At the end of May, I had volunteered for solidarity activism with Palestinians facing expulsion and harassment and ethnic cleansing. There were a few hotspots at that time, including Occupied
East Jerusalem/al-Quds, al-Khalil/Hebron and the Jordan Valley.
I plumped for the South Hebron Hills because I felt I might feel some affinity with farming people. The Jordan Valley was out: I had just spent a couple of weeks in Ariha/Jericho and the
temperatures had been well over thirty degrees and, despite whatever I may try to pretend, I’m a peely-wally Scot and I don’t function well at those temperatures.
The people in al-Quds were wanting activists who were experienced with politics and with the media, that’s not really me. But pragmatism and a few words of Arabic seemed to be the right fit for a
stay in a rural community.
The plan was to head for at-Tuwani, a larger village, just outside the active firing zone, and then perhaps go from there to Khallet-ad-Dab’a - within the firing zone and regularly a target of
army demolitions and settler attacks.
Before leaving, I didn’t have a very clear picture of the South Hebron Hills / Masafer Yatta. Vaguely, I visualised ramshackle, corrugated-iron buildings. People had told me about it being
uncomfortably cold in winter and quite rough. Thinking back, this image corresponds more closely to Beduin living structures, than to sedentary farmers like the population of Masafer Yatta. I was
probably unconsciously influenced by the narrative which depicts the area as uninhabited and the shepherds as nomads.
Picking the destination was one thing, getting there a somewhat bigger undertaking.
My companion and myself were to travel by public transport from Ramallah. This meant getting a service taxi (known as a “servees”) and going via al-Quds, Bethlehem, al-Khalil and Yatta. If we
were lucky we’d get directly to al-Khalil, perhaps even Yatta. If necessary, we would head for Azariya, on the outskirts of al-Quds, and try to find a servees for the onward journey. For the
Yatta - Tuwani leg we had some phone numbers of drivers who took fares…Some serious walking might be involved.
We expected this journey to take around three or four hours. The distance is around 60km, as the crow flies. Yeah, not a typo: sixty.
The town of Yatta has a population of around a hundred thousand, I’m told. It’s not exactly a remote village….
As I said before, decent infrastructure is not something that is available for Palestinians. The segregated road system in the occupied Palestinian territories slows down travel in two main ways. Firstly, in a dramatic manner, because of the checkpoints and occasional closures; secondly, less visibly, due to the fact that the roads are constructed to enable travel between points under Israeli control – between settlements to Israeli towns.
After having picked up some survival rations -in my case, this involved fruit and tomatoes, instant coffee and some sweet rolls for breakfast - we headed for the cab station and started looking for a servees. By dint of exchanging courtesies with the various guys who were hanging around, drinking coffee and taking cigarette breaks, we got a lead: someone's uncle might be going to Yatta. We chatted, waited a bit, chatted some more. Just when we were thinking that we'd have to go to al-Khalil and try to find a servicees from there, a stroke of luck. The uncle had found a group of young workmen who were heading home to Yatta for the weekend. The servees was full and we could leave right away. Easy!
(Cultural note: shared cabs don't run to a timetable. They leave for their destination when all the seats are taken. That means that you need at least six other people who want to go where you're going. If you're in a hurry, the driver might suggest that you pay the fare of any missing passengers. For example, this means that you can travel fairly easily between Ariha and Ramallah, sharing your cab with studenty types heading to Bir Zeit Uni. On the other hand, getting to and from Bethlehem, primarily a tourist destination, is more complicated and can involve more than an hour's wait.)
So, off we went. In silence, mostly. Our fellow travellers didn’t speak English, unlike the people a foreigner usually comes into contact with in Ramallah, which is a cosmopolitan administrative centre. After maybe an hour or two, there was a halt; I think that we were on the outskirts of Bethlehem. There was a roadside café with a toilet and some food. We gathered that the guys were going to have some lunch. Nope, no menu. I looked carefully at the contents of the huge, single pot on the stove. Smooth, shiny, dark lumps of something floating in a thick sauce. No resemblance to the street food sold on the tourist drags of the cities.
My Scandinavian partner had overindulged the evening before, taking full advantage of the Western amenities on offer in the big city, before submitting herself to the rigours of alcohol-free Tuwani. I had eaten a good breakfast, so we both thought we’d pass on whatever was simmering in that saucepan. But we’d reckoned without Arab hospitality. The guys bought us fizzy drinks and thick sandwiches. I pride myself on eating anything going, and you can’t reject a kindness, so I chomped on my local speciality while trying to understand what it was. “Fishash”, they said. The cook made emphatic gestures at his rounded midriff. I asked if it was “kibde” (liver) and they said yes, and something else, maybe heart? Tasty, anyway, and definitely a change from the kebab you get on every street corner. My colleague was having problems with it, her misery apparent! Quarter of a kilo of pungent offal is not the snack of choice when you’ve a hangover.
We finished our lunches in the van, speeding and swaying through the hilly terrain. One of us was finding it hard to appreciate the scenery. As we arrived in Yatta, the guys started asking us where we were going. When they realised that we had no transport to Tuwani, phone calls were made. “I’ll take you”, said the oldest of the group. We baled out and paid the driver in a quiet, residential quarter of Yatta. 5 minutes later a teenager roared up in a beat-up car. Off we went again, no air-conditioning this time, and the air thick with cigarette smoke.
Soon after leaving the built-up area, our first stop was beside a van parked by the side of the road. A piece of cardboard listed prices and an improvised nozzle distributed petrol from jerrycans. Taxes and excise are not part of the culture in the Middle East, I am led to understand. The artisan nature of the transaction at the van meant that petrol fumes joined the fag smoke in our car. My partner was breathing heavily, eyes closed, by this point.
You reach Tuwani via a bumpy, dusty track of a road. The experience of the bumps and potholes is vivid, ‘cos in Palestine seatbelts are only for use at checkpoints. (Properly-equipped cars have gadgets which block that annoying, beeping noise the car makes when you don’t wear your seatbelt)
Our helper and his mate dropped us off right in front of the Tuwani guesthouse, refusing any form of payment or contribution to petrol costs. I’ve experienced this kind of generosity several times in Palestine and Jordan, and feel I have a lot of paying forward to do.
The day wound up with one member of our team struggling from her bunk to the bathroom and back, the other tucking in to a family dinner of ….fishash!
Post scriptum: When the time came to leave Masafer Yatta, I mentioned my travel plans to other occupants of the guesthouse. “Get the bus” they said. Less politically motivated than myself and my group - and less afraid of being recognised as Palestinian sympathisers! - they had been using the transport system put in place by the Israeli government for the settlers. Apparently, if you get the bus from Ma’on Junction just outside the illegal settlement, and head for Beer Sheva, you can go anywhere between the river and the sea in under two hours...
I preferred to avoid sitting in a bus with the guys who were threatening the village and returned via el-Khalil
P.S.S.: Eventually, I got a fleeting glimpse of the transport system in the Territories of '48 / Israel. I took a train from al-Quds to the airport. The shuttle flashed through tunnels and over bridges, its path as straight as the bore of a gun. The ease of that journey was the first in a series of culture shocks I experienced on leaving Masafer Yatta.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<--- previous article next article --->