or from an online or local bookseller.