Qawawis and the mustawtaneen
If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest — in all its ardor and paradoxes — than our travels.
— Alain de Botton , The Art of Travel
I don’t know if Alain de Botton has messed with too many Israeli settlers who think god has told them to come out to the West Bank to wrestle “Judea and Samaria” from the Palestinians, but the quote does lead me to think about why people join human rights groups or activist oganizations such as the The International Solidarity Movement to run off to places where they know it’s not going to be around-the-clock fun in the sun.
ISM, along with a few other oganizations keeps international human rights monitors stationed in the small shepherding village of Qawawis. It’s the only way the villagers have found that they’ve been able to keep the settlers at bay. For a few days last week, I took my turn in the village. I don’t know if it was so much a search for anything at that specific place — a month ago wouldn’t have known it existed — but there’s much to be found there that seems worth keeping around.
Blue Vs. Yellow: Just before scoring with a brilliant curlingshot after a defensive error during a friendly in Qawawis.
About 40 people — from four families — live in small caves carved into the rocky terrain or in stone and earth huts built low to the ground in Qawawis. There’s no running water and electricity just hit the village this summer in the form of a generator, which is turned on for two hours at night to light the village around supper time. There’s one outhouse that’s reserved for the ladies, and some distance away, there’s a small clearing surrounded by some trees and a cliff wall that the guys use. The village’s entire water supply comes from two deep wells which reach into the valley’s aquifer.
Qawawis is referred to by many as one of the ‘cave dwelling” villages that are all over the southern Hebron hills. About half the houses are caves or have cave sections to them. Walking out of one of them into the desert heat — after the initial urge to walk across a sand dune to haggle with some Jawas over an R2 unit — I immediately understood why these people have kept to this kind of living environment. Air conditioners are not so common in most homes around Palestine, especially those without electricity. The square, plaster-walled homes in many towns just don’t keep you cool the way these caverns do in the heat of the afternoon. It’s entirely possible to sit in them and actually get a shiver on occasion as the temperature up above approaches 100 fahrenheit.
The village. Less than half the village quarters are visible from this vantage point.Many are dug into the ground or are low structures that blend in with the terrain.
On the way to Qawawis, my traveling companion, an Italian ISM volunteer named Tiziano, asked for the time. Glancing down at the pale tanline around my wrist where my watch should have been, I was at first a little worried about losing track of time in a place with no clocks, calendars or computers. There was no need for the worry. There’s a natural rhythm to life in Qawawis that makes clocks redundant. From the cool environs of underground dwellings, or one-room homes built of mud and stone, people emerge with the dawn to herd livestock. In the heat of the afternoon, work for the young adults turns to the maintenance of structures, keeping animals stocked with water from wells or harvesting olives from small groves.
The caves are the place to be as the sun hits its peak in the afternoon.Most the cave floors have been cemented over in the last year, which
has helped limit the number or rattlesnake nests and also keeps scorpion
intrusions down to a minimum.
At some point in the afternoon, the usual gang of children congregate around the visiting foreigners to practice their English and see how the they’d manage to mangle the limited amount of Arabic they brought with them.
Then there’s the late afternoon soccer match with teen-aged boys, where visiting players such as Tiziano and myself instantly see the home team advantage as we try to guess at the ball’s trajectory as it bounces from one rock to the next.
Tiziano (right) and a member of the winning team.In the cooling evening, sheep and goats are taken back out to pasture, and as the sun finally dips below the horizon, the generator is fired up for two hours to keep light bulbs running for dinnertime. When the hum of the generator goes silent for the night, so does Qawawis.
Surrounding Qawawis are three of the roughly 148 settlements that sit on Palestinian land in the West Bank. The largest of the three colonies, Susya, popped up in 1982. It doubles at a military post. This one actually looks somewhat townish, with shops and an industrial plant and permanent looking homes. The other two, in small barbed wire cages at the tops of hills, look like little trailer parks you’d see along the forgotten backroads in Nevada, boasting a few anonymous, white double-wide mobile homes. One popped up eight years ago. The other showed up four years ago.
