It makes a little crazy to read stories like this. Wtf is wrong these people?
The Illegal Settler Outpost Has Running Water. Its Palestinian Neighbors Don't. This Is Apartheid at Its Starkest
The activists who were attacked by Israeli soldiers in the South Hebron Hills were bringing water to the Hamamdi family – who are denied that resource by Israel. Opposite them are the water pipes and electric cables of an outlaw settler outpost
Gideon Levy
Alex Levac
Sep. 24, 2021
The yellowish water in the large plastic jug is for irrigating the crops. The clear water in the 1.5-liter plastic bottles is for drinking. Ahmad Hamamdi, a 71-year-old farmer, displays the wretched water system of his well-tended and almost miraculous homestead. Up the hill is the half-wrecked pen he tried to build for his 10 sheep. Opposite the small cabin he resides in are the ruins of another room he built. Between them lie torn seats removed from old cars, along with other junk. The sight evokes a village in the Afghan mountains. But we’re not two hours from Kabul, we’re two hours from Tel Aviv, across from the unauthorized settler outpost called Avigayil, which is of course hooked up to the water system and the power grid, and to which an illegally built road leads, here in the South Hebron Hills.
Umm al-Shukkhan is home to three elderly persons: Ahmad Hamamdi, a straight-backed, resilient man with a hearing aid; Halimi, his wife, 67; and her sister, Zarifi, a mentally disabled woman, aged 52. Zarifi is a pitiable sight. She doesn’t utter a sound, her gaze is mostly fixed on the ground, occasionally she clasps her face in her hands. Her sister and brother-in-law see to all her needs – she is wearing a fine, clean, striped robe. Ahmad and Halimi’s 12 children have all married and left home, and against all the odds and against the violence of the occupation authorities and the hostile local settlers, the couple have created a splendid single-family farm.
Ahmad built a fence around the pomelo tree, and when troops of the military government’s Civil Administration arrived to uproot it, two years ago, he begged in the name of the tree’s soul, shouted haram – “have pity” – and succeeded in staying the executioner’s hand. Also spared were the tomato, okra and cucumber plants, along with the five beehives and the lemon tree. In place of the 150 olive trees that were uprooted two years ago, he quickly planted a few dozen new ones, which are now blooming. And all of this in the rocky desert land, in the heat of the summer, which so far has refused to abate.
Combatants for Peace, an Israeli-Palestinian NGO, chose to come here last Friday, not because this is the only place in the South Hebron Hills that is crying out for water (it isn’t), but because the apartheid here cries out to the heavens more starkly than elsewhere. Unlimited water and a hookup to the electricity grid for the unauthorized outpost of Avigayil, which also has a large, recreational wading pool, and opposite it the compound of the Hamamdi family, which clings to earth that belongs to Halimi’s parents, with no hookup to water or electricity.
Combatants for Peace wanted to bring water to this family, but Maj. Maor Moshe – a deputy battalion commander in the Engineering Corps of the Israel Defense Forces – took a dim view of the plan. His soldiers fired stun and tear-gas grenades at them, one even by aiming at them directly, pushed them back violently and in a fit of unbelievable rage wounded six of them and arrested a few others, in one of the IDF’s ugliest and most repulsive displays in memory. All that remained on the ground from the incident this week were a few plastic bottles and plastic handcuffs.
continues at haaretz.com
[you don't have to be a subscriber to read this article. it led me to give some money to "Combatants for Peace". Although it is possible that this article itself is effectively an advertisement for that group, who knows.... I am so tired of all the BS and liars and hucksters in this world.] |
