1. David

It is my wife Eileen’s first day in At-Tawa’il. Her report follows mine.

Within minutes of our arrival, ten or eleven settlers, many of them minors, with their herd of black goats, come at us from the rocky path below the madafeh. We could see them advancing in our direction:  nearly all of them appropriately wearing black except for the nefarious Benayahu (in blue), whom we know too well from Ras al-‘Ain. His presence is a bad sign. We are only four: Alon, Agnes, Eileen, and me. One or two of them have clubs; thankfully, no guns. We decide to sit this out in the car, doors and windows locked. They surround the car, they pound on the hood, the windows, the windshield, the doors, they photograph us up close with their cellphones. I’m waiting for the first rock to come. But it doesn’t. I call the police; to my surprise, the policewoman who answers listens to my report, answers graciously, understands the danger; she says she’ll pass the case on to her officer. Fairly soon the bullies move past us, heading down the hill to join up with another settler or two and their flock, crowded into the shade of a tall evergreen tree.

A policeman calls me back, says that the army is on its way, they know At-Tawa’il, they should be there soon. But they won’t. We drive down toward the settlers, keeping our distance; we have to be sure they aren’t planning to attack ‘Imad’s compound, just a few meters away. The goats are already moving toward it. We know that if they manage to get into the compound, past the new fence, we will have to rush over there to protect ‘Imad and his wife Amal and their children or grandchildren, whatever the cost. Time passes, we wait. It’s around 3:30, I guess: hot and dry, the afternoon heavy with sunlight.

After some time—it’s hard to remember time and sequence in moments like this—some of the settlers seem to be moving away, slowly, goats and all, toward their ugly outpost not too far down the road. Meanwhile they have blocked the road with rocks, no doubt for our benefit. Benayahu is still there under the tree with several of his companions. I call the police once more. They say the army is on the way. An hour or two later, when we’re still dealing with the situation, I get an SMS on my phone: “Further to your call, number 6462, we wish to inform you that your call has been received and transferred for further consideration. We beg to update you; there has been a delay. We will continue to give you updates. Always at your service, Israel Police.”

The threat is still active. I remove the rocks from the road. I call the police again. This time I get a grumpy, impatient policewoman who breaks off the call within seconds. No police or army will materialize. Maybe just as well. I try to call the head of the Jordan Valley Council; he slams down the phone when he hears that we are activists of protective presence, with the Palestinians of At-Tawa’il. I call again, I let it ring, I wait, he doesn’t answer.

I’m getting a little uneasy, because we can’t see where the remaining settlers have gone; I’m worried about ‘Imad. We drive back to the madafeh, close to ‘Imad’s home. No sign of the settlers. A short respite. Cold water from the flasks. But they can’t be far away. Sure enough, five or six or more of them—children, still, early adolescents—push through the slightly upgraded wooden fence leading to the madafeh. We should have waited it out again in the car, but by now it’s too late. Then there’s the horrible, familiar dance:  they shove their cellphones in our faces, they try to steal mine but I’m holding tight, they yell at us, they mock us, they pound on the doors of the madafeh, looking for a way in, they try to incite us to respond with violence, we don’t fulfil their ardent wish, they lash out at us, block our way. I tell them to get lost. I’m fed up with these juvenile delinquents and their washed-out brains, I yell at them, I tell them maybe someday you’ll become human beings, go away, get the hell out of here, you don’t own this place, go, go, go, etcetera. It goes on for a while– a long while in experience, whatever the number of minutes may be. Finally, we manage to reach the car, this time the pounding on the hood and doors is more persistent, hatred evident in their faces—you can’t help feeling sorry for these lost souls—until time somehow moves on, and then they are gone.

Rafa‘ comes with his lovely, perky young daughter, Zeyn, to sit with us on the boulders just as the fierce afternoon winds of Al-Tawa’il arrive on schedule. “This is no life,” Rafa‘ says. “Dying is better than living.” Rafa’ is a handsome man, courageous, lucid, in despair.  I tell him that someday, if there will be peace, I’d like to rent a room in Aqraba, just over the hill. I’ve come to love the city. “Ahlan wa-sahlan,” he says. Zeyn has lots to say to Agnes, who teaches in the Bilingual School in Jerusalem, Arabic and Hebrew, one of the remaining pockets of light and faith in these black days. Agnes says to her that she should come to study with her. Zeyn smiles. She knows a few words of English. She’s in fourth grade, but to reach her school she has to get past the settlers’ outpost; for that reason, for all the kids, on many days there are no classes. Her father is right:  what kind of life is it? What life will there be for Zeyn? Can we even dream that there will be a change, maybe with the upcoming elections? The poison in Israel is beyond measure, probably beyond cure. Still, Agnes says to him, and I repeat: “No. We know your suffering. We know the pain. Still, life is better than dying.”

***

2. Eileen

My husband David goes to the West Bank frequently, and I get a detailed report on each outing. But being there in the flesh is of a different order. On occasion I become an activist; each venture is “starting anew.” My most recent new start, different from any previousones, was in At-Tawa’il, with David, and Alon and Agnes, who pick us up in their dusty but reliable old Toyota. We speed through landscapes unfamiliar to me, find our way through the labyrinth of streets in Akraba, then bump and clump over rocky, dusty roads at considerable speed, and then up the hill to the madafeh. I see all around the expanse of open hills, with a tree here and there, a flock or two of Palestinian sheep and goats finding, remarkably, what to nibble. Pretty serene, I think …

But it doesn’t last… the black shapes begin to appear, marching forward in the distance. The quiet landscape has taken on a foreboding aspect. Settlers. We count ten figures. We do not know what their intentions are, they are certainly headed in our direction, we are concerned lest they attempt to break into the home territory of the Palestinians, lest they become violent. We watch from outside the madafeh, they are beginning to climb up toward us, accompanied by a herd of sheep. This is definitely a turning point. This outing is apparently for real. In the past my experience in Palestine has often been limited to being “present.”  Today we are here as a “protective presence,” more active than passive.

Tensions get higher as settlers come closer, as they pass us, slowly. We scramble into the larger car that waits on the hill next to the Toyota. There are a number of children settlers. I have heard about them, seen pictures. They come to the windows of the car, faces pressed against them, fingers drumming on the doors… They are the ones, in fact, who will later come right up to the madafeh, who will challenge us up close, sticking their faces and fingers into our photographing phones, laughing, cursing, provoking, moving here and there.

I do what I have been told to do, I photograph, horizontally. I do not get riled by the kids. I hear David, his voice angry. For some reason I feel that we are not in real danger. I was more frightened when they were far away and I had no idea what would happen. When I take a moment later to think objectively about them, I feel shocked, saddened, worried that they are being trained to hurt, to hate, that they are losing their humanity and their innocence.

We have spent a lot of time in the car today, guarding, watching, checking who was moving where, watching the movement of the goats, taking decisions together as we survey the lay of the land and the settlers in it. Fortunately we were not hurt. That doesn’t mean we couldn’t have been

Later, as we sit with Rafa‘ and Zeyn, ‘Imad appeared with his flock of goats. He draws water from the well for them– so natural an act, but not to be taken for granted in these times.

We drive back to Jerusalem in the dark, not an easy drive, not an easy day… At home I feel in my whole body a sense of having done something right, of having been in some simple state of in-touchness within and without. I was moved by the words on Agnes’ T-shirt: “We need nothing more than less….”

Text, photographs, and other media as credited © 2026.

“The Bitter Landscapes of Palestine,” now in its second printing, can be obtained from Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press or from an online or local bookseller