The neighbors show up with a humvee full of soldiers. Settlers in thearea maintain that the land Palestinians are living on is theirs by
ancient religious decree. While some settlers around Jerusalem
don’t necessarily always their religion on their sleeves, those in the
southern Hebron hills tend to be your more fundamentalist sort.
Settlers, with the help of soldiers, have been trying to get the villagers to leave for several years, and not so long ago, nearly succeeded. They have demolished homes, cemented over cave entrances, destroyed wells, poisoned animal feed and soldiers briefly tried to declare the area a “closed military zone,” arresting for several months any Palestinians found in the area.
the Israeli Supreme Court ruled just this March that the military has to respect the villagers’ rights to live on their ancestral land. More or less, that’s happened, though usually less.
Tariq, one of the shepherds of Qawawis, tries not to move or makeeye contact as a group from one of the nearby settlements approaches
with a humvee full of soldiers to scatter sheep and intimidate villagers.
Apparently god tells them to do this. You’d think there’d be medication for that.
Shortly after the court case, villagers began coming back to Qawawis to rebuild their home. That’s when they put a call out to ISM in request for permanent human rights observers. One volunteer reported at the time:
Yesterday morning armed and masked settlers began chasing and stoning Palestinian shepherds and their flocks. When the internationals tried to intervene, they themselves were assaulted.Israeli soldiers looked on as Ryan was grabbed by one of the settlers. Camyla tried to put her body between Ryan and the assaulting settler. He threw her to the ground, pinned her down and punched her repeatedly in the neck, face and chest. Robert was pushed and headbutted by another settler. The settlers attempted to break the cameras of all four internationals.
The mustawtaneen are in Qawawis, so we’re in Qawawis. As a human rights observer, my role in Qawawis was simple: When a villager said “mustawtaneen” (settler), I grabbed my camera and cell phone and went out to see what was up, hopefully diffusing a situation simply by being present, or to make calls and take pictures if things escalate.
PHOTO BY KASPER: A settler from one of the neighboring Israeli coloniescelebrates Purim with a stop by Qawawis complete with scary mask and uzi.
I’ve since adopted the word “mustawtaneen,” (Arabic: ????????) instead of “setter” or “Israeli,” when talking specifically about the ideologically driven folk who are squatting on land held under occupation since 1967 with the purpose of keeping it forever. There are all sorts of arguments about where Israeli territory starts and stops. You can discuss the borders set after the war of ’48 if you want, but there’s something very different about these specific people. Hanging out in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, you don’t meet many of these kinds of people.
Besides, there’s a sort of “Little House on the Prairie” connotation that comes with the word “settler” that makes it, to western ears, seem a little too innocuous.
PHOTO BY FLO: An elderly Qawawis villager is kept on the ground by agroup of settlers and soldiers during the daily harassment that takes place here.
Villagers have been regularly labeled a threat by Israeli soldiers.
Note who has the guns and decide for yourself.
It’s unfortunate that Israeli law keeps so many Palestinians pinned in and makes it illegal for Israelis to actually visit much the occupied territory outside of military duty. Not only would coming here allow Israelis to better understand who Palestinians are, it would let the Palestinians see that there are a vast majority of Israelis who are not extremist gun-toting freaks. More Israelis should just break the law and come out here. I’d suggest the same thing for Palestinians, except they can get killed or imprisoned for years for such attempts, while Israelis tend to simply be detained for a few hours and then get a free ride back to Jerusalem.
But more Israelis should see the mustawtaneen in action. It’s my guess that if more saw what these people do on a daily basis in the name of Israel, more of them would want to write them off and have them go by some other name, such as mustawtaneen.
PHOTO BY LEE: Mustawtaneen walk through Qawawis daily to showpeople whose boss in the region. Any Palestinian approaching a settlement
for a quick looksee would be arrested or likely shot at.
Mustawtaneen come through Qawawis daily, honking car horns to scatter sheep and goats, or wandering into village homes unannounced. Often they will confront shepherds out on grazing land — sometimes accompanied by soldiers, other times with their own weapons — waving maps that they argue prove the land on which the sheep are feeding is actually Israeli territory. Violence has been a frequent feature of settler visits; A log book kept in the village by human rights monitors chronicles injuries inflicted on villagers that have included beatings, or being struck with stones and sticks and worse.
