Fear and Fruit in Yanoun

While standing in front of the fruit shelves in town choosing bananas, Yasser gets the alarming message: Israeli settlers have entered the village of Yanoun.

It has been calm for quite some time in the tiny village of Yanoun, just southeast of Nablus in the northern West Bank. The Israeli settlers, who in recent years have inhabited the surrounding hills, have not caused any trouble in the village for several months. The look of fright on Yasser’s face as he stands in front of the fruit boxes tells the story of the horror armed settlers have spread among the people of Yanoun over the last few years. He hurries his shopping into the back of the car and I get a lift with him back to the village. But just as he is about to start the engine he receives a phone call from his brother Rashid: “Don’t come home yet. The settlers are on the road leading in to the village.”

The previous day there had been smiles and laughter in Yanoun. Yasser, Rashid, and their brother-in-law Ghamal were playing football together with the children. The children were off from school on their holidays, the sun was shining, and Yasser got the ball between the two stones that were serving as goal poles several times. Now the smile is gone. After a while he gets another message from his brother that the settlers have gone up the hills and he can drive homewards. “You see, this is what used to happen before. They came and pointed their guns trough the windows, and scared the children,” Yasser tells me, while he drives home at a speed which makes the car tremble and the bananas jump. In his house, a wife, a daughter, and three little sons await him.

When we get back to Yanoun we hear from Rashid and other men in the village that the settlers numbered seven or eight. The villagers are not able to tell whether they were armed or not. Yasser tells me that those who do not have M16 rifles visible on their backs often have pistols in their belts. The settlers came down the hillside and went over to the house of the Abu Hani family that lies across the street. There they climbed onto the roof of the house and started shouting and screaming. The family got scared and ran into the house. After that the settlers left the property and walked across the newly ploughed fields, following the road out of the village.

After a while two military jeeps and two police cars arrive to hear what has happened. They talk to Rashid and fill in forms. My colleague Karin from Switzerland and I keep close to see what happens. Yasser joins us after having placed the fruit in his house and checked that his family was o.k. “Now the police spend a long time here. It is because you are here,” he explains. “Before, they came and asked us where the settlers were, and when we replied that they had just left, they just drove off again and we did not hear any more from them.”

Yasser, Rashid, and Ghamal sit down in front of Rashid’s house together with the children to drink tea and calm down. They are worried what might happen next. “Maybe this was the beginning of a new wave of incursions from the settlers,” Yasser says. “We hope it is not.”

Yasser (left), having just arrived back in Yanoun following the "visit"

of the settlers, talks with his brother Rashid (middle), and their

brother-in-law Ghamal (right).