Today we spent a second morning/afternoon in Umm al-Kheir. While one half of our group continued to clear the field for zatar planting, the rest of us went to the other side of the village to rebuild one of the thirty five homes that was destroyed this past April.

Our group was led by a village leader named Eid Suleiman Hathaleen, who did his best to explain the complex, Kafka-esque bureaucracy behind the IDF’s practice of home demolitions and land confiscation. The IDF’s Civil Authority relies on an arcane mix of land laws from the Ottoman, British and/or Jordanian administrations – the three legal systems that once governed what is called today the West Bank. One such law states that those who claim rights in rocky land must prove that they cultivated at least 50 percent of the entire parcel – otherwise, the entire parcel will be deemed state land and Palestinians will be left with no rights whatsoever. For this reason, we are helping the villagers expand their tillable land.

As I mentioned in my last post, the Bedouin residents of Umm al-Kheir purchased their land from the Palestinian town of Yatta over 6o years ago after their expulsion from the Arad region of the Negev desert. In the picture below Eid and his father Suleiman Hathaleen the patriarch of village, shows us the original document that gives his family their rights to the land.

Despite their clear legal right, Eid and his fellow villagers are constantly on the verge of eviction and the regular reality of home and structure demolitions. The Civil Authority can demolish homes and structures for any number of reasons: it can claim the area to be a military “firing zone,” it will deem a house over 35 meters to be unlawfully high, or it might respond with demolition orders for any structure based on complaints from settlers.

The neighboring settlement of Carmel has lodged several such complaints against the people of Umm al-Kheir; once, for instance they sued the village over the smell of manure, which resulted the demolitions of their chicken coops and sheep/goat pens. Perhaps the most bizarre complaint occurred over the aroma of baking bread from the village’s communal taboun (oven). Yes, they were actually forced to go to court to keep the Israeli army from demolishing their stove.

The infamous taboun of Umm al-Kheir

As we prepared to our work rebuilding the home, Eid explained that it was being constructed in different location than the original since demolition orders still apply to any homes or structures built on the same sites. By rebuilding in another spot, the entire bureaucratic process would have to be started from the beginning, and could take up to a year or more to be completed.

There are several new temporary structures donated by the European Union in different locations throughout the village. They are simple metal boxes, essentially four walls without floors. Our job was to take the rubble from the demolished homes and haul them to the new sites to create a floor for one of the new structures. In the picture below, a few of us are shoveling rubble into wheelbarrows to bring over the new home. The picture beneath it shows the final product of our work – not a complete floor yet, but hopefully a good start:

On our way back to the fields, Eid took us on a short detour to show us his art studio. Among other things, Eid is a talented self-taught artist who makes miniature trucks, bulldozers and helicopters from scraps he finds from his village, most of them from demolished structures (see pic below). As he explained it to us, these models (which are so intricate that the steering wheels of the vehicles actually move their tires) constitute a form of artistic resistance – i.e. making something constructive out of acts of destruction. There is of course a profound irony that Eid creates for instance, the very Caterpillar bulldozers that regularly come to destroy his village. Of course this is an intrinsic part of his artistic intention. (You can see more of Eid’s work, contact him or order items from his website here).

Our group then returned to newly cleared field to plant hundreds of zatar plants (pic at the top of this post). While summer is not the traditional time for planting, it was important for the people of Umm al-Kheir to get the plants into the ground as soon as possible for the above mentioned legal reasons. After the planting, the villagers quickly installed irrigation pipes to keep the ground well watered.

I’m sure that some reading these words might be asking why they are working so hard to rebuild homes or sow plants that were all too likely to be demolished or uprooted by the IDF?  The answer of course, is that this work is a very disciplined and steadfast form of resistance. The goal of Israel’s draconian military/legal bureaucracy is ultimately to make things so intolerable for the people of Umm al-Kheir – and so many other Palestinian communities throughout the West Bank – that they will eventually be driven from their homes. However, it is all too clear to us that their connection to their land, their homes and their communities is unshakeable. As Sulieman Hathaleen, the patriarch of Umm al-Kheir recently said to a reporter,

We went through so many catastrophes: 1948, 1967 and now the settlements, which have taken most of our land. They left us with nothing. And now they want to expel us. But we will not leave.

I believe him.

After lunch, we traveled to Hebron to tour Area H2 with a guide from the Israeli organization, Breaking the Silence. I’ve written about Hebron and BTS several times before (here and here, for instance.) For now I will only say that the situation in Hebron is even more appalling than ever – if such a thing is even possible. After the tour however, we met with Palestinian non-violent activist Issa Amro (below), the inspiring founder of direct action group Youth Against the Settlements. YAS is truly one of the bright lights in the dark reality that is Hebron and is becoming most well known for its Open Shehudeh Street campaign.

I will have more to say about Hebron, Issa and Youth Against the Settlements in future posts.  Stay tuned.