I hope you like my photos of farm life - cute, huh? Manual work, on a tiny plot, like in the olden days!
In fact, this tract of stony ground used to be part of a much bigger property. Since the 1980’s vast swathes of land have been appropriated by Zionist “settlers”. Illegal housing estates were created. Hilltop pastures were designated state property by the Israeli government and turned over to the colonists.
Now, herds are small and tools are manual, because any possession can be destroyed at any moment by intruders from the illegal settlement. It’s located just a couple of hundred meters from where the family I’m staying with work the land. Trees are cut down and animals slaughtered, people are beaten up and their bones broken.
They day these photos were taken, I was supposed to be weeding a rather large patch of ground. Although I was quite happy to get a bit of exercise, I had noticed a tractor on the farm, so I asked the obvious and innocent question , « will you not be using the tractor to plough this over? »
With pain and frustration came the answer, « We can’t do that. They’ll confiscate the tractor as soon as we start »
If you look up at-Tawani online, you’ll read that “inhabitants live in caves”. Well, they used to. At roughly same time as rural people in France lived without sanitation and shared their accomodation with their cattle.
Nowadays, people live in houses. Or at least they try to. In the surrounding countryside, the caves are being rehabilitated now, due to the repeated demolition of their homes by the Israeli army. The ancient caves are harder for a bulldozer to knock down.
Working this land in the face of ethnic cleansing and the #ongoingNakba is an act of resistance. They call it somoud - steadfastness.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<--- previous article next article --->