The Khallat Makhoul community was one of the first with whom I had contact, over 15 years ago. I saw them in their modest glory, when they numbered 11 families and even a playground with swings! However, repeated demolitions and harassments by occupation authorities and the colonists have reduced the community, and now it is inhabited only by 3 brothers and their families and 92-years-old Abu Khalaf Bani Aude who refuses to leave and rejects his children’s requests to join them at Tamoun. This is the life he knows and loves, here he was born and here he will live until his dying day.

In recent years, because of the need for Protective Presence elsewhere, I seldom visited them, and even when I came, these were short visits after an exhausting day accompanying the shepherd communities.

This time Nurit and I decided to dedicate the day to our friends at Makhoul, for it was important to visit Yusuf and his wife Najia, because their 18-years-old son is detained and they are so grieving and worried about him. As he did every day, he was driving a car loaded with cheeses for sale at Nablus. At Ein al Shibli (Beqa’ot) Checkpoint the soldiers searched his car and found a knife he and his family use for work on the farm.

He was detained, brought before a judge and released with a 5,000 shekels bail. However, just as the judge ruled, the attorney general’s office turned to another judge and demanded administrative detention. This judge approved and put him on 3.5 months of administrative detention, which the state can extend time and again without trial, no right of appeal, without the accused even knowing what he was being accused of. His mother’s brother was detained two and a half years ago for a half year’s administrative detention and he is still detained. No one, including he himself knows what he was accused of.

According to prisoners released from prison, conditions since Ben Gvir took office are terrible: famine, torture, sexual assaults, infectious disease and prevention of washing, etc. Hussein’s parents naturally heard these horror stories and are crazed with worry. We could do nothing but embrace the mother (thinned out since she cannot eat since her son was arrested) and listen to her, heart-broken.

Later we visited old Abu Khalaf. We were glad to find him looking good and healthy (during out last visit he was very ill). He told us his long story, again.

From there we went to visit Burhan and his wife Samahar. The couple looked very depressed. Attorney Tawfiq Jabarin notified them that morning that the court rejected their request to approve the erection of a miserable tent surrounded by pens, after a court struggle that lasted 15 years. From now on, they live under the threat of demolition. Their 9 daughters and son study in the West Bank, at university and schools, and the couple is collapsing under the load of hard farmwork, the loss of grazing grounds stolen by the colonists, the hill thugs, who – since they arrived – have made their life unlivable.

No less harsh are the expensive fees of their daughters’ studies, and the lack of their children in their everyday lives (they are only home on weekends).

Our last stop was at Ashraf and Rima’s. Here the atmosphere was totally different. I brought the children light, flexible calls and we all played a game they invented, and every time someone was ruled out, happy laughter was heard from afar. Rima prepared delicious sinaya and we stayed to share it with everyone. The children learn Hebrew from friends at the Al Farisiya community, who can already speak it because of the permanent presence of ground activists and shepherd accompaniers. They hunger for every word. The parents are raising chicks right now, breaking out of eggs placed at a home incubator. It was good to finish our day with this happy family.