I got to know Tafwik Salim in – as I assumed - the saddest moment of his life. The 56 years old Palestinian was running up a slope followed by a young Israeli soldier and myself, onto a small hilltop. Above us the warm midday sun of December. A clear day. On the horizon you could see the skyline of Tel Aviv, Herzlia, Nethania. Beyond the shimmering Mediterranean Sea. Around us citrus, orange, guava and olive groves. The rocky plateau across which we were running is surrounded by a large quarry. They left this plateau aside when extracting the white yellow stone of the quarry, over the last twelve years, to clad houses in Jerusalem and elsewhere. And while the quarrying has come close to completion, a stone crusher began some days ago smoothing the rocky ground to make way for new streets.
And in the centre of all is Tawfik's olive grove, which we were then approaching. This has been his families land, the Salims, for more than 100 years. Around 30 years ago, he planted the olive trees himself. A modern olive plantation, where the trees are not too close together. Year by year he harvested olives here. And extracted from every trees about two litres of olive oil.
This year the harvest is nearly completed. It was a good year for the olive harvest. A bad year for prices. Each litre sells for not more than two or three Euros. Because all the checkpoints and roadblocks are still in place many markets are unreachable today. The fellaheen are used to problems. Life has become more difficult once again. But they try to live with it.
However, what Tawfik has to see now, Thursday, Dec. 9, 2004, shortly after 2:00 pm. is a little bit harder. The place, where his olive trees were standing this morning, is now peppered with deep holes. Holes in the rocky soil. The trees lie around like mikado sticks. Shortly before this, a bulldozer had smoothed a way for the excavator, to get to the second row of trees. Easily it picks up whole trees as if transplanting small plants. It puts them aside here and there. Whilst destroying some of the trees.
The excavator has been ripping through Tawfik's olive grove for six hours. I first saw it, saw something from a hill far away. I was with a group from "Rabbis for Human Rights". They came from Jerusalem this morning to help a Palestinian family harvesting olives. Since I had been here only for some days I climbed up the hill to get an impression of this part of the land that I would be staying in for a couple of weeks. They are the first hills to the east of the flat coastal area, that used to be "Silicon Wadi" until the break down of the New Economy, a region of IT and HiTech StartUps.
Between the rocky hills I can see green fields of fruit trees and the long plastic greenhouses, where they pick cucumbers and tomatoes throughout the year. In this region on the boundary between lowland and highland is the so called "Green Line", that used to be the border between Israel and the Jordanian West Bank from 1948 to 1967 and which still is considered in international law to be the official border of Israel.
However, another real border nowadays winds across the hills. With a huge energy driven through the rocks. A long strip of barbed wire, paved road, fence, paved road and barbed wire. Praised by the builders as the "separation barrier", wailed at by the others as the "apartheid wall".
The barrier here has cut off Tawfik as well as all the other farmers among the 3.500 inhabitants of Jayyous from their own farmland. Those of the fellahin who still want to work on their own soil have to pass gate 25. Four times a day it is opened by Israeli soldiers for about an hour. Sometimes, however, they don't open it. In the summer of 2003 it stayed closed for 26 consecutive days. When the farmers got back to their greenhouses they found nothing left but tomato pulp. For the gate the farmers need a permit as well. Only land owners get it. And only, if the Israelis feel like it. They won't get it when they have been imprisoned before. There are no reasons given for a refusal.

