At-Tuwani - Palestinian minors in the Israeli prisons

“Run at the Sumud Freedom Garden, there are soldiers!”, screamed to us a child. We find Hafez, his brother and his son Amoudi with some soldiers. The situation is calm, when other jeeps of army arrive. The commander starts to make some questions to Amoudi, in a bad and pushing way. A soldier comes in a threatening way near the children, he is looking for the provocation. We don’t have time to exchange words between volunteers when two soldiers grab Hafez for an arm and take him away. His daughters start to scream.
The situation gets worse in a second, we turn in a moment hearing someone screaming: the hands of two soldiers are on the neck of Amoudi as bolt cutters. Our throat is closed when we see the small Hussem running behind the jeep where there is his father inside, handcuffed and blindfolded. Angry, we stop a soldier who is running behind him and who took his arm. Sometimes it’s difficult remembering that there is a man under the uniform.

Khan Al Ahmar – E1 Plan

Hussem looks at the life surrounding him: who is speaking vivaciously, who is playing cards, who is dancing, who is drinking tea, who is speaking in front of a camera, answering to journalist and reporters. There is an endless stream of people day and night to not let uncovered the preside at the entrance of the village near the “Rubber Tyre School”, which became Khan al Ahmar symbol after its construction.
Now is nearly evening, and the day passed calmly: no bulldozers, no police, no army, no arrests. Maybe the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) decided to grant a day of truce to let Khan al Ahmar licks its wounds after yesterday, or maybe they have other things to do.
Hussem gets up from the chair full of sore. He moves under the artificial light of a lamp and pull on the shirt. The bruise on the right hip is becoming bigger, purple and more painful, so that it’s becoming difficult to raise up the arm.

Umm Al Khair – Dangerous neighbors

There is a thud in the middle of the night.
Then another.
Another one.
Some children start to cry. Suddenly we wake up. One by one, adults run outside the house, looking each other still sleepy.
In the meanwhile, shots become stronger, rocks thrown become bigger and reach the first houses and sheepfolds. The village is asleep, scared and tired from nights without sleeping caused by the continuous attacks. At 2 o’clock it starts raining rocks coming from the near settlement. Since weeks.
People are running to the international volunteers’ tent, near the fence which divides the village from the settlement. They run around looking for an answer with tired faces. Someone screams to call the police. A rock nearly strikes an old man. We start to look for the settler, but we enter another time the tent when another rock has been thrown near us. The thuds stop for a while.

Sarura - Sumud Freedom Camp

Hammoudi comes out from the cave and looks at the panorama around him: the sunset paints the hills in purplish color, the wind blows gently spreading the scent of narghile. It seems a magical moment if it were not for the Israeli outpost that arrogantly breaks the harmony of the landscape. The outpost is right in front of Sarura, as if it wanted to make impossible for the Palestinian communities of the area to forget to live under occupation.
Hammoudi’s gaze moves to the cave next door and to what is left of the bathroom built just a bit further, after the Israeli bulldozers demolished it. That’s the third time they’ve put it back together. In the next days they will rebuild it, and probably in a few days, weeks or months, the bulldozers will come back. From the cave next door he hears his uncle’s voice telling the stories about the old village of Sarura, when it was still inhabited by families of shepherds, the same stories that in turn his father told him. The cave was uninhabited for years, the work to settle it up has been long.