Uprooted
You should all first read what Marie wrote about the situation in Umm Salamona on November 30 and November 18.
When we entered the field yesterday we where met by 15-20 uprooted trees. Settlers had been there and uprooted some of the newly planted trees and burned them with acid.
I don’t know if they did this to try to scare the land owners. If they did it to show the owners what they are capable of doing. Maybe it was full moon and they felt a drive to destroy something. It seems childish and hopeless, and none of us where really surprised.
In fact much of what the settlers say and do are childish (trust me on this one, I’ve been working with children). The settler movement of course doesn’t want to freeze any building activities the next 10 months. In fact they are planning to build more, not necessarily because they have a need for more buildings, but because they see it as their right to build wherever they wanna build as much as they wanna build. Which means that the settlers are going to spend a lot of time on building sheds, which they don’t need. They are going to build them on top of steep hills, where Israeli bulldozers will have problems to reach in order to demolish the buildings. They are going to build sheds deep into settlements (far away from the entrance) so that it is harder to find for inspectors who are coming to search for unauthorized constructions. Also they will have women and children marching «in a way that does not let them[the inspectors] work», according to an “instruction sheet for residents”, issued by The grassroots Samaria Residents Council (a settler organization). They have also already blocked inspectors from entering settlements.
By doing this they will in fact also halt the process of removing other illegal settlements (outposts), which already have been given demolishing orders. Because the manpower which where supposed to be used for this has to be used in the silly game that the settlers now are playing.
The settlers are really a crazy group of fundamentalists, who often get their way by wining, being stubborn and violent, one minded and unable to see any one than themselves as a victims. Much like children.
But we wouldn’t let children carry guns, give them drivers license and cars (which they can use to drive over Palestinians). Basically, we wouldn’t tolerate children taking the law in their own hands, and twist it to fit themselves. We just wouldn’t.
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