“Nothing that happens here is transcendental. It is just about who gets to live in and farm these hills.”
In the Jordan Valley, which runs along the eastern portion of the occupied West Bank, there is a vague tedium for those of us who engage in the act of “protective presence” – accompanying Palestinian shepherds as they go about their daily routines, in order to deter and document state and settler violence.
We are not farmers, and I suspect I would be fairly useless at the tough manual labour that these men and women do from dawn until dusk. So once we have entertained the children, read our books, and drank enough caffeine to feel slightly buzzed, all that is left to do is talk.
My Hebrew is weak, and my Arabic is limited to basic conversation words, so I can only really talk properly with the one English speaker: an Israeli activist who comes here every week to support these Bedouin families. And he does not understand why international Jews care about Israel-Palestine at all. “If I could forget this place, I would,” he tells me. ….more
