Translator:  Charles K.

Meytar crossing

By 6:45, all the laborers crossed to the Israeli side. No one under the canopy, no prisoners' relatives' visits today.

Route 60

Route 60 is crowded as usual. For the first time in a long while, reservists are stopping vehicles at the entrance to Dahariyya, making people get out, inspecting them and their vehicles. They act as if they’re looking for someone or something in particular. We stay to observe, they turn their backs and don’t reply to our questions, but are polite to those detained: “Sabah el hir!”’ “Kif halkum,” and after a few minutes release them. Because we’re there? Who knows?

Kvasim junction: soldiers positioned also here, at the sheep market. We ask why they’re here and, for once, they answer: “to make sure that things are orderly.”  Why shouldn’t they be?! Because.

Bani Na’im junction – An army jeep again parked there.

Hebron

The fancy entrance to Kiryat Arba is nearing completion with enviable speed. The Nofei Mamre neighborhood is also rising gloriously. On the opposite side of the road we see the Mitzpe Avichai outpost. More shacks have been erected, no one makes them leave or demolishes the place. Giv’ati soldiers patrolling.

Nothing unusual at the checkpoints: no detainees, the CPT volunteers say there are no special problems. A soldier up at Tel Rumeida asks to see the ID of M., our driver. We have the usual argument, that he should check us also, because he’s a citizen just like us. The soldier tries to convince us that he’s doing it for security. We insist the inspection is unnecessary because there’s no difference between our driver and us. As usual, it’s all very tiresome and racist, but ends peacefully.

We drove out via the Worshippers route which recently was opened to traffic.

At the Tzir Tzion ("Zion route") corner we met the sanitation worker who told us about his 10-year-old son who had been hit twenty days ago by a car a settler was driving. We wanted to visit him at his house, which is right next to the Kiryat Arba checkpoint, but ran into him at work (sweeping the street). We asked about his son, and were glad to learn that he’d come back from the hospital a long time ago and nothing serious happened to him. Of course, no one from the police or the army ever came to investigate. But the neighbors wrote down the license number.

Route 317

We returned via Route 317 because we wanted to hear what had happened at D’kaykeh.  Hagit said she’d read on Facebook that houses were demolished yesterday. Here’s what happened:

The Bedouin village of D’kaykeh is located east of Umm el Hir, where members of the Jahalin tribe live, some of them in a recognized locality and others still struggling for recognition.

Members of the Ka’abaneh tribe have lived on their lands in D’kaykeh since 1948. The locality of Hamaydeh is closer to Umm el Hir, occupied by members of the same tribe, where they’ve lived until now. For internal reasons they established D’kaykeh about ten kilometers to the southeast. Neither village is recognized, of course. The army showed up at Umm el Hir at 5:30 AM this time, waited for tractors and additional personnel and stormed the locality at 7:30, with Sudanese laborers(!!!) doing the dirty work (literally); they’d been brought in two buses (for the greater glory of the State of Israel). Two weeks ago wells were destroyed, and now 13 structures and also one that served as a school.

Eid, from Umm el Hir, says that when the soldiers arrived he thought they’d come to demolish in his locality, but when he saw where they were going he and his companions remained there all day in solidarity, to offer help and support.

That’s the story. People are sitting in the desert, with no means of livelihood, no rights, no water, in a god-forsaken area where they can’t possibly disturb anyone,  and are still pronounced “dangerous,” “unnecessary,” “invaders.”  And it’s possible to have slaves keep demolishing their homes (slaves who will later be expelled from the country).  And they call us Israel haters?!