Update February 10, 2003

Tree Planting Activity at the Nassar Farm

Friday 7 February was the date we set for the first tree-planting activity out at the land, and when we woke up that morning, the weather seemed to indicate that it would be a perfect day. The sky was a clear blue and the sun was shining, despite the forecast for stormy weather. We immediately starting calling people to confirm the time and place for the meeting and everyone seemed ready and eager to get started. It was about 8:30 when I rang Rev. Sandra Olewine, who broke the news: “The jeeps just passed my house announcing curfew. They’re chasing all the people out of the intersection.” I couldn’t believe it and asked if she was sure. “I just talked to a friend of mine living near Manger Square and jeeps are passing through there
too.”

The night before, around 2am, we had been awakened from sleep by explosions nearby and they had continued for about an hour, accompanied by the sounds of sporadic shooting. So the fact is that we had expected to see the curfew announcement when we woke up and had considered it an auspicious sign to find nothing written at the bottom of the tv screen the next morning. I started calling back all the people I had called and we discussed what to do. The final conclusion was: proceed with our original plans and see how far we could get. So we finished dressing and preparing supplies and were out the door by five after nine. We had to drive slowly in anticipation of encountering army jeeps head-on, but in fact we made it all the way up to the top of Bet Jala without seeing or hearing any. We parked beside the huge mound of dirt and rubble which has blocked the road leading out of Bet Jala since early 2001 and climbed over to the other side. Step one accomplished.

Step two was to get the group out to the land. We were thirteen: George, me, and the girls; my friend Elaine Myers from the Albright and two of her friends, Franak Hilloowala and Chris MacEvitt; Bob May; Ed Nyce of the Mennonite Central Committee; Johannes Zang, a German teacher of music at Dar Al-Kalimah school; George’s brother Tony and his sister Amal. Tony had arranged for a twelve-seat transport van to take us the six kilometers from Bet Jala to the turn-off to the farm, so we piled in. The driver was nervous because we were one person too many and the short stretch of road leading to the land is heavily patrolled by soldiers and border police. But we managed to avoid being stopped and took the familiar pothole-riddled turn-off adjacent to the settlement of Neve Daniel.

It has probably been two years since the girls and I went out to the land so we were excited. Our tense “escape” from Bethlehem had heightened the sense of adventure. And as the van crested the hill and the land came into view with the clear dome of blue sky overhead, I felt the old sense of breathless gratitude that I have always felt about this place. There is a poem by Wendell Berry, I think, called The Cure of the Ground which captures the inexpressible beauty and the primordial healing capacity of landscape. I don’t pretend to understand the profound way in which Palestinian farmers are attached, bone and tendon, to their land or how the soil seems to flow through their very veins. But I have seen how it transforms my husband, the moment he plants a foot, into who he really is, the person God seemingly meant him to be. I suspect that not too many people in this world know exactly where they want to be and are in that place. The simplicity of this is a pure gift of grace and grace is what you feel all around you out there. But if land can cure, what can the result of its being taking away be other than brokenness and despair?

Once there, we were joined by seven more: George’s brothers Daher and Daoud; his mom; our friends Sherry and Vernon; Dror Etkes of Peace Now; and Efrat Ben Ze’ev of Ta’Ayush. Following some introductory chat, we got to work planting olive trees in two fields on the northern slope (see www.bobmay.info). If you’ve never planted a tree, there is something about it that, like bread-making, feels not merely therapeutic but holy, especially in this specific location. Our task was regenerative, reparative, redemptive in a place where the last two years have been devoted to the single purpose of destruction and devastation and extinction. After the suffocation of months of curfew and confinement in Bethlehem, I felt something in me miraculously reviving: the possibility of hope.

By one o’clock we had planted sixty trees and were ready to stop for food. That’s when we were joined by three more: a settler and two armed police.

According to local residents, Hanania has succeeded in taking land all over the area surrounding Nahallin. Maybe it is his official job. In any case, he seems to have plenty of time and energy to devote to the enterprise of land theft on behalf of the State of Israel and he must be good at it, judging by the expanding settlements obscenely visible from every direction. I don’t know if he’s a good person or a bad person. Maybe he sincerely believes that all this land is unowned. What I do know is that he has been single-handedly harassing George’s family for years and that he is causing them a great amount of grief. If his intentions are truly benign and if he genuinely believes in the legitimacy of his claim to the land, why doesn’t he wait for the outcome of the case to be determined by the court?

Hanania charged straight over to the two plots of land we had just finished planting with the armed policemen in tow and commenced taking photographs. Point: He must be keeping the area under constant surveillance to have known. Point: While it was fine for him to photograph whatever he pleased, the policeman made it clear in no uncertain terms that we were not to take photographs. Point: The land where we had planted the trees is not even included in the area under dispute. Point: A Palestinian would never be able to get away with charging into the middle of a settlement to take photographs of land he claimed as his. Point: Even if we win this case, it is clear that the low-level harassment will continue. If the decision is in their
favor, it will be enforced. If it is in our favor, it will not be. They have the resources and the time and the energy and the money to make us miserable for as long as it takes.

The policeman kept insisting that “this can end well or it can end badly” and that it was “up to us not to resort to violence.” But from the beginning his language was very belligerent, never mind the guns. He threatened Bob about photographing any of them. He told Vernon to shut up. He spoke rudely to all three of George’s brothers. And according to Sherry and Vernon, both Hebrew speakers, he had actually intended to arrest George and take him to the detention cell in Gush Etzion, although he claimed only to want a “private word” with him down by the jeep. The entire group proceeded to follow them down to the road,
Nadine clinging to me on the verge of tears because they were going to take her daddy. Mathilda held his arm and refused to let go, her first real act of civil disobedience. On the way down the hillside, Sherry overheard a phonecall to the policeman instructing him not to detain George. And standing beside the jeep, she heard the him tell Hanania (in Hebrew) that “the owner is in the right.” Nevertheless, he wrote George up. In the end, however, it was they who left and we who remained. Another victory for the Nassar family.

We went back to our lunch and tea. Dror, who had left before the arrival of Hanania, came back to find out the details of the exchange and share a plate of food. We had a few more rounds of tea. The air was scented with the smell of the wood fire. The sun started going down and it was curfew in Bethlehem. We had to get back. We called the same driver who had brought us out and he met us at the end of the road. As the van slowly picked its way back up the pothole-riddled track to the main highway, I looked over to the settlement, feeling sure Hanania was watching us depart and devising his schemes for the next
disruption.

We climbed back over the mound of rubble into Bet Jala and navigated slowly back down towards Bethlehem in the fading light. As we neared the main road, a driver heading toward us indicated that soldiers were stopping cars up ahead so we turned back and detoured through Al-Madbasah, narrowly avoiding another jeep convoy coming up from Manger Square. We dropped off our final passengers and headed for home.

Despite everything, the land is a testimony to coexistence. Despite everything, there is hope for a cure.