This day was such fun,the sun shining, all the different nationalities picking away together, the food the good will but of course spoilt by the soldiers and their stupidity,but they were just kids. One is covered in dust and then the great simple food that tastes like food should. About picking olives & the anarchists' day in court By Adam Keller October 17, morning. No less than twenty-five people turned up at the rendezvous point, having taken the day off from their normal work in order to participate at the olive harvest in Palestinian villages suffering from settler harassments, and the mini-bus chartered by Rabbis for Human Rights was overcrowded. "This is the kind of trouble which we hope to have often" said Yoav, the RHR coordinator, with a smile. We passed with no trouble the checkpoint at the West Bank entry, where on the previous day olive harvester buses were turned back and three organizers taken to police detention for several hours. Past the bored soldiers at the checkpoint, we were on the "Trans-Samaria Route", bisecting the West Bank from west to east. An ultra-modern four-lane highway, with all cars bearing Israeli licence plates and a considerable number of them also displaying extreme-right bumper stickers. In the past four years, Palestinian cars are banned from this road, which is reserved for Israeli traffic (which mostly means settler traffic). Later on we would see the alternate route to which the east-west Palestinian traffic was diverted - a narrow, winding, mostly unpaved mountain track... "We are today asked to help three villages" says Yoav. "The largest number of working hands are needed at Beit Furik. At Jama'een and Yassouf, there are international volunteers already working on the the olive groves, but there must be some Israelis with them. It is very important that if soldiers or settlers come, they will encounter Hebrew speakers." Yassouf, home to some two thousand inhabitants, is overshadowed in all possible ways by the settlement of Tapuach - a cluster of imitation-European houses with red tile roofs, perched on the ridge above and visible from any point in the village. Tapuach is a stronghold of the followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who preached the expulsion of all Arabs. "We suffer very much from them. Last week they beat up one of our people, stole the sacks of olives he had filled and also his horse. We talked to the army and police but the horse is not yet given back. His owner hears him neighing in the night from up there". A young man named Hisham volunteers to guide us to the plot where Palestinian families were already working with volunteers of the IWPS (International Women's Peace Service). "The plot of my own family is fortunately on the other side, but we all try to help the people who are suffering most" he said as we walked down the narrow track, with the settlement houses above growing nearer and nearer. Suddenly, we were face to face with a settler, some fifty metres distant - a shepherd, riding a donkey and accompanied by three fierce-looking dogs. We were too distant to hear what he said, but his gestures made clear it was not a compliment. Then he turned back and disappeared. In between, an army jeep and a police patrol car were parked, a fragile buffer. We went among the olive trees, many of which had blackened boles. "A few days ago they came and tried to set this plot on fire. Fortunately, the Palestinian and the Israeli fire brigades both arrived quite quickly, and together they put off the fire and saved most of the trees" told Hisham. To our surprise, one of our own party admitted to being a settler of a kind herself. "I live in Ma'aleh Adumim, east of Jerusalem. When I came on Aliya from Australia eight years ago, my father was already living there, and it seemed like just another Jerusalem suburb. Perhaps a bit more Likud-oriented than average, but nothing like this horrific Tapuach place. I am now involved in an interfaith group in Jerusalem, bringing together Jews, Muslims and Christians, and I try to get our community centre at Ma'aleh Adumin to host Palestinians. That's a difficult idea to get across where I live". A few more rows of trees and we arrived at the olives of the Abdel Fatah family - three brothers with their respectives wives and children. A family enterprise, with strong young men making the agile climb to the tree tops and merry young children playfully picking up fallen olives from the ground. A short introduction, and we set to work. Olive picking is a companionable work, and we soon learned that - aside from the Palestinians - there were around the tree a Puerto Rican from Massachusetts , an Irish woman married to a Palestinian and living in Spain, and a couple of Austrians. "I was born in Kuwait" says Rajaa, a young family mother speaking English with a trace of an American accent. "We had a good life there, before Saddam invaded. After finishing highschool, I went to visit Yassouf where my father was born, and I got married and stayed here." We take a break, and our hosts insist on feeding us, despite themselves being on fast. "Ramadan is for us, not for you. A pity you can't stay the night and share with us the real meal, the breaking of the fast. At least you must have a bite to eat now, you are our guests." By noon, the Abdel Fatah trees are about fully harvested and the family prepares to move to the village centre, when we get an urgent call on the cellular phone. "If you are free, please come over here. We have a bit of an emergency and need more hands. We are five rows ahead of you, near to where the army and police cars are parked. Just walk forward, and take care not to move out of the olive grove into the open field." When we get to the other group, we find them working with frantic speed. "The soldiers came and told us these trees are not in the protected sphere, that we have to clear out in a quarter of hour" says Dan Tamir, former intelligence officer who served prison terms for refusing service in the Occupied Territories. "We must make the most of the time we have. Don't go for individual olives, try to find the bigger clumps where you get many at once. Quick, now!" However, the fifteen minutes pass, and another fifteen, without the soldiers coming to enforce their eviction edict. On the pass, we see a white car parked near the army and police. "That's the settler security patrol, the whole trouble started after they showed up. The white car starts off for the settlement, comes back, goes again. As after all we have more time, Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals go back to more thorough scouring of the trees." A bit after 2.00 PM the settler white car arrives again, and somebody gets out of it and approaches the army jeep. We can't hear them, but immediately afterwards the soldiers come again. "This is it, you must clear out of right now, no more delays!" - "The harvest is finished in this part, we just wait for the white donkey to come back and bear the last full sack." - "But there is no need for so many of you to wait for the donkey, is there?" It is decided that the internationals would go back already, while Israelis and Palestinians stay with the increasingly impatient and irritated soldiers. But the wait is finally over, and soon we depart back up the mountain trail - two Palestinians and two Israelis behind a snow-white donkey bearing, if not the Messiah, at least a sack with fifty kilograms of olives. BACK TO TOP