CTSD!

From The Inside Looking Out: Report-40

by Jerry Levin

Hebron. West Bank Palestine, December 4, 2004

It's been a while

since the term PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) attained a kind

of idiomatic universality. But now I think it's important to

recognize that--where traumatic stresses and the disorders resulting

from them are concerned--there is something that may be even worse

than PTSD; and that is CTSD: Current Traumatic Stress Disorder. The

kind that a person being scarred and rescarred by perpetual violence

can't leave behind. Can't leave behind because it never stops. The

kind where--tragically--a victim doesn't have an opportunity to

reach the point where relentless ongoing stress--deliberately

applied--can be left behind so that he, she, or they can enter into

a "post traumatic" phase, where presumably there is a better chance

for recovery and healing.

So this report is about CTSD, especially as it applies to the

beleaguered, careworn men, women, and children of At-Tuwani who, in

the face of unrelenting subtractive too often violent domination,

are struggling from one day to the next to hang on to their way of

life and the surviving dignity they amazingly still are able to

muster. At-Tuwani is a small and ancient Palestinian village

situated too close for comfort to Ma'on, one of the militant

violently acquisitive Israeli settlements in the Yatta hills

southeast of Hebron. Ma'on was suddenly established on a nearby hilltop by Israeli

squatters in 1982. Since then the people of At-Tuwani have been the

victims of continuous physical intimidation and the equally

unrelenting theft of their agricultural holdings: acreage made rich

by the patient labor of the local farmers, who have been diligently

carving their plots out of the rocky soil surrounding the village

for at least a thousand years. The more than a generation of

repression, suppression, and oppression against the people of the

village has been carried out by confidently smirking, swaggering,

and often snarling settlers who know that they can count on, if not

the connivance of the Israeli army stationed in the area, then at

least its eventual passive acquiescence.

I first wrote about the gradual reduction of At-Tuwani in the

second "From The Inside Looking Out" report that I filed from

Palestine. Here is an extract from that July 10, 2002 account.

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"Why do you look so angry?" one of our small group asked an Uzi

toting security guard. The grim settler had just led an Israeli Army

patrol up to our little group of CPT and Quaker fact finders, which

had been waiting expectantly and hopefully in a field outside the

Palestinian village of At Tuwani for someone in authority to answer

our call for help. We had gotten in touch with local police on a

cell phone a half hour before in order to get help for villagers

helpless to deal with mooning Israeli kids from the nearby

settlement of Ma'on. Before that the brats had been bathing brazenly

and nakedly in what had been a [Palestinian] well but which lately

had been confiscated and put under settler lock and key.

The Police told us it would send the Army. But when the troopers

arrived, escorted by that scowling Ma'on security guard, it was

clear that they were there on Ma'on's behalf, not At-Tuwani's.

Our complaint had no constructive effect on either the security

guard, which was no surprise, nor the commander of the soldiers,

which really was not a surprise either, although we had hoped he

might try to rein in the security guard a bit. Instead he clearly

was concerned with making as few waves as possible for the settlers--

not the villagers.

The security guard went so far as to tell us that we CPT and Quaker

visitors had no right to be where we were because the land we were

in was Area C--the notorious military security zone, which many

people do not know constitutes about 60% of the West Bank and where

the Israel military is a law unto itself. So from now on, the

security guard yelled, we had to get permission from authorities in

Ma'on to visit the area. The Army commander did not contradict.

That's when the security guard was asked, "Why do you look so angry?"

"I was born angry!!!" he literally snarled."

------------------------------------

Confiscation of At-Tuwani land began in 1982 about two years after

Ma'on was established not more than three quarters of a mile away

from the village. The area, where we stood during the encounter

described above, along with its acre or so of olive trees, has long

since been confiscated; and the ring of confiscated land around the

settlement continues to expand at the rate of from 20 to 25 acres a

year. That may not seem to be very much acreage, for instance, to an

American or Canadian; but for the village's five families (numbered

at about 150-200 children, women, and men) the amount of

cultivatable soil that is now out of their reach behind settlement

fences adds up to about 375 acres.

