Operazione Colomba

A dangerous road to education

Palestinian students under settlers violence and military negligence
SUMMARY OF THE 2016-2017 SCHOOL YEAR – 1 st SEMESTER
Period: 2016/08/28 – 2017/01/10

Children from the Palestinian villages of Tuba and Maghayir Al-Abeed began the first semester of the 2016-17 school year with Israeali soldiers escorting them to their school in the nearby Palestinian village of At-Tuwani. This is the thirteenth continuous year that these children have needed a military escort in order to walk to school safely.
To get to school the children must walk along a road which once provided easy travel between the villages, but which now runs between the Israeli settlement of Ma’on and the illegal outpost of Havat Ma’on. For the past thirteen years violent behavior by settlers from the outpost, the existence of which is illegal under both Israeli and International law, has made the road inaccessible to Palestinians. Even escorted by Israeli soldiers the schoolchildren continue to face the possibility of violence, harassment and intimidation as they walk to and from school.

Mixing tears

When volunteers get home from a project, they often have to deal with the experiences and the emotions they have lived during the last few months. When we are on the field, we don’t always have time to realize what is really happening, we try to decode feelings and we keep them in a corner of our hearts, in order to face them one by one at home, calmly. At least, it is what I usually do.
Yesterday, I read this text I wrote in a very difficult moment of my stay in Lebanon and during Aleppo’s “final assault”. Living this event at the camp, close to people who still call Aleppo home, has been tough: going through the despatches, watching pictures, scrolling messages from people stuck there… What should I do other than hugging them and mixing my tears with theirs? I always tried to be strong, to bring them a smile or some music to dance together, but that night a heavy cloud laid on my thoughts and I wrote this; I’m still into what I wrote because sharing means even to suffer together in order to stand up again. Together.

A dirty job – Gaza Strip, 2002

Gaza strip, 2002

Rafah, on the border with Egypt. On the border line Israel has carved itself a security strip by demdirty jobolishing all the houses of the Palestinians present on the area. The pump, that was used to flow away the sewers’ water that came from the Palestinian houses, is trapped under the rubble after the demolitions. Every time the workers try to fix it the Israeli army shoot at them and at the pump. It has been out of order for more than four months now. In the houses that face the security strip, the liquid sewage leaks from the toilet and, with the aid of the sun, the risk of an epidemic is higher every day.

P/R: Settlers “price tag” attack and IDF demolitions in the South Hebron Hills

At-Tuwani – On December 31, at about 3:00 am, Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian house in the South Hebron hills village of Ad-Deirat. In the same day, at about 12:50 pm, Israeli forces demolished a tent in the village of Al-Mufaqarah.

As witnessed by Palestinians, at about 3:00 am two settlers wrote with black spray near the front door of a Palestinian’s house in the village of Ad-Deirat a sentence, in which is recognizable only the word: “revenge“. Then, settlers broke a window and threw a molotov cocktail inside the house. The molotov cocktail damaged furniture and the television, but didn’t injure any Palestinian living in the house as they were all sleeping in another room.