Operazione Colomba

VISIT PALESTINE: POSTCARDS FROM OCCUPIED TERRITORIES / 13

At-Tuwani/Tuba – School Patrol

Like every morning, students walk to the school. Among the cackles Said tries to look longer to make sure that there is Israeli army, which has the duty to escort them along the road between two Israeli settlements. Said doesn’t see the flashing lights of the army jeep. That means it is late. Thirty minutes pass but no sign of the soldiers. The schoolchildren keep waiting at the meeting point. They are dangerously close to the Israeli outpost, and if the settlers wanted to attack them, they would take no time at all. At this point there are three possibilities: going back home, but they want to go to school; taking a path that winds through the hills trying to keep as far away as possible from the outpost, but they would arrive at school even later; walking the road unescorted, which seems the best choice. Said asks the volunteers of Operation Dove, with whom he has been in contact since they left home and who are waiting for them at the end of the road, to reach them so they can walk together.
Just as the mutatawain - volunteers - arrive with their cameras at hand, a car stops in front of them. A settler gets out and aggressively orders the children to turn back, threatening to call the Israeli police.

VISIT PALESTINE: POSTCARDS FROM OCCUPIED TERRITORIES / 12

Settlers’ vandalism of Palestinian properties

Jaber is near his tractor on the top of the hill.
The sun has just risen but, unlike the other mornings, Jaber is not appreciating the dawn.
In front of him, there is his olive grove, which belonged to his family from generation. A land that until yesterday was alive, full of life and resistance, and now is just a devastated field: most of the trees are broken, the centenary trunks cut, the branches broken.
The grief he feels is nearly physical, so strong enough to feel his heart broken.

VISIT PALESTINE: POSTCARDS FROM OCCUPIED TERRITORIES / 11

Demolitions - Military order 1797

Ra-ta-ta-ta-tà.
The loud sound of a drill.
The first wall falls down.
The machine flakes against the next wall.
Ra-ta-ta-ta-tà.
Boom.
The concrete falls down with a thud.
Now a bed is clearly visible inside the rubble.
There are clothes which are waving on the terrace still upright.
A lot of clothes and tools some meters from the house.
Soldiers.

Testimony of arrested minor (June 15, 2019)

Every year, hundreds of Palestinian children are victims of the same situation.
Raids at home, also in the middle of the night, arrests, intimidations. Blindfolded and handcuffed, they are transferred to the police station for the interrogation, often subjected to violence along the way. Interrogated – some of them after a long transit, others without foods or water for hours, others sleep-deprived. Alone, without an adult they trust near them, and without the possibility to consult a lawyer. Often the children give a confession after verbal abuse, threatens, physical and psychological violence.

VISIT PALESTINE: POSTCARDS FROM OCCUPIED TERRITORIES / 10

Beit Ijza – Living in a cage

Suleiman is silent while he is drinking his coffee, sitting on the steps of his house. He is looking at the cameras that monitor every centimetre of his house. The surveillance cameras point at the small corridor connecting the house to the iron gate, on the fence, and on the 6-meter wall which delimits the few dunums left to him. He looks at the cameras, oriented at those 2 meters distance between the fence and the settlement. Just 2 meters, which Israel wanted to reduce further to 60 centimetres, and that Suleiman has conquered, day after day.
He gazes at the houses of the settlement. The structures built continue to increase, becoming every day bigger. Or maybe it’s how he sees it: overwhelming, suffocating, all around what he calls home, but that seems more like a prison. Last night again, the settlers didn’t give them a break. They have launched some buckets of water on the freshly washed clothes off the line. It happens every day, the fence which divides them has very wide mesh, while the walls are low.