Day by day I am witnessing the humiliating treatment at this gate. If one of the young boys laugh, usually he has to turn around and wait. On some days children can pass, on other days they cannot. On some days people with permits for gate 26 can pass gate 25, on others they cannot. It is totally arbitrary . It is not about security for Israelis. If I want to pass the gate I am treated different each time. Sometimes I can get across easily, sometimes after a long discussion, sometimes not at all.
When I now look down from my hill to the left of the gash that the fence has cut into the landscape, I realize at once that today three big Caterpillars are working there around the quarry instead of the two that were there over the last few days. And the third is moving among the olive trees of Tawfik.
It's hard to see: the excavator moves whole olive trees. I wait for the next one. Indeed, in the distance I can see a whole tree turning around together with the excavator. I go back to the Israeli-Palestinian olive picking group. One of the Israeli peace activists and a Swedish photographer are joining me. After half an hour scurrying across stones and rocks we arrive.
Two men armed with M16s are approaching to defend the excavator. The first row of trees has just been laid prone, around 20 trees. We take pictures, the men in their blue uniform let us do this. My two companions must get back to the olive harvest. The Israeli asks me to be cautious since on a similar occasion in the Gaza strip two years ago an international volunteer, Rachel Corrie (23), had been killed. An Israeli army bulldozer ran over and crushed her, in what later was called an accident.
I sit down on a stone. Crying. In this moment I still do not know about Tawfik, contracts, back ground, the whole context. I am just touched by the might and force of this excavator, which picks the trees, in dramatic contrast to the farmers going to their fields every morning on their donkey carts.
Then I act. However, now some some things are not as they should be. I do not have the right mobile. The phone my predecessor should have passed to me had disappeared, probably stolen. I have no video camera, since the only one in the programme office, does not work. I do not have the right equipment with me. I was sent to Nablus for two days, hours after arriving in Jayyous. I am still living out of my rucksack. I have just a mobile of the only Palestinian network, Jawwal. Despite the fact, that the signal here on the border of Palestinian territory is extremely weak, I succeed in talking to Hermina Damons, coordinator of our "Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel" (EAPPI) in Jerusalem as well as to one of the people living on the other side of fence in Jayyous.
The protest gets started. However the next time gate 25 opens is 12:30. I can do nothing other than take pictures of the ongoing destruction with my small camera. Followed by two mistrustful armed settlers, who say that they are settlers from the Jordan valley.
At around noon a truck shows up. It drives to the first group of prone olive trees and lifts one after the other with its crane. I approach the vehicle when it is nearly full to count the trees. One of the guards asks me to help him to move the trees. Incredible. Another one asks if I want to buy one of the uprooted olive trees.
The truck driver tells me, that he will take the trees to Tel Aviv for sale. When he leaves the scene he just passes Tawfik's brother Jamil with his wife, sun and daughter, who have just arrived. I join them. In the beginning Jamil (65) just can say only two words among the tears and sighs: "Thirty-five years." He spent his whole working life here. Now he does not even dare to approach the olive grove. Too many Palestinians have been shot "accidentally" by Jewish guards.
Within minutes more and more people gather at the bottom of the slope. Tawfik, armed and non-armed settlers. A military jeep arrives. Jamil's wife and his children get their last belongings out of the olive grove: a ladder, a water box and a bag of plastic foils. The soldiers try to keep me away while mediating between the two parties. Tawfik has brought some documents, the settlers as well. After some minutes of negotiations the soldiers decide: all work has to terminate at once, the uprooting of the olive trees as well as the smoothing of the soil round the quarry. In three days, after Shabbat, there will be a decision.
But now Tawfik is allowed to see the destruction done to his olive grove accompanied by a soldier. The moment we reach the hilltop, he gets into a state of desperation. He raises his arms, crying out loud, pointing desperately to the torn soil. He tumbles among the uprooted olive trees, pressing the leaves at his face, running from one tree to the other. I have nothing else to do other than to take one picture after the other.
In a last effort he tries to catch the Israeli guards. The soldier and I try to restrain him. Immediately he sinks into my arms on the ground. Whimpering amid tears. Suddenly gets stiff, looking unconscious. Then he collapses completely. The soldier shouts at me: "Water!" I rapidly pull one bottle out of my small rucksack, try to pour some water into his mouth.
Now the soldier makes the operator of the excavator leave the area. Together we get Tawfik up and carry him to the military jeep. When I want to get back to count the uprooted olive trees the soldiers also order me to keep away from the olive grove. I just wait, until they leave the place to take pictures of the final result and to count each of the trees lying around. There are 107. Plus those ten, that were brought away by the truck. That means 117 olive trees were uprooted today. Out of about 350. One third of the grove is destroyed.
On my way back to the gate I see that the bulldozer and the stone crusher are still working. Against the order of the soldiers. They prepare streets for a new illegal Jewish West Bank settlement with nice houses set around the quarry. Illegal, because settling their own population in occupied territory, and the West Bank is nothing else than that, is prohibited according to international law. Besides, the Israelis agreed in the so called Road Map, the last schedule so far for a definite solution of the middle east conflict, to keep away from any further development of settlements. Instead the existing settlement Zufim is to be enlarged here by far more than its existing boundary.
When I come back to the fence I see Tawfik’s family his donkey cart. The father lies motionless on the ground. A military jeep passes by. I stop it and ask the soldiers to open the gate for humanitarian reasons, since the family lost the ground, where they used to work. The soldiers argue that the electricity for the sensors in the fence, who indicate any movement, can only be switched off centrally. At least they try it, but the central officer refuses to do so. So we all have to wait one more hour for the regular opening at 3:45 pm. While leaving one of the soldiers tells me, the family should be happy, since nobody died today.
When I finally get back to our small house in Jayyous, I succeed in a moment where both electricity as Internet are supplied, to transfer pictures and information to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The next they edit a report with my photo: desperate Tawfik next to an Israeli soldier. Before noon the first TV crew is in the village to interview Tawfik.
I put the most moving pictures together with some basic information on my homepage. Via E-mail circles the news of Tawfik's and Jamil's olive grove goes round the world. When an American website links my page with the title "Israelis uproot, steal and sell Palestinian olive trees", my page gets 1.000 hits a day. A peace activist from Rhode Island starts a campaign and makes volunteers calling the State Department and the White House in Washington, to get their attention to this violation of international treaties by Israelis. Swedish and British diplomats come to Jayyous, the German representation in Ramallah calls me. In Jayyous Tawfik is supported by the local representative of the Palestinian Land Defence Committee, Sharif Omar. A complicated legal battle on different levels starts involving contradictory Ottoman, British, Jordanian, Israeli and Palestinian maps and dubious sales. The German diplomat tells me, this would be the rule on the West Bank and whatever the facts, at the end in general the Palestinians lose their land. For him it is a desperate fight, where the mixture of different kinds of law and competences is in case of doubt against them. The village of Jayyous already lost one fifth of its land in 1948, it was taken by Israel at the end of the war, that the Israelis call War of Independence, and the Palestinians the Disaster. Since the beginning of the occupation in 1967 a large part of their land was confiscated for the Jewish settlement of Zufim. The quary was opened in 1992. When the fence was built in 2002/2003 they lost land once again. Some of the farmers cannot get onto their fields anymore. The so called extension of the settlement does not only contribute to the loss of farm land but endangers the access of the farmers to the remaining acres. In the future the farmers may only get to their fields by using another gate in the next village. For many of them that would mean walking ten or more kilometers each day. The Israeli strategy is obvious: The "security barrier" serves as an instrument for the grab of Palestinian land. Their life is getting more and more difficult in order to make them leave the country.
Day by day I accompanied Tawfik. A land surveyor came to document the terrain. The Palestinian governor promised to pay for the work. It took Tawfik three hours to file a complaint against the people who uprooted the olive tress at the police station in the Qedumim Settlement. Most of the time he sits on a chair hanging his head. He fights. And he knows, he might lose the fight.

More pictures of this day in the
Diary
Thursday, Dec. 9, 2004
Uprooting of 117 Olive Trees

Complete Diary
Uprooting of Olive Trees in Jayyous

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