In the evening, as the sheep feed, shepherds round up brush for fires.More Americans should see the mustawtaneen in action as well. The United States now is considering a request from Israel for $2.2 billion to relocate the Gaza mustawtaneen. Relocating them where? Well, while about 2,000 homes in the Gaza settlements we vacated, about 6,400 were under construction in the West Bank in settlements just as illegal as those in Gaza. With the +$3 billion that the U.S. economy already pumps annually into the occupation army, settlements and construction of the mammoth barrier annexing land all around the West Bank, more Americans should see where their cash is going.
It’s difficult to describe the tension that comes from this situation. Settler visits to Qawawis take many forms, but each one is meant to relay the same propaganda: “We’re in charge, and you’re on your way out.” On my second day in the village, Tiziano went with one shepherd and I followed three others across the highway. We stood watching the herd graze for about half an hour when I noticed all the boys get tense.
Same as it ever was.I’d been talking to Tariq, who’s father owns the herd. At age 20, Tariq is working toward a degree in mathematics at Herbron University and is saving up to start graduate studies in the U.S. later on. With ambitions set so far off from this isolated patch of land, it was jarring to see him brought immediately into the present by the sudden appearance of four kids from the nearby settlement walking along the highway.
With one on a bicycle and three strolling beside him, they reminded me of any group of kids you’d see in any U.S. neighborhood, out on a hot summer afternoon. But most kids, even if they feel like being bullies, don’t have army Humvees to back them up.
I casually noted the group in the distance, but didn’t pay them much attention. However, as they passed the turnoff to one settlement and then the next, the Palestinian boys grew increasingly nervous. I looked down the hill to the road again and the group of kids were standing there, looking back. They were all in their early to mid teens, about the same ages as the two Palestinian kids with Tariq and me. I looked back at him and shrugged. We had been there for a while, letting the animals feed. I gestured to ask if we should move. He shook his head quickly and continued wring his hands and stand still, just saying “it’s a problem. It’s a big problem.”
Shepherding has its down time.After a short time, a humvee full of soldiers drove up and pulled over next to the four boys along the road. A few minutes later, up the hill they came, with the mustawtan-teens in the lead. They circled up above from where we were standing. Tariq and the two boys stood still and kept their eyes down. One of the four soldiers in the vehicle got out, leaned against the hood and checked his watch. His first words to us were “no photos.”
One of our young visitors circled around us on his mountain bike as another one blared crap techno pop on his ghetto blaster. The eldest kid kept a constant stream of threats and insults hurled at me and my hosts, informing us we were all stupid and terrorists who needed to be killed. I pointed to the kid beside me who was about 10. “This one?” “All of them,” he replied. “he will grow up to attack us. You should all be in prison.” “I don’t know that he thinks it’s going to turn out that way,” I had said. “Maybe he’s too stupid to know,” the kid replied. Then he screamed at me for taking photos, which, of course, I was.
Highlights of the next five or so minutes:
Me: “Are you in charge here or is the kid in charge?” Kid jumps around. Soldier checks watch. Says: “one more minute.” Kid says: “You should just shut up now.” I reply: “Yes, you’re very brave,” and make a phone call to Miriam, a woman who works with another organization that sends observers to Qawawis. I describe the scene to her and hang up. It’s silent until the border police arrive (was no just “one more minute”). The soldiers in the humvee look bored. The kids even look bored. I wonder what they were hoping for. The three shepherds I’m there with stay still. The youngest whispers “photo” at me, so I take a couple more. The sun’s at their back, though, so I just think how crappy they’ll turn out. Still, it seemed like a bad idea to get out from between blustery mustoutanteen and the freaked out villagers to get better light.
