Settlers are already there with their herd of goats, climbing up toward the Palestinian tents and huts when we arrive after pushing our car out of a rocky crack in the dirt road to At-Tawil. The morning shift activists are shooing the herd away over the stones and thick thorns; but the settlers, several of them young adolescent boys well trained in the arts of vicious harassment, are pushing the goats back uphill. A Palestinian herd deep in the valley below us is being dispersed by an older settler; the shepherdess is calling out desperate curses at him in her dialect, too colorful even for my Arabic. “Come, come, let me tell you, come here, you stupid thug, you have no reason to be here, you have no right to hurt us….” I don’t think I can paraphrase the obscenities. The settler, unperturbed, his face cruel, also blank, also contorted, continues his march through the herd until we manage to scare him off.
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March 29, 2026 At-Tawil Text and Photographs: David Shulman

After several weeks of enforced rest—not an art I have perfected, or even practiced—I am back in Palestine. I yearned for this. Rain, cold winds, grey-to-black clouds, the occasional flicker of sunlight, mountains as green as Ireland, the sheep happily eating their fill, the access road slippery with mud, a sharp fragrance in the air that almost hints of spring—it’s one kind of happiness.
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