1. Visits to Prisoners. Text and photographs by Margaret Olin

I began this post on Martin Luther King Day, 2025, a moment to think back on all we in the United States have achieved and the distance we still must go to realize King’s dream of racial equality. In 2025, this day of concern for justice and love also marked the inauguration of a president who opposes these values and many others we hold. Some, dreading this event, found ways of trying to forget about it. My way was to think back to my visit to Israel and Palestine this past December.

It was not a halcyon escape. The streets and even the airport were lined with photographs of Israeli hostages. My mind was on them and their families, and at least as much on the horrendous slaughter going on in Gaza. But I concentrated on the suffering, and the resilience, incomprehensible to me, of people whom I know in the West Bank. They were hostages, too. David has already written about our time in the Jordan Valley. But I also spent time making visits to the South Hebron Hills. The visits were painful. At least nothing terrible happened while I was there, but one reason that nothing happened was the same as the reason that the visits were painful: residents were afraid to leave home, even though staying home is only marginally safer than venturing out. No one went out; there were no trips to fields, no planting, no harvesting, no digging trenches for water.

There was no grazing. The goats who remained, such as they were, shuffled aimlessly about in their pens.

There was no grazing for Ahmad in the fields opposite the settlement of Susya. Instead we accepted the family’s hospitality in his home in Gawawis where he lives with his extended family, including his father Khalid.

Here and elsewhere we watched the children play or we played with them.

There was generally little else we could do. The photographs were taken in Gawawis and Susiya, December, 2024. To scroll, click on the arrows. all photographs: Margaret Olin

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And then there were Jibrin and Wadha Abu Ram

Before the war, we visited them often. After wandering through the hills of Gawawis with Jibrin and his flock, we would return to his home and talk with him and his wife Wadha over tea, pita, za’atar, perhaps tomatoes or maybe watermelon. He would sometimes tell us about or show us photographs of one of his sons, a doctor in Venezuela. Sometimes another son, an engineer in Yatta, would join us.

When we visited them in March, Jibrin and Wadha took us to their home, but were afraid to sleep there. They were retreating at night to a house owned by a relative, not far away, in another section of Gawawis, near the headquarters of COMET-ME, an Israeli-Palestinian organization that provides energy to the off-grid Palestinian communities in the West Bank. There was hope that they might return after the passing of the latest madness. But in July, I saw a picture of their home, now a shapeless pile of twisted metal and crushed concrete. When I visited their old neighborhood in December, I saw the corpse of their compound from a distance, still lying untouched.

I had a sober and sedentary visit with them in their refuge near COMET-ME.

Wadha brought tea.

children played

Nearby, a small group of soldiers loitered on the road, throwing the occasional glance our way.

Eventually, two of us decided to approach them. Noah chatted with one soldier, while I talked to another. He had a sensitive look and one rolled-up sleeve. I noticed some straight lines on his bare arm. A closer look showed that it was a tattoo. Written in a spare, antiquated Hebrew script unfamiliar to me, were three lines from the well-known psalm 23, beginning “The Lord is my shepherd.” His name, it turns out, means “shepherd” in Hebrew. I considered the idea of a soldier-“shepherd” whose job it was to prevent real shepherds, with flocks, from taking them out to graze. This shepherd was interested in photography, however, and asked me about my camera. Soon we were showing each other pictures. He seemed interested in my trees, my gay rights photographs and my Palestinian landscapes and showed me an exquisite photograph of his own of a rock with a reddish color that seemed to be bleeding softly. He regarded it, he said, as a heart. I regret not having him send it to me. The soldiers soon abandoned their patrol, or whatever they were supposed to do. They left in peace, and someone ventured the hope that perhaps the good mood from this visit might carry over to the next. Or, if the soldiers felt they had a choice, they might opt to leave the shepherds alone for a while.

This was almost a moment of reprieve. There were others.

Guy kindly drove David and me about Masafer Yatta so that we could distribute copies of our book to some of the people most involved in it — people we interviewed, photographed, people who invited, sometimes urged us repeatedly to come and document their lives.

We enjoyed watching them and their children peruse the book, turn its pages, look at the pictures.

Fatma paused to look at the book while preparing packets of food and supplies and “psychological first aid kits” that she had organized to distribute to families to help them and their children cope in these hard times. Eventually another women snatched it away to redirect Fatma’s attention to their important task.

We had another pleasant surprise on our second visit to Jibrin. There were no soldiers patrolling. Jibrin was waiting for us, along with his much-diminished flock of sheep.

One sign from him sent them off in a blur of joyful leaping and cavorting, like school children let out for recess.

I was told that they had not been taken out to graze for weeks.

The sheep were happy, for the moment.

But there has been no lasting respite. The day before I began to write this post, three Israeli prisoners were released from captivity in Gaza and 90 Palestinians from captivity in the Ofra prison in Israel. Even understanding that the ceasefire agreement under which they returned is still fragile, and that many more families wait for their members to return, it was a cause for jubilation. But not two days after the release of the prisoners in Gaza and Ofra, settlers and soldiers were already busy unleashing vicious attacks throughout the areas we visited.

2. Epilogue: Mu‘arrajat, February 2, 2025, Text by David Shulman; photographs by Yael Sela

On February 2, between 1 AM and 2 AM, Israeli settlers came into the village of Mu‘arrajat, which we know well, and set fire to the mosque and a nearby tractor.

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Sliman Malihat caught sight of the arsonists; he says there were four of them. The videos captured two. Fortunately, no one was inside the mosque when it began to burn.

There’s every reason to believe that the settlers came from the illegal outpost not far away, across the main road. When our activists arrived at the village just before 2:00, there was already an army patrol of three soldiers there. They were, as usual, indifferent to what the activists had to say. Another army officer arrived and was apparently less indifferent. Sliman gave his testimony to this officer, who sent the three soldiers toward the outpost; they didn’t come back. Toward 3:00 the police joined the soldiers; one of them suggested to Sliman that he file a complaint in the morning. You can imagine what effect that might have (that is: none). Meanwhile, a fire brigade vehicle turned up and did nothing; the mosque was already mostly gone, though the fire was still simmering in the morning when the activists returned.

None of this is new. In some ways, it’s even expectable. We know that the violent settlers of the outposts hate all Arabs and want to drive them out. We know they will stop at nothing. They also hate us, the human-rights and peace activists. Still, it takes a depraved, obsessive joy in causing pain to set fire to a place of worship. Friends and co-criminals of these arsonists are the ones who fire-bombed the house of the Dawabsheh family in Duma on July 31, 2015, killing the two parents and a one-year-old child.  Those killers were caught and brought to court; Amram Ben-Uliel was sentenced to three life sentences in jail for murder. There are people in the settler community, including religious leaders, who regard Ben-Uliel as a saint.

The chances that the arsonists who attacked the mosque in Mu‘arrajat will be arrested are slim, though we can still hope against hope. But this is not simply a matter of routine, though abominable, criminal violence. By now the state of Israel has mortgaged itself entirely to the settlers’ plan of annexation and expulsion, under the aegis of the government and the malevolent prime minister who runs it. Unless there is a change of course—but it is probably too late– the state will sooner or later devour itself and its citizens.

Thanks to Yael Sela for her report from Mu‘arrajat. We weren’t there: David is in India, Peg in New Haven.

Texts: Margaret Olin and David Shulman, as credited @2025; photographs: Margaret Olin and Yael Sela, as credited  @2025.