Consider This from NPR - Far from Gaza, West Bank Farmers Face Harassment from Israeli Soldiers and Settlers

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

It's olive harvesting season in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. But farmer Ayoub Abu Hejleh hasn't been able to harvest olives from any of his 370 trees yet this year. He says Israeli soldiers and settlers have blocked him from his land since the war started. That was back on October 7, when Hamas insurgents attacked Israel, killing more than 1,400 people. While the world has focused on Israel's response in Gaza, violence in the West Bank is also spiking. The International Crisis Group estimates more than 130 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the war began. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly and her team traveled to Abu Hejleh's village. They saw first-hand how the war between Israel and Hamas is upending lives for Palestinians in the West Bank, sometimes in extremely frightening ways. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

There are times on this job when you set out to do a story and you think you know where it's going and the day ends up spinning in unexpected directions. This is the story of such a day in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the other Palestinian territory. Consider this. Far from Gaza, the war between Israel and Hamas is upending lives for Palestinians in the West Bank, sometimes in extremely frightening ways. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Thursday, November 9th. It's Consider This from NPR. This week, my team and I traveled to the West Bank to see a small town called Darastia and to meet a 54-year-old man named Ayub Abu-Hajli in his family home, where he made Arabic coffee for us.

Over coffee, he explains a problem he's been having. I planted around 370 olive trees, grapes, figs. 370 olive trees. They are groaning with olives, ready to pick. This is harvest season. But he hasn't been able to. Not one. We faced a little bit of problems before in the harvest season,

but in this season, it's terrible. He says Israeli soldiers and settlers have blocked him from his land since the war started. That was back on October 7th, when Hamas insurgents attacked Israel, killing more than 1,400 people. While the world has focused on Israel's response in Gaza, violence here in the West Bank is also spiking. Attacks on Palestinians by the Israeli military and settlers are up. The International Crisis Group estimates more than 130 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the war began. Israel's military says they are conducting raids on militants. Ayub says when he tries to get to his olive trees, the war is the reason Israeli soldiers give for stopping him.

They say it's forbidden you to stay here because we are in a war, so we are coming to protect you. So I say to him, you are not coming to protect me, you are coming to protect the settlers, because you are coming from a settlement. On October 13th, Ayyub says that settlers rolled in with diggers, tore up the dirt road to his fields, that they severed the irrigation pipes he'd installed. He has not set foot on his land since. I'm raising these olive trees like my children. So it's not the issue of income. It's our land. You know the connection of the trees, the soil, the stones.

This is the important. The olive harvest does represent a key supplement for many family incomes. But Ayub's point is, for many families, the land has been passed down for generations. Ayub hopes his children will farm his land one day. This is how it works around here, says Dana Sharon, a rabbi from a kibbutz in central Israel. She is Israeli and with a group called Rabbis for Human Rights, who are here at Ayub's house with us. They work with Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest, trying to help farmers access their land safely. She told me this while we

were waiting by the car. There is no other place to be as far as I'm concerned. The way things here are managed or mismanaged is beyond awful. I just want to make a very clear statement, not on my behalf, definitely not on behalf of my religion. On this day, Ayub offers to show us his land. Not to walk on it, just glimpse it from a neighboring hill. He does this trip often, says it won't be a problem, that if we are stopped, we'll just be asked to leave. We follow Ayub in his car down a steep dirt road, only a few minutes drive from his house in town. We stop. He shows us where the road has been torn up. So they damaged there, as you see. Three times they damaged the road.

Our team pulls on our flak jackets, press written in big letters across the front, and then we hear a buzzing. A drone has appeared to hover above us. Someone knows we're here. We start walking over the remnants of the destroyed road and then... There we go. I don't know, maybe settlers, maybe soldiers, I don't know. Soldiers appear. Quite a few of them. One, two, three, four that I can see. Some come over the hill on foot. Others drive up in an SUV.

Some have their faces covered with balaclavas. All of them, about a dozen by the end, have guns. Hi. Shalom. Shalom. Media. Press. They are not happy with us.

In Hebrew, they yell that we need to leave, that we have crossed a barrier. For the record, there is no barrier, no signage. They tell us this is a time of war. And then they separate Ayub from our group, tell us they need to question him. We say we don't want to leave without him. Is it possible for someone to stay here with us? They said no one will stay. need to question him. We say we don't want to leave without him. The soldiers refuse. A gun lifts, points straight at us. So we back off. As the soldiers walk Ayub around a hill and out of our sight. We asked Dana, the rabbi, who works regularly with Palestinian farmers here,

how unusual is this situation? We've never seen anything like this before. This is not according to any protocol that we're familiar with or are experienced with. She says she is extremely worried. Her colleague, Danny, gets on the phone, starts making calls in Hebrew, in Arabic. Calls to the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, to the police, to lawyers. We also get on the phone with a media contact we have in the IDF. We tell him where we are, what's happening.

All right, so first of all, I will check right now what happened, and I'll see what we can do about it. Then we wait. We don't want to leave Ayub. The soldiers told us they would only question him for a few minutes, but we can't tell if he's still nearby. The soldier's vehicle is gone. So we're now at about 45 minutes since Ayub has been separated from us, taken. I can't see him, but we can see the soldiers, so we don't think they've left or taken him anywhere. And so we wait.

Around then, the drone comes back. It's hovering lower and lower. Finally, more than 90 minutes after Ayub was taken away, our IDF contact calls. He reports Ayub is safe, and he strongly advises us to leave the area. So, reluctantly, we do. We head to Firas Diab's office. He's the mayor of Daristiyah. We'd called him to see if he could help. Mayor Diab is also an olive farmer.

On the side, 160 trees. And I can't harvest them because they're close to settlement too, and I can't even reach them. No harvest at all? You haven't been able to get any olives? Until this day, no. Big portraits of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas hang on his wall at town hall. We ask the mayor why scenes like the one we just witnessed are unfolding in fields all around his town. What do you think the goal is here? Why is the military doing this?

This is an old thing that we see in a new way. Their goal, their aim is the land. And they're using the war in order to seize the land. Back at Ayub's house, the family has gathered. Everyone's worried. Everyone is tense. Then, his sister's phone rings. Ayub has been released. The sister bursts into tears of relief. She calls me to her.

You Americans, she tells me. Look at what's happening to us Arabs here, to our people, to our land. Ayub's son goes to collect him. We all wait outside in plastic chairs. And soon, a car pulls up the hill, honking in celebration. Ayub gets out, big smile, everyone rushes to greet him. His daughter, his wife, his sons, his young granddaughter. We sit down with Ayub to make sure he's okay and to hear what happened. He tells us after he was led away, he was blindfolded, handcuffed. Then they drove him to a military office in a nearby settlement where he was mocked and questioned.

They say it's our land, it's not your land, so you must forget it. But now he's home. Are you okay? I'm okay, alhamdulillah. As we prepare to leave, I ask Ayub, will you go back? Will you try to see your land again? I will go back. Don't worry. They will arrest it and I will return back until I will fix my land. It's our land. NPR producers Kat Lansdorf and Erika Ryan and local producer Sassan Khalif contributed to this story. And our reporting is continuing all through this week on our news program, All Things Considered. We've been hearing from voices across Israel and across the region. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.