In Palestine that's a lot.

And, oh, by the way, earlier this year, settlers poisoned one of the

village's two drinking water wells by throwing dead chickens into it.

Confiscation, however, has been only one dingy facet of the

villagers' continuing--not just travail but--terrifying peril. Along

with the land thefts, settlers, starting twenty years ago, began a

relentless campaign of physical attacks on the villagers (including

children) ranging from beatings to deliberate close up shootings.

The "including children" is what brought CPT back to At-Tuwani, more

or less to stay a couple of months ago.

The background of CPT's return is this: about four years ago,

settlers began a stepped up campaign of not only menacing but

actually attacking youngsters from a near by village as they walked

to and from the area's primary school, located in At-Tuwani. The

shortest route for the kids (2 kilometers) is a rocky hilly road

that skirts the settlement. The hilliness is significant, because

settlers hiding in nearby trees would wait there undetected until

the kids got close enough that it was difficult for them to be able

to dash safely away.

This year there are only four pupils who must brave the settlers'

terrifying potential gauntlet each day. But when school began in

September, the situation became so bad for them that CPT and Italian

partners from a similar faith based nonviolent organization,

Operation Dove, were asked to establish a constant presence in the

village. Which the internationals did, and then promptly began to

accompany the four kids as they walked fearfully to school in the

morning and then back to their home village-just as fearfully--at

noon.

Ma'on's settlers, to say the least, were not pleased. Not long after

the accompaniments began, two CPTers were rushed to a hospital after

being attacked by settler youths dressed in black and whose faces

were hidden by black scarves. Dashing from their tree cover,

swinging bats and chains, the settlement thugs were not quick enough

to reach the fleeing children, but they did catch up to the

internationals who got between them and the attackers.

The young Black Shirts, who could very well have been some of the

same mooning brats I encountered from afar back in 2002, but who are

now older, bigger, stronger and more frighteningly brazen, had

plenty of time to flail and beat the CPTers to the ground. Police

and soldiers in answer to CPT's calls for help did not arrive on

scene for thirty minutes. That was more than enough time for the

settlement's proto-Ku Kluxers to break one CPTer's arm and bruise

her knee badly, while the other CPTer's lung was punctured by one of

his breaking ribs. (After stays in hospitals both returned to their

work in At-Tuwani and elsewhere in the West Bank.)

That dangerous episode, however, was not the end of serious

injuries. A few days later another CPTer and an Amnesty

International observer were battered by more bat, chain, and

slingshot wielding masked neo-Bundists. However, an Operation Dove

accompanier was injured so severely in that attack and he is still

recovering.

Happily, however, no child has been hurt since the accompaniments

began.

Partly as a result of complaints and inquiries filed with Israel

from around the world, Israeli military occupation authorities

agreed to provide a police or military escort for the children

during their frightening walk to and from school. But not along that

short route skirting the settlement. They must follow one, which is

several kilometers longer, and with the proviso that the army or the

police do the accompanying not CPT, Operation Dove, or other

internationals.

However, team members are still stationed in At-Tuwani, to--among

several tasks-- anxiously monitor each day (from a hilltop about 200

yards away) the slow daily progress on foot of those four kids and

their military escort (riding securely in a jeep) to and from school

each day. I say "anxiously monitor," because settler toughs still

often come down from their trees to line the route in order to try

to frighten the kids (or worse), while their Israeli armed escort,

usually slow to react, leads its charges diffidently onward.

CTSD!

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This is the fortieth in a series of micro-reports, commentaries,

and or analyses that I am sending routinely from the Occupied

Territories and other areas in the Middle East. If the information

or ideas seem helpful, please feel free to forward them to others.

It would be a privilege to add their names to this mailing list, if

so requested. I can be reached at: jlevin0320@yahoo.com. As always I

will be grateful for any feedback-- Jerry Levin .

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website at: www.cpt.org.