Take our picture! Umm Al-‘Ara’is, October, 2022

“Why are these children so wild?” the soldier asked me.

“Could it be because their father has just been arrested?” I answer.

“And do you know why he was arrested? Because he was in a closed military zone.”

“But he was on his own land.”

“You are making me laugh.”

“So who’s land is it?”

“Have you never heard of Abraham? When he was here thousands of years ago, there weren’t any … Palestinians.” The pause before the word “Palestinian” seemed to express a certain distaste.

I am with the `Awad family again. I wanted to visit beautiful Umm al-Amad, but Guy told me that Sa’id’s worsening situation needs documenting. He was right.

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Photographic Empowerment. Umm Al-‘Ara’is, spring and summer, 2022

Remember Sa’id and his many children who accompany him every week to the fields? I hadn’t seen them for nearly three years, but I could recognize them at a distance from Jibrin’s pastures (if you can call a rocky patch with a few scrubby thorns a “pasture”) as they arrived for their weekly visit on the ridge far above us. Then they descended into the next wadi and disappeared.

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January 18, 2022.   Umm al-Khair, Hajj Suleiman’s Funeral. Text: David Shulman, Photographs: Margaret Olin

He was like one of those rocky hills in South Hebron, a living, breathing, feeling mass of sunlight, rain, wind, earth, and stone.  Though he wasn’t all that tall, he always dwarfed everyone around him. The soldiers and the border police were afraid of him, because he told them the truth and gave no quarter.  

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December 4, 2021. Tuba, South Hebron Hills (David Shulman)

Tuba in 2018. credit: Margaret Olin

It’s 8:00 on a winter morning as we arrive in South Hebron, and immediately there is a call:  settlers attacking in Tuba. Five of us—Guy, Yigal, Noah, Yossi, me—tear off over the gravel-and-goat paths , through the desert, to Tuba. Guy is driving as if he were flying a plane or flogging a horse. The car careens over the rocks, kicking up dust. They need us. Now.

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