Gideon Levy for Haaretz
Human hunting. There’s no other way to describe what Israel Defense Forces soldiers were doing last Thursday at the separation barrier in the southern West Bank. Spotting a young man climbing over the wall on a rope ladder, with others awaiting their turn, snipers opened machine gun fire at them from an ambush, hitting two of them in the back, one after the other.
They fell to the ground on top of each other, bloodied.
The soldiers could have easily arrested the men, called out, fired warning shots in the air or ignored them and allowed them to return home.
But this time the preference was apparently to shoot with the intent to kill, to gun down young men whose only sin was to sneak into Israel to find a way to provide some food for their family, to pick an edible sort of thistle called akkoub in the rocky soil and return home safely.
The two men who were shot were brothers who had permits to work in Israel, as does their father; everyone in the family speaks excellent Hebrew. But since October 7, Palestinians have been barred from entering Israel to work.
All together, three brothers and a friend set out for the akkoub fields, some of which in fact belong to their family – the security barrier has in essence annexed part of their village’s lands to Israel – but became killing fields.
And with a vengeance: two brothers killed, a third wounded slightly when the bullet missed him and he was miraculously saved, and a fourth taken into custody. His grieving family still does not know his whereabouts, and he probably doesn’t even know that two of his brothers were killed. Israel isn’t even considering releasing this fourth brother, who attempted to climb over the wall with other family members after the incident to see what happened. Not so much as an iota of humanity or compassion has been shown by the authorities toward this doubly bereaved family. No compassion or humanity for Palestinians are to be shown here – and that’s an order.
Dura is a small city southwest of Hebron. Most of the access roads leading to it, as in virtually all the cities and villages of the West Bank, have been blocked by the army since the war in Gaza erupted. The main route into Dura these days is via the congested streets of Hebron. For our part, while making our way there, we saw a phenomenon we had never witnessed before: resistance at its finest.
The road leading to Dura from the south had been blocked by the army with the usual ramparts of earth and boulders. A local initiative brought about the removal of the ramparts, and a few young people, wearing quasi-military garb and equipped with walkie-talkies, were directing traffic for a fee of 10 shekels (about $2.80) per car, for a round trip. Driving on this improvised toll road is difficult and demanding, it’s a rocky route, but hey, we saved an hour by circumventing Hebron.
We were told about this rather amusing new toll road by our escort, Basel Adra, a field researcher for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem and a co-director of the film ‘No Other Land,’ which won the Berlinale Documentary Film Award at the international film festival in the German capital last month. Adra had returned directly from the red carpet in Berlin to his home in one of the hamlets in Masafer Yatta, an enclave in the South Hebron Hills – which is the subject of his award-winning film. It’s evident that he feels more comfortable here than in the glitter and spotlights.
You have to head west across Dura to get to the small village of Deir al-Asal, whose homes are a few hundred meters from the separation barrier and whose residents usually make a living from work in Israel. Four days after their calamity, members of the Shawamra family are still sitting in front of the residence of their extended family, a five-story stone structure. The bereaved father, Suleiman Shawamra, and the wounded survivor son are dressed in splendid camel-skin desert robes. The family has 150 dunams (37.5 acres) of olive trees on the other side of the wall, which they are given access to once a year for the harvest. This year there is a war in the Gaza Strip, so there was no olive harvest in the Hebron Hills. You try and figure out why.
There are eight remaining siblings in the family. Suleiman, 62, has worked in Israel all his life, mainly in restaurants in Netivot and Jerusalem. He relates that as a youth, he basically grew up in Moshav Ahuzam, near Kiryat Gat, where he worked in the fields and became friendly with his employers, the Suissa family. ‘We slept in the same place together,’ he says longingly.
Last week he decided to send three of his sons to the hills across the cement security barrier and the fence next to it, to gather akkoub, a particularly in-demand ingredient in the Palestinian kitchen, in order to sell it and earn a bit of money.
For five months the family has had no source of income. ‘I sent them,’ he says, perhaps accusing himself. ‘I told them: ‘Go and make some money.’ They didn’t want to go. They have wives and children at home and they were afraid. I told them: ‘There’s no danger. There are no Jews there. You are not going to the city, you are going out to fields. There are only Bedouin there.’ My sons also worked in restaurants in Israel since they were 18. Until recently they lived on Hayarkon Street in Tel Aviv and worked at a branch of Tiv Ta’am [a supermarket chain]. We felt no racism and no hatred between us, we grew up together with the Jews.’
