Within an hour of arriving at the Palestinian hamlet of Susiya, the local settlers decided to make an unwelcome appearance on the farmers' land, shattering the calm of dusk as the sun set over the Judean hills. The intruders drove their sheep all the way to the edge of the Palestinians' encampment, encouraging their animals to gorge themselves on the sparse flora belonging to their neighbours' flocks.
Watching a crime take place is never pleasant for onlookers, but the experience is made infinitely worse when there is no recourse whatsoever to ameliorate the situation. In more tolerant and equitable societies, witnesses can pick up the phone and call the authorities, in the hope and expectation that the police will intervene on behalf of the victim and right the wrong being committed. But when the very security forces meant to deal out justice are standing alongside the criminals and providing armed cover for their actions, the sense of disbelief and disaffection with the status quo is off the scale.
In this case, the two settlers were aided and abetted by a pair of M16-toting Israel Defence Force guards, who stood menacingly in position to keep the distraught Palestinian farmers at bay; the hopeless cries of opposition by the landowners falling on deaf ears, the stony-faced soldiers gazed on impassively and let the settlers brazenly steal the crops from under their noses. Neither the farmers, their families, the NGO workers staying with them nor our group of eight visiting observers could do a thing to prevent the theft – and the micro-story on this remote patch of scrubland embodies the macro situation across the region as a whole.
In the Book of Samuel, the prophet Nathan tells King David a parable, during his rebuking of the king for his underhand pursuit of Bathsheva. He speaks of two neighbours – one man very rich, with a flock of a thousand sheep, the other dirt poor, with just one lamb in his possession, which he loves as though it were his own child. When a guest comes to visit the rich man, the wealthy farmer goes next door and steals the other man's only sheep, which he slaughters and serves to his friend for a meal. A totally unnecessary theft, a totally heartless and selfish act – and, as I've written before, the Israeli authorities repeatedly behave like that rich farmer.
Before arriving in Susiya, we had spent the morning in Hebron, witnessing the state-sponsored land grab and destruction of thousands of livelihoods to make way for a few hundred fundamentalist settlers whose ultimate goal is ridding the city of all Palestinians to live out some warped interpretation of Torah-based commandments. Six of our group had never set foot in Hebron before (three were fellow north-west London Jews; the others English university students of varying ethnic backgrounds); yet all had seen the footage and read the reports about the endemic abuses in the city – and the evidence was on display from the moment we arrived.
Whole streets of Palestinian-owned shops stood deserted; their doors welded shut by the army – in the all-trumping name of "security precautions", of course – and daubed with outsized Stars of David and "Death to the Arabs" graffiti, courtesy of the local settlers. Palestinian homes sported vast metal grilles on their windows, doors and outside stairways to fend off the rocks and other projectiles hurled daily by settler men, women and children alike, and Palestinian locals hurried past checkpoints and settler buildings with heads bowed, second-class citizens in the city in which their families have lived and previously thrived for generations.
Back in Susiya, the situation is even worse. While Hebron's Old City is no walk in the park for the Palestinian residents, they at least have the likes of the Temporary International Presence in the City of Hebron (TIPH), Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) and a constant stream of tourists and reporters passing through whose presence acts as a partial deterrent to the most blatant and aggressive of settler misdeeds. Susiya, on the other hand, is largely out of sight and thus out of mind for the press and public, giving the settlers cover to run riot in the area – and they are only too happy to step up to the plate time and again.
After a night's sleep in a tent still sporting the scars of a settler attempt to raze it to the ground, we woke at the crack of dawn to accompany the shepherds into the mist-covered hills to graze their sheep. The clouds were so low as to render sight all but impossible; when they cleared, a pair of early-rising settlers were spurred into action, and they laid into one flock with fists and rocks, screaming at the shepherds to go back to their camp – and, once again, all under the benevolent watch of the soldiers on duty a few metres away.
When the shepherds turned and fled, the settlers followed in hot pursuit, chasing them all the way back to their tents, despite at least 20 members of the farming family arriving to protest at their actions. However, the unarmed settlers weren't put off, fully confident that no Palestinian would dare lay a hand on them for fear of the longer-term reprisals by settlers and state security alike. The humiliation of the family's menfolk – unable to protect their onlooking women and children; a true mark of shame in such a patriarchal and proud society – was palpable; once the settlers finally had enough of their sport and left, all that remained was a silent cloud of sadness and resignation that descended over the encampment.
Two attacks within 12 hours was nothing out of the ordinary for the residents of Susiya but were a major shock to those of our group paying their first visit to the South Hebron hills: ample proof that the settlers and the army collude to make the Palestinians' lives unbearable in an attempt to force them to leave the region for good. As a sergeant who served in the area explained in his testimony to Breaking the Silence, "The practical objective of our brigade was to guard the Jewish settlement in the Hebron Hills. To guard means also to make a ring around them, where other people won't live. They embittered the lives of the people who live there."
For those who see such embitterment up close, the settlers' and soldiers' actions are indefensible. An army of apologists couldn't convince the neutral that such crimes are in any way conscionable – but still they try, and, despite all the political bluster and diplomatic posturing, nothing changes on ground level. For the farmers of Susiya, their struggle to fend off the forces amassed against them is as futile today as it ever was.
Seth Freedman, a writer living in Jerusalem.