[R-G] When the Occupation Gets Really Filth

[Anthony Fenton]

MIDEAST:  When the Occupation Gets Really Filthy
By Nora Barrows-Friedman
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38964

BETHLEHEM, Aug 21 (IPS) - 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

"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)