It could have been worse. In April, ISM volunteer Kasper Lundberg reported:
Suddenly everything seems chaotic. Five minutes ago a white pick-up came to a halt, and two young men exited. I and another international calmly approached them, remembering our training in de-escalation of possibly violent situations. One of the males was dressed in orthodox manner, complete with light colored loose clothing, head covered with a kippah and curly black locks of hair at the temples. The other was sporting a yellow Purim mask, depicting a skull, and an Uzi. (Purim is a Jewish religious holiday celebrated in a similar fashion to Halloween, with costumes and parties.)
It’s a strange mixture of rules set to keep Palestinians in permanent checkmate. In the occupied territories, border police can arrest Israelis, foreigners and Palestinians. As for whatever Palestinian police there happens to be around, they can also arrest Palestinians, but can’t do much to Israelis unless they want to take on an army. Israeli soldiers can detain foriengers and arrest Palestinians, but are limited in what they can do to Israelis. Their job is basically to protect them no matter what. So when this group of kids decides to come up the hill to bother some Palestinian kids who are trying to work, the soldiers are obliged to tag along, even though their presence is what spurs the courage to do it in the first place.
Tea. And lots of it.When the border police arrived, they quickly sent the mustawtaneen kids back to their trailer park and then turned to me, pulling out a photocopy of a map of the area with a big square drawn in the middle of it, trying to indicate we were actually in Israel, which is strange when the internationally recognized borders, sometimes referred to as “The Green Line” are somewhere miles from here on the other side of Hebron. But what to say when they’re standing there with a map and a bunch of guns and I’m there already explaining why I didn’t have my passport (A wallet isn’t much use around Qawawis. It’s not exactly a place with a corner convenience store). As we left, the driver of the jeep blared his siren and honked his horn, driving behind us, scattering the sheep and goats across the landscape.
Kids play around for a while in the afternoon before hitting the chores.Back in the comparative comfort of Ramallah, with the comforts of running water and the lack of scorpions, I can’t help but worry about Qawawis and the numerous villages like it dotting the West Bank. Groups such as ISM ultimately do not have the sustained volunteer population to keep observers in these places. Sooner or later, these people will be left on their own.
I don’t think more foreigners should come over here for the sole purpose of seeing how Palestinians daily get beat up and humiliated by soldiers, border police and the mustawtaneen. If we’re going to be (through U.S funding and investment) complicit in attempted ethnic cleansing, we ought to be more aware of who it is that we’re trying to help cleanse from the land here. Who are they and why have our own policymakers thrown their collective weight behind the people who want to see them turned into landless refugees?
The earthmade homes of Qawawis reminded me of archival photos of dwellings that the Hopi called home at the southern end of the Black Mesa in northeast Arizona. Looking at the situation that the people of Qawawis face, it’s not the only similarity I noticed that Palestinians and American Indians seem to share. Will it be much longer before the United States subsidizes and Israeli military program that utilizes blankets carrying smallpox?
We now comfortably lament the treatment of Native American with the occasional Hollywood blockbuster. What if there was similar treatment of an indigenous people taking place right now and a good amount of it was subsidized by U.S. tax dollars? Could we care about it now, or do we need to wait until someone makes a movie out of it?
Everything here is tan: Water is collected daily from two wells, but withthe expansion of the three nearby settlements, there’s starting to be a
shortage in Qawawis. So far, the Red Cross has launched a study
into the issue, but villagers have not heard from the organization in some time.
I hope to see Tariq in the U.S. getting his phd some day. Ultimately, his goal is to teach in Palestine and continue living in Qawawis. Some of us, as Alain de Botton points out, travel to find our happy. Others, despite great odds, have it right where they are.
Visit Palestine.
For more on Qawawis, settlements, the occupation and the problems of zealotry, see:
- “Means of Expulsion: Violence, Harassment and Lawlessness against Palestinians in the Southern Hebron Hills,” July 2005 by the Israeli human-rights group B’Tselem
- Reports by the Christian Peacemaker Team on the poisoning of wells, the beating of schoolchildren and international monitors, and other forms of settler harassment in At-Twani.
- For the rest of my digital photos from Qawawis, here’s my flikr account set.
The first thing we see as we travel around the world is our own filth, thrown into the face of mankind.
