Matters to Remember about People of the Land

AT-TUWANI REFLECTION: The Stations of Shaadi
(April 7, 2008)
by Eileen Hanson
(Christian Peacemaker Teams)

[Note: According to the Geneva Conventions, the International Court of Justice in the Hague, and numerous United Nations resolutions, all Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal.]

As we accompany shepherds in the South Hebron Hills, a place of great beauty, they often speak of the land they knew as children. Recently, as we accompanied one of them, Shaadi, he pointed out some of the landmarks in his memory along the way.

From a hilltop, we can see the nearby settlement and outpost. Although he does not mention it, we are looking across at a place where settlers have repeatedly attacked his children while they walked to school.

As we pause at the cistern to water the flocks, he recounts the time when three masked settlers from the outpost attacked him and his nine-year-old son there. The settlers arrived in a truck and began firing stones at them with a slingshot, hitting his son. They also broke the legs of two of his sheep. When he called the Israeli police to report the attack, the police refused to come to take his report saying they were afraid of the settlers, "We are only two police. We need a whole army to go in there. The settlers will break our windows." Shaadi replied, "If you are afraid of the settlers, how do you think I am?"

We pass by the place where three years ago a settler from the Hill 833 settlement outpost stole fifteen sheep from his flock.

As we approach his home, he talks about the forced removal of several hundred people from this area. On 7 April 1998, over one hundred families in the area, including Shaadi's, were served orders to abandon their homes. After they refused to leave, military confiscated their meager belongings and offered to return them if they agreed to leave. They refused. Armed settlers once shot up the village, wounding his mother and brother. In May of 2006, the Israeli Civil Administration issued a demolition order for the family's outhouse. A few days later, a bulldozer destroyed it.

In January of this year, while Shaadi was out grazing his flocks with a few other local shepherds, settlers came out from the outpost and fired six shots at them. The flocks scattered, and the shepherds fled. The Israeli police refused to respond, saying they "had better things to do."
A few weeks ago, Shaadi was one of several shepherds that went to graze their flocks in a valley called Mshaha, south of the Hill 833 settlement outpost. Israeli soldiers demanded that the shepherds leave. The shepherds responded that that they wanted to appeal to the commander to decide the issue. The soldiers ran toward the flocks and kicked several sheep, trying to drive them away. Several sheep sustained internal injuries and broken teeth. Shaadi lost two lambs later that week from injured ewes.

As we were finishing this long walk, we paused along the way as a young lamb was born. Shaadi tended gently and expertly to the newborn, and invited us back to his house for a meal. We rejoiced in the new birth.