Report from Masafer Yatta

The Relentless Machinary of Colonisation

Here is a slightly expanded version of a speech I gave at the IJAN (International Jewish Anti-zionist Network) protest, which has been happening almost every week since October 2023.

They started out near the home of the genocidal ambassador of the terrorist entity. Then they were moved to the Swiss Cottage Library by the racist British police. They were moved again to outside the tube station. Now they have been banned from the whole of Swiss Cottage. So they are now outside New Scotland Yard, also highlighting the repressive role the British police plays in supressing those trying to protest genocide in Palestine.

"We were based in the Masafer Yatta region just south of Al-Khalil or Hebron. Mainly helping with protective presence work. We stayed with a family in the village of Qawawis. When we would hear of settler attacks, home demolitions, military harassment etc, we would try and go there and hopefully by being there mitigate some of the violence experienced by Palestinians. We would document what was happening and try to spread the word about it.

When we arrived in Palestine we got through immigration without substantial problems.

What was quite scary was how ordinary life in 1948 Palestine just seemed to be continuing unaffected by the genocide.

While the much more intense phase of the genocide continues unabated in Gaza, in Jenin, in Tulkaram etc. In Masafer Yatta it is more the slow genocide that has been ongoing at least since 1948.

The mechanisms and architecture of colonisation weave into so many aspects of ordinary life.

Since October 2023 the intensity of colonisation has only increased. Home demolitions, settler violence, military and police harassment, land appropriation, settlement expansion, building of new outposts etc.

In a settler colonial society the level of brutalisation that is necessary towards their own population, in order for that population to carry out the brutality necessary to continue the settler colonial project, reveals the self-destructive logic at the heart of any such project.

One thing I have been doing is encouraging people to consider going to Palestine. Looking at it from the outside, it can seem like an impossible thing, with things so intense in Gaza and parts of the West Bank. However, I would like to say that it is much more doable than it might seem from the outside.

We had been trying to go for months. Initially we tried with various organisations, but none of them worked out. In the end we just bought tickets and went. We plugged in to the network of activists already doing work on the ground.

If anyone is considering going, feel free to contact me and talk. I can also put you in touch with longer term activists in the area.

On the one hand it is easy to give into despair at the relentlessness of the machinary of colonisation, but what I found most inspiring was the resilience of the people, the sumud or steadfastness.

Existence is resistance and we teach life, sir become much more concrete than just phrases.

No matter what violence, harnessment, intimidation etc. they were subjected to, they just continued to do whatever was necessary to sustain life: hearding sheep, planting olive trees, making sheep’s cheese (with Sara, my one and a half year old arabic teacher, insisting on helping by eating it and spreading it all over her face).

The family we stayed with had four generations. The great grandmother, her daughter and the daughter's husband, the grandparents. One of their sons and his wife and their four children. It was such a support being with them. When nothing was happening we would play with the children, or be with the elders. This made the anger so much more concrete, in that these were the children they were trying to harm or, in Gaza, even eliminate.

Then there was the proverbial Palestinian hospitality and generosity. Everywhere we went they tried to feed us or offer us something to drink. Even if people were living in tents, even if they were fasting during Ramadan. Even when people had very little, the impulse was always to share, very different than the attitude of the coloniser.

The British fascists when they occupied Palestine, used to go stay in villages just like us and make use of this Palestinian hospitality. Ilan Pappe in “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”, describes how they used this to gather information about the villages, the so called village files. This information was later used by the zionist militias during the Nakhba to carry out their ethnic cleansing.

I can briefly mention examples of the types of things that are happening.

- Hajj Khalid, the grandfather of the family we stayed with had been attacked by settlers at night in January before we came. They came to the house at night, they broke his skull and caused many other injuries.

- On our first day in Umm al-Khair we had to witness a home demolition. How they do these is that they gather various units near the villages: bulldozers, military, police, etc. This process takes a few hours. At this point Palestinians don't know which village they will go to or whose house they will demolish. This adds an additional level of psychological torture. When the forces are ready, they drive to the house. They don't give people enough time to empty the house. The military surround the house, pushing everyone out. Then they send the bulldozers in. What struck me is the level of indifference among the 18 year old soldiers, it was just another routine job for them.

- Settlers would often carry out attacks at night in the various villagrs in the area. Though, technically, they could be arrested, in practice they almost never were. They would often be wearing masks during these attacks. We did not witness these attacks directly, but they happened a few times while we were there. Sometimes other activists we were with were present and were themselves attacked.

- On a few occasions settlers burnt Palestinian cars in villages like Susiya and Tuba.

- Over the years, the military often destroyed many of the caves people used to live in in the region. These caves were much better for temperature regulation, easier to heat in winter and easier to keep cool in summer. Now most Palestinians are forced to live in concrete blocks which can be demolished at any time.

- Settlers would often attack Palestinians grazing their sheep.

- Settlers with guns would drive around villages in ATVs to intimidate Palestinians.

- Sometimes if there were settlers around we would walk the kids to school.

- Settlers would come at night and put big stones in the middle of the road or come at Iftar time and uproot trees.

- Palestinians would be detained or even taken to military bases while just attempting to graze their sheep. This happened to the father of the kids in our family. One day while he was with his flock, settler-soldiers came and said he couldn't be there. One of the soldiers with a big gun, told the activist I was with, “You have come here to kill us all”.

- Settlers would sometimes poison wells so when the sheep drank from it they died. This happened at least once while we were there.”