Palestinians are also prevented from harvesting their olives – Amira Hass

Mohammed al Khatib, from the Palestinian village of Bilin, uses every useful opportunity to speak to the soldiers, in Hebrew. Even after they beat him, laid him down and arrested, even after one of the soldiers imperiously planted a foot in his back, as happened on 11 October near the West Bank town of Salfit.

“I like talking to young soldiers, explaining the occupation to them,” says Khatib. “’What do you mean by occupation?’ They ask me. ‘You Palestinians can do whatever you want.’ And I explain to him: ‘What if I told you that a Palestinian cannot build on his land? Search the internet. Don’t just listen to your superiors’ ”. Khatib spoke to Haaretz two days after being detained for a much shorter period than usual in the circumstances I am about to tell you about.

Relive the tradition
Khatib has forgotten how many times he has been arrested because he participates in popular committees that fight against the separation barrier. The reason for the arrest this time was the olive harvest. These days, groups of volunteers go around the West Bank to help out, especially in the areas most prone to violence by Israelis living in nearby illegal settlements.

From October 3, the first day of the harvest, until October 16, Israeli citizens in the West Bank carried out eighteen sabotage actions, physically assaulting farmers, cutting and breaking the olive trees, or stealing the harvest.

Among the groups of volunteers there is one, Faza – of which Khatib was one of the founders – intent on reviving the tradition of volunteering and mutual help that characterized Palestinian society in the 1970s and 1980s.

If it is not the settlers who are hindering the harvest, the soldiers will take care of it. It happened on 11 October in an olive grove in Al Ras, near Salfit, north of the Ariel settlement. Just a year ago, the illegal Nof Avi outpost was built in that area. Since then, the Palestinian owners of the olive grove have only been able to look at their plot from a distance. Now that the olives are ripe, the farmers have invited volunteers to join them, in the belief that more people can discourage Israeli violence and allow the harvest to be completed more quickly, before the olives are stolen.

When the volunteers arrived around 8.30 am they were amazed to find “an incredible number of soldiers,” Israeli activist Gil Hammerschlag told Haaretz. The soldiers had stretched a ribbon between some poles planted in the ground and had hung notices, in English and Arabic, declaring the area “closed military zone”. According to activists on site, the soldiers did not show any signed orders (as they did the next day in court). In any case, the activists took care to stay outside the marked area, deciding to walk to the olive grove from another road, also blocked by the soldiers.

Khatib explains that he did not expect the area to be closed. “It is true that on the top of the hill there is a settler who has taken possession of it. But we were going to protect something legal, like olive harvesting, from something illegal, like settler violence. If the army was really concerned about the settler’s safety, why didn’t they put soldiers around the illegal construction of the settlement? Why prevent the olive harvest? It all depends on what the commander had decided ”.

“The day before”, continues Khatib, “we had harvested olives in Beita. To do this, we went through the settlement of Evyatar. The army did not bother us and there were no problems. In other words, the military commander decides how things will go. We go to pick the olives: we are not interested in creating tension. We don’t want to provoke anyone, but we refuse to warn the army if we want to enter a private olive grove just because a settler has taken possession of Palestinian-owned land. Because of that outpost, the land of that olive grove was not plowed for a whole year. It is full of brambles ”.

The foot on the back
Khatib arrived a little late, says he has not seen the tape of the “closed military zone”. He saw the soldiers denying access and joined the other activists. Khatib, who studied law, said that during his detention an officer told him that if there is a closure order, it means that it is Israeli land. “But he doesn’t know anything about the law,” he observes. “By what logic? The settler breaks the law, I respect it, and instead I would be the transgressor ”.

Even as the activists backed off, the soldiers approached them and started pushing them. “I started arguing with the officer: ‘Why are you pushing us? I have the right to harvest olives. ‘ I heard another officer tell the commander that he wanted to arrest two people. He asked for permission and got it. I said to him: ‘You can arrest me, but why?’. He told me I was under arrest. I raised my hands. Some activists came and freed me, then soldiers swooped in on me, there were five or six of them, and they beat me. At the time I didn’t feel bad but afterwards, while I was under arrest, I had a hard time moving my neck. They knocked me down with my face on the ground, and one of them crushed my back with his foot ”.

