Ein Hajla – Stories of resistance

Mahmoud sits on the deck chair. Hafez prepares baba ganush and dinner with the few kitchenware they brought with them. As evening approaches, a little breeze rises. Mahmoud looks at the fire, deep in thought. That uninhabited place is the treasure chest of a history of resistance.
“The smoke bombs, the violence, the lined-up soldiers, the screams, the evictions. Do you remember Hafez?
But what days have been! You could feel it in the air that people were tired, ready for something big. What a crowd, and what dreams we had. Entire families had settled here, from all over the West Bank. All here. To claim the end of the occupation.
Do you remember how we took the soldiers by surprise? We set up tents not far from a military base. And we lived there for almost a week, hundreds of people. They succeeded to chase us, but we resisted with all our strength.
What does remain of those days? Where is the spirit that led us to fight here, united? "

Burin – Settlers’ violence

We are outside the area just declared closed military zone, looking at the soldiers on the other side of the road, to control that Abu Salem can continue to pick olives from his olive grove.

Suddenly a loud noise comes from behind us. I turn around. I don’t have time to realize that the sound I’ve just heard is a shot, that I start to run following the others. We rush inside the car which starts to speed in the streets of the village of Burin. When it starts to slow down, we jump outside the car which is still with the engine turn on.

Bruqin - Coordination and settlers' violence

It’s the first day of the olive harvest. Farah has waited for this day all year. Throughout the year she tried to remember her olive trees, the smell of the land, the sun that filters through the branches of its ancient and powerful trees at dawn. For a whole year, she hoped that her field would not be vandalized by the settlers of Bruchin, the settlement just outside her land.
They are all at work: her brother, her four children, and her husband. Sometimes Farah looks at the soldiers not so far from them. They are four, with their khaki uniforms and their M-16 held tightly. They are near the jeep, showing no interest in anything that surrounds them. Farah is not quiet. The soldiers are there to protect them from the settlers, in case of need. She knows it. But she is still not quiet. The soldiers are not on their side, they’ve never been.
While she is loading a sack on the truck, she hears voices coming from the settlement, right behind her. Shortly after, four settlers appear. They are young. They get close to the jeep, where the soldiers greet them with big smiles, shaking hands, and hugs. They start to talk altogether and then a soldier nods at Farah and her family, who in the meantime are still working, pretending nothing is happening.

Two days left, when I will say goodbye to you once again.
I met you for the first time a year ago, and one of those love stories that you see in the movies was born: your fields, your green hills and the smiles of the people who welcomed me here, where I thought that I would have had a three-month experience, but that has become Home.
You were strange, my Palestine, especially in the eyes of those who had never seen you, and never understood your inconsistencies, if not those read in the books.
I saw the wall they had built around you, with strips of sand on its sides to check that no one was approaching it, and barbed wire on its top, and I wondered why the man had decided to separate himself from his fellow men, with that barrier.