Early last week they set out: Nur a-Din, 30, the father of a baby boy not yet a year old; Nazem a-Din, 29, the father of a 5-month-old daughter; and Salah a-Din, 24, who married half a year ago. Nur a-Din is sitting with us now – he was spared when the bullet missed his head. Nazem and Salah were killed. Their unmarried 27-year-old brother Muhi a-Din, 27, was the one who climbed over the wall after the incident and was arrested.
Last Thursday afternoon the three brothers made their way back from the hills. Their akkoub harvest was meager; each of them held a bag containing two or three kilos of not completely ripe plants. The men got to the Israeli side of the barrier at around 4 o’clock. A Palestinian observer standing nearby signaled to them that there were no soldiers and that they could climb over safely.
Nazem a-Din was first up the rope ladder. As he started to climb, three bullets were suddenly fired at him, out of nowhere. He tumbled off the ladder and fell onto his friend and fellow villager, Mohammed Imru, 21, who was standing below waiting for his turn. Instead Mohammed found himself on the ground with Nazem a-Din on top, covered in his blood. Mohammed, who is here with us now, relates that he went into a state of shock; his jittery demeanor and speech show that he’s still affected by what he witnessed.
Salah a-Din rushed to the aid of his dying brother. Six bullets slammed into him. He fell on the fence of the patrol road abutting the wall, his arm severed from the force of his fall.
As Nur a-Din bent over to try to help his brothers, a bullet whistled by and grazed his head. He was lightly wounded, but his head is still bandaged. His mental state appears to be dire. During our visit he held his head in his hands and stared at the floor, his body trembling. He says he remembers fainting at the sight of his two fatally wounded brothers.
A military vehicle pulled up and took the two of them, dead or dying at that point, to the nearest checkpoint, Negohot, where a Palestinian ambulance rushed them to the hospital in Dura. The family is certain that if they had been taken to Soroka Medical Center, in Be’er Sheva, the life of Salah a-Din, who died four hours later from loss of blood, would have been saved.
In the meantime, Mohammed, the shocked friend, was handcuffed and blindfolded by the soldiers. He recalls that two soldiers, one a woman, approached and asked, ‘How is it that you’re still alive?’ Mohammed lay there, in shackles, for around three hours, he says, and was then taken to an army base, where soldiers occasionally jolted him with an electric Taser. At 3 A.M. he was released at Negohot. One of his brothers came to pick him up.
The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit this week stated, in response to a query from Haaretz: ‘A few months ago, following the outbreak of the Swords of Iron War, and in the wake of the security situation, the rules of engagement were updated in the area of the security barrier and the Judea and Samaria boundary line, with the aim of preventing terrorist activity and infiltration, and in order to thwart the unauthorized crossing of the barrier, other than via the official points of passage. It should be emphasized that approaching the security barrier and the boundary line is forbidden and endangers one’s life.
‘In the case mentioned, a number of illegally present [Palestinians] tried to cross over the security barrier near the village of Beit Awwa in [the territory of the] Judea Brigade. IDF troops who were on active duty in the area tried to prevent them from crossing by acting in various ways. When the suspects failed to heed the actions, the forces fired at then, and hits were observed. The circumstances of the case are being clarified.’
‘The [other] suspect was taken into custody, and we do not know of allegations about how he was treated. If complaints are received in this regard, they will be examined according to the regular procedure.’
‘We grew up in Israel,’ Suleiman says now. ‘If our friends there hear what happened to my sons, they will cry. I am ashamed to phone them. Even if there is a war going on, there needs to be a law of human beings. How can you even kill a cat that way? I’m asking you: Put the soldiers on trial. You’re a democratic country. My children didn’t do anything. Three kilos of akkoub in their hands. Help us. We don’t know who to turn to. I worked at Ilan’s Corner restaurant in Netivot – everyone knows me.’
Muhi a-Din, the fourth brother, tried to tell the soldiers who arrested him that he had a permit to work in Israel – but to no avail, as all such authorizations have been suspended.
The family hasn’t heard a thing from him since. ‘Look at our faces,’ the father says, sadly. ‘Do you see hatred?’