Photographer Matan Golan had the impression that the major, seen in a video running towards the soldier who was trampling Khatib, was not happy with what was happening, and in fact when he intervened the foot was removed from the back of Khatib. At that point the soldiers started throwing stun grenades at the volunteers ”.

An Israeli army spokesman responded to Haaretz’s requests by repeating that there had been “a violent disturbance of public order near Nof Avi’s farm”, and that the volunteers had broken the closing order that was notified to them. , using violence against soldiers. The spokesman added that “the soldiers had responded with methods used to disperse the demonstrations, arresting three suspects. One of them had a violent attitude towards a soldier, behaving in a sprawling manner during the arrest, even trying to escape. The soldiers had to use force to carry out the arrest. The conduct of the soldier who placed a foot on his back is unacceptable ”.

Justify the arrest
It was ten in the morning when the soldiers handcuffed Khatib behind his back, blindfolding him and carrying him to the olive grove, closest to the settlement. Two Israelis who had also been arrested, Hammerschlag and activist David Shalev, were already sitting there. They too had their hands tied behind their backs but no blindfold. The two pointed out the difference in treatment and one of the soldiers removed Khatib’s blindfold. After two and a half hours, during which the three remained seated on the ground handcuffed, the soldiers blindfolded them all and loaded them into a jeep bound for the nearest police station in Ariel.

While they waited in a holding cell, they overheard an officer talking to one of the soldiers who had arrested them, the only one left. Their impression is that the policeman was instructing the soldier on how to model the evidence to support the arrest. Khatib, who was near the door, says he heard the officer explain to the soldier that breaking a closing order is insufficient for detention, and that he would have to claim that the Palestinian attacked the soldiers for this. Khatib says that the soldier said he hadn’t attacked anyone, only causing a nuisance, and the policeman replied that it would not be enough. Hammerschlag says he heard the officer ask if Khatib had yanked the officer’s rifle, as if to suggest what could be noted in the evidence to justify the arrest (Judea and Samaria district has not commented on this so far).

Later the three were split. The Israelis were taken to the Hadarim prison in Israel, while Khatib was taken to a detention facility at the Hawara military base, south of Nablus. Israeli law requires a suspect to be brought before a judge within 24 hours of his arrest. Military law prevailing in the West Bank allows a Palestinian suspect to be detained for up to 96 hours without appearing before a judge. In fact, Hammerschlag and Shalev were given the opportunity to be released under certain conditions while still in Ariel. But they refused, declaring that they had not committed any transgression.

Their refusal to be released immediately made it easier for the lawyer representing the three, Riham Nasra of Michal Pomeranz’s law firm, to get Khatib released before the 96-hour deadline. On the afternoon of October 11, the lawyer submitted a request for his immediate release, which requires the secretariat of the military court to call an early hearing. This is not a trivial matter. Due to the abundance of prisoners, lawyers in the West Bank have become accustomed to a minimum of four days of detention, without even trying to get released first.

On 12 October, the two Israelis appeared in a court in Petah Tikva. The police demanded an extension of the detention for Hammerschlag and an order forbidding Shalev to go to the olive grove for 15 days, so that “the investigation is completed”. Nasra showed a video confirming the version of the arrested. If the soldiers had had a video showing the opposite the police would have been happy to show it. Judge Liat Har Zion concluded that the police could have completed the investigation even if the two were released. Nasra promptly sent the minutes to the military court in Salem, in the north of the West Bank, then went to the scene and demanded an immediate sentence on Khatib’s release. At 16.30 it was decided to hold a session at 4.45pm.

Khatib remained in the Hawara detention facility, participating in the videoconference hearing. The judge, Lieutenant Colonel Samzar Shagog, said there was “reasonable grounds for suspecting that Khatib had pushed the soldiers and tried to enter a restricted military zone”, but released him, requiring them to pay a bail of 1000 shekels. (270 euros).

Khatib was released on 12 October at 6.30pm. A few days later he was picking olives in Burin.

(Translation by Francesco De Lellis)