Settlers, snow, and I don't know

An excerpt from the 'zine Kicking at Clouds , a collection of e-mails and diary entries written by Sonya McRae as she traveled through the occupied Palestinian territories.

by Sonya McRae

E-mail from 22 February 2004

Okay. I apologize for the silence. We were in a situation where we could not e-mail. No access. Often no electricity. But we are fine, all in one piece and not in some Israeli military cell.

I can't remember where the story left off. Was I leaving Il-Quds [sic] (Jerusalem) for greener pastures? So I'll start on some random day that encapsulates the days before it, the days we went from one village to another hidden in the frightening shadow of one of the biggest settlements in the west bank. Ariel.

The village Marda, terrorized by the settlers who only have to slip down the hill with guns and dogs into the enchanting pathways framed by ancient stone walls that crisscross around old stone buildings. A spring is the precious part of the village. The man we interview says there's an ocean under the rock. Then we move on.

We ended up in Yanun for a week and a half. It's a tiny Palestinian village that has managed to survive the years of living below an outpost of violently demented “settlers.”

Survived? "I was born here, my father was born in that house over there, my grandfather was born in that house, and my great grand father was born in a cave in these hills, that's as far back as I can remember." The settlers have come into the village with guns and shot through windows destroying doors and tearing apart houses. They bathe in the drinking water of the village. They plow the fields of the villagers and shoot if the owner puts even one toe in his field or one inch of sheep hoof. They walk through the village with their guns, children and pregnant wives. The settlement itself is 8km away. On Bet'selem's settlement map you can see the brown dot of Yanun, a Palestinian village swallowed by a sea of blue indicating settlement land. Like the village does not exist.

It's an incredibly breathtaking location and the people are grateful to the international presence. In October 2002 the villagers all left after the settlers threatened to kill them all if they didn't leave the village, and they had their children to think of, say the village men. Internationals and Israelis came and stayed in the village to stop a complete take over by the settlers. Three days later two men, the mayor and his brother-in-law, came back and then their families and the others. There used to be 300 inhabitants and now there isn't even 100.

You can see the outposts above the village. They surround the village on the horseshoe shaped ridge. An Israeli flag is stuck into the ground high on the ridge like the American or Canadian flag after the massacre of some indigenous nation. The ridge the settlers have claimed was once the wheat-fields of Yanun. A few cardboard cut-out houses perch on the ridge with a guard tower and bright spot lights trained on the village. On the ridge above the village chicken factories shine their spot lights on the village from behind. The settlers often herd their sheep and tether their horses here. The village has street lights, strategically placed to illuminate the shadows created by the settlers' spotlights.

The days are quiet and simple. We go with the shepherds with their flocks around the hills they are still able to go on or we stay in the village and visit the families there. Watch the women make bread, the kids play or sit with the old women nodding at the wind. The silence was something for me to get used to.

It is the silence of waiting, the silence of nightmares and hidden terror. The families are waiting for the day even the internationals cannot stop from coming. The day Israel finally takes the land the village sits on. This may be the day the wall cuts them away from their closest village and extended families. It took me awhile to swallow my sadness and live like everyday had no day to follow it and no day before it.

I scrambled around the hills, stumbling over ancient sites, graves, wells, cave homes and other unknown creations from a time long gone. The shepherds pick nettles, pull off all the leaves and rub the stalk for me to eat. Or they dig up milk thistle and cut away all the leaves leaving the juicy stem. They point out the fields, green and wide, that the settlers have stolen and the road they have shut down. We bring the sheep to the edge of this road but do not let them cross to the settlers' fields on the other side. Any act of defiance would bring beatings or death and so we have to simply sit and watch and daydream about all the things we would do if we had more than nine lives and our children were invincible. It is a silence enforced.

We eat the cheese, yogurt and bread the villagers make in order to get a little cash into the villagers' lives. The world of sustainability is lost with their wheat fields, olive groves and pasture lands. The locals see the internationals breeze in and out with their expensive tastes and habits and their desires change. The women look at me in wonder when they find out my husband did not give me gold and that the bracelets I wear are plastic. My mismatched practical patched clothes blend in with theirs. The meticulously stylish Palestinians are all in the bigger villages and cities. When the women are kicked out of the room because men, friends of their husbands, are arriving, I follow them to the kitchen and watch as they make tea. One woman sits down to show me how she makes cheese and we talk about her life in Kuwait. She doesn't like living in the small village in her husband's generations-old house that has no modern amenities. Not even a kitchen sink. She learned cheese making when she came here five years ago. She also learned the repressive ways of small village life. But she does her duty diligently waiting for the day her husband will take her and their children to Jordan. Soon she thinks, when the Israelis take the last of their land.

The settler attacks stopped and their threatening visits became less frequent when the nastiest of them beat up an Israeli. Countless Palestinians have been beaten and terrorized, internationals have been beaten, kidnapped and threatened, but put a finger on one of their own and inquiries will be made. The settler has a court hearing. The Saturday before we arrived he stormed into the village and told the Palestinians everything would be okay if the internationals would just leave. He could kill them all but that would create problems. The settlers come on Saturdays because it is their holy day and from what I've heard they think terrorizing the Palestinian population in their homes is a holy duty. C and I would be the only two internationals there on this Saturday. We were apprehensive. But then a cold fast wind blew in and with it came snow. A day the Palestinians usually stay indoors turned into a day of snowball fights and visiting. When we left it took us a full day to say goodbye to all the families and countless cups of tea and coffee.

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Kicking at Clouds is available in Vancouver at Magpie Magazine Gallery and People's Co-op Bookstore. In Victoria, you can find it at Dark Horse Books, Second Storey Café and Wildfire Bakery. To get a copy outside of these cities, send an e-mail to kickingatclouds @ yahoo.com.