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Letters from Jayyous

• Stone throwing
• Late for school
• Bread oven
• Morning at Jayyous Gate
• Working in silence
• South Gate
• Muslim prayers
• Letter from John Aves

Working in Silence

Abu Azam stands in front of the Jayyous land cut off by the separation fence. He owns some of the greenhouses and olive & citrus trees beyond the fence.

The citrus grove is full of oranges, clementines and lemons, hanging from small trees with shiny dark green leaves.  Large metal pipes run between the fields, bringing water from the well to the system of small black plastic pipes that irrigate the individual trees.  This excellent example of fruit tree irrigation brings a good harvest.  

Suddenly, as we walk through the grove, there is a great scar across the land; an earth bank capped in razor wire.  There are red warning notices saying ‘Mortal Danger - Military Zone’.  Behind the bank and the razor wire is the fence and the military patrol road.  This is the fence that surrounds the farming village of Habla, where the West Bank is closest to Tel Aviv.  Sticking out of the earth and stones, at the base of the bank, are broken pieces of irrigation pipe.  When the bulldozers cleared the citrus trees they obviously had little regard for the investment made by the Palestinian farmers in the planting or irrigation of their fields.  The land is farmed co-operatively by a group of about 20 farmers, and the irrigation system supported with funding from the Spanish government, channelled through the Palestinian Hydrology Group.

The water for the irrigation project is brought from the Western Aquifer to the surface by a pump at a well just to the Palestinian side of the fence.  The Western Aquifer is strategically important for the supply of water to both Israel and the West Bank.  The Aquifer carries underground and westwards the rain water which falls high on the permeable limestone hills of the West Bank to supply the villages on the lower slopes at the edge of the coastal plain. 

One of these villages is Jayyous, where 90% of the total annual agricultural economic revenue comes from 7 million kilos of vegetables and fruit produced on the irrigated land now separated from the village by the fence.  The restrictions on water consumption have made farming this fertile and productive land increasingly difficult.   The construction of the fence has isolated farmers in the village from their land.  Some days farmers will not be allowed to cross for quite arbitrary reasons, and indeed the gates have on occasion been closed for several weeks at a time.  This clearly makes the management of irrigation extremely difficult, especially in greenhouses, as it needs daily supervision.  In 2003 many crops were lost due to lack of access for watering and harvesting.

The Mayor of Jayyous, Fayez Hassam Mohammed Salim, can stand at the window of his office and see the separation of the best land from the village.  He knows that many of his fellow landholders do not have permits to go through the fence to their land.   As the farmers are kept from their fields, the area is being changed from a successful, well-tended landscape to one where fruit will rot on the vine and new crops cannot be planted.  I have already witnessed the removal of greenhouse frames from this separated land, as farmers realise the difficulty of keeping in touch with their assets and crops.  As with other villages, there have been restrictions on water consumption and development since 1967, all new installations requiring a licence from the military authorities.  However, Israel embarked on a deep well programme, so only half of the 750 wells found in 1967 are still functioning due to the lowering of the water-table across the whole of the West Bank.

It is strange how in life one returns to the same theme.  As a child I painted a map of the Holy Land on the office wall of my Methodist lay-preacher uncle.  It was a simple map, the Mediterranean coastline, the River Jordan and the Dead Sea and a few Biblical towns and villages in between.  Later, as a geography teacher, I taught about the issues around international water resources, using the River Jordan and the diminishing Dead Sea as an example.  

The map is far more complex now.  Despite suggesting to my former students that countries might end up going to war over water as resources became limited, I never imagined a situation as complicated as that found today in Israel/Palestine.  The boundary of the viable groundwater supply, which coincides with the edge of good, productive land, is becoming marked out by the separation fence or wall.   Here we find an occupier controlling the resources of its occupied territory.  This adds to both the economic difficulties and the depth of humiliation of being powerless to control one’s own resources.  This control exercised by the Israeli government is in contravention of the Geneva Convention (Article 33, prohibiting pillage) which sets out the rules for the management of resources by occupying powers.

I have to thank Abdul Latif Khaled, of the Palestinian Hydrological Group, for his assistance in researching this topic.  He has international education and experience in the world of hydrology, and is here working in the pain of his own community, trying to find a way forward from these humiliating circumstances.  Abu Azam, pictured at the top of this letter, does not have a permit to go to his land.  However, he declares: “All we want is fellowship with the Israelis” to the groups of Israeli students that come to the village to find out what is happening in the Occupied Territories.  It has been a lesson in humility to accompany these men during my time in Jayyous.  

 Maurice Hopper, Ecumenical Accompanier

Jayyous, West Bank.

Note: The title for this piece is a quote from a Greek Orthodox Monk in Jerusalem, describing how he saw our work as Ecumenical Accompaniers in Palestine, which very much appealed to me as a Quaker.