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Body-Mind-Spirit -
Israel pumps raw sewage on to ancient Palestinian
orchards:
When the Occupation Gets
Really Filthy
In the orange glow of another sunset, Awad
Abu Swai, 36, stands underneath a towering fig tree, a sample of its
fruit in his hand. He peels back the bright green skin to expose crimson
jelly and seeds inside.
Inter Press Service News Agency August 21, 2007
By Nora Barrows-Friedman
"The Israeli military came inside the valley and
cut about 50 apricot and walnut trees since May. And now, they are
coming to cut more trees. This is all because of what they are building
through this land -- my land. Here, they are building a sewage channel
to run raw sewage through this valley collected from four Israeli
settlements near here." Abu Swai is one of approximately 4,000 residents
of the Palestinian village of Artas, located southeast of Bethlehem
city. Artas is known regionally for its succulent vegetables, and fruit
and nut trees. But over the last few months Israeli occupation forces
have brought dozens of bulldozers to the eastern valley fields of Artas
to construct a wall that will cut villagers off from this fertile land,
while a concrete tunnel for raw settlement sewage grows longer each day.
Efrat settlement colony, part of the Gush Etzion
settlement bloc that stretches around several villages and towns near
Bethlehem, sits perched on a hill over Artas. Below the settlement, a
colony which houses approximately 9,000 Israelis and immigrants, Israeli
bulldozers and earth movers work day and night constructing the sewage
channel and building the wall.
Artas villagers have kept up an active and defiant
campaign over the last year after unofficial information was leaked to
the community that the village was in danger. Villagers watched in shock
as bulldozers kept moving down the hillsides from Efrat toward the
orchards on the valley floor.
Since May, Abu Swai has led actions as head of the
popular committee in Artas, inviting international and Israeli peace
activists to join villagers in their fight against the occupation
administration's designs on this land.
Non-violent protesters have been shot at, beaten
and arrested by Israeli occupation soldiers and private settlement
security guards. Abu Swai tells IPS that he was imprisoned for five days
after being badly beaten by an Israeli soldier during a non-violent
demonstration as he tried to protect his land.
Elsewhere across the West Bank, Palestinian
villagers are facing land confiscation as illegal settlement colonies
expand and tumble down hillsides. Some are watching as crops and
orchards become poisoned and contaminated from raw sewage being actively
pumped into their land from the sewage treatment facilities inside
Israeli settlements.
South of Artas village, sewage from the Gush
Etzion settlement bloc is slowly decimating the farming village of Beit
Ommar, a small community reliant on its agricultural exports. Next to a
vineyard owned by several families in Beit Ommar sits Gush Etzion's
sewage treatment facility, surrounded by a fence with barbed wire. Two
pipes jut out from the edge of the brackish open water pool, aimed
directly at the vineyard.
"Here, you will see that the land is black. This
is where the sewage is pumped when the sewage pool from the settlement
gets too full," Musa abu Mariya, 29, a farmer and Beit Ommar community
leader tells IPS. He points to an area in front of the facility that was
once full of Beit Ommar's apricot and plum trees.
"The bulldozers came about two years ago and
started to pile dirt into a circle so that the overflow from the pool
would go there." Abu Mariya says that every few months, especially in
the rainy season, Gush Etzion starts to pump overflow sewage over the
fence and into this built-up area -- an open and unprotected pit. "The
water just shoots right out. It is destroying all of these crops on
Palestinian land."
Abu Mariya tells IPS that a whole area in this
vineyard is now completely contaminated because of another open pipe
leaking sewage. On the other side of the sewage facility, a small orange
pipe connected to the facility cuts through the barbed wire fence and
opens directly in front of the vineyard. Dirty, foul-smelling water
drips from the end of the pipe.
"Look at these grapes," Abu Mariya says. "They are
not good here. Before the sewage plant started pumping water here, these
grapes used to be beautiful and delicious." On one grapevine, the leaves
are yellowed and curling, and the grapes themselves are grey and
withered. "They are obviously sick grapes," Abu Mariya remarks. "They
are all poisoned and dirty. This is from the water that they pump onto
this land from the sewage."
Jeff Halper, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, former
professor of anthropology at Ben Gurion University and co-founder of the
Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, tells IPS that this
otherwise banal issue of sewage infrastructure is consistent with
broadening Israeli policies of Palestinian dispossession.
"Infrastructure sounds innocuous, but the partisan
planning behind it simply pushes Palestinians out of historic farmlands
that are ether expropriated for settlements or Israeli-only highways, or
which are flooded by sewage by settlements with no sustainable
infrastructure of their own.
"Planning by the Israeli authorities is done with
impunity regarding the Palestinians," adds Halper. "It is merely one
more means, more subtle than actual transfer, to alienate them from the
lands and, in the end, render the greater Land of Israel cleansed of all
but remnants of non-Jewish populations. It constitutes a crime of
genocide, a crime taking place in the light of day and over six decades,
that must be urgently addressed by the international community."
Meanwhile, Abu Swai says he remains anxious as the
sewage channel expands each day and the village prepares another round
of direct actions against the confiscation and destruction of Artas. "We
are going to the (Israeli) Supreme Court in two days to await a
decision...they should determine that all of this destruction is
illegal. We have certificates of ownership for this land from 1936. We
hope we get justice." (END/2007)
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