Our first day in Tulkarem
Our team is made up of Iris and Wolfgang from Germany, Martin from Sweden and myself. Our 2 day hand over is being supervised by Paula, a young Swedish graduate, who is just finishing her time as an Ecumenical Accompanier in Tulkarem, a town to the north west of Nablus in the West Bank.
None of us new EAs slept well last night, our first in the town, We had travelled up from Jerusalem by public transport and all had been stunned by our first sight of the menacing stretch of 'the Wall', or 'Separation Barrier' at Qalandiya, the first checkpoint we passed through.
The call to prayer from the nearby mosque woke us at 4.30.am, and somehow we were ready for the taxi at 5.15 am which took us near to the Deir al Ghusun agricultural gate checkpoint. We walked in the dark for a good ½ a mile on a very rough track with ancient olive trees either side. Voices greeted us, 'assalaam alaykum', as we rounded a bend to see about 8 men with 2 donkeys sitting in a concrete shelter, waiting for the gates to open at 6am.
'The Wall' in this part consists of 2 parallel tall yellow gates about 5 metres apart, with lots of barbed wire above and on either side. At 5.45 a jeep drew up on the other, Israeli, side and some armed soldiers got out. They opened the gates promptly at 6am and one of the waiting donkeys, well used to the daily drill, automatically started trotting towards it, his owner in pursuit.
Part of our job as Accompaniers is to see the official opening & closing times are adhered to, check that everyone gets through without harassment, and to ascertain the reason should they be refused, and if necessary contact a human rights organisation. The first week of each month we visit the gate daily for the UN Organisation for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and pass on more in depth information for their statistics and reports.
As there were five of us, instead of the usual two, we stood further away from the soldiers, so as not to draw unnecessary attention to ourselves, and during the hour we watched, 59 farmers, 8 donkeys and 5 tractors pass through. None was refused. However, two boys under 16 years who wanted to help, did not: a farmer who spoke some English, said this was because they were not with their families and had no birth certificate on them and there was nothing we could do to help. Each farmer had to wait by the 2nd gate to be called by the soldiers to have their permits checked. We felt their humiliation… but these were the lucky ones. A farmer told us how his friend, like others he knew, had been refused a permit to work on his land for the past month, and we agreed to contact the District Co-ordinating Office (DCO) to try to discover why. (We have since heard that he now has his permit.)
Ramadan starts next week, the midday sun is unrelenting, so the farmers have asked the Israeli Authorities if the gate opening hours could be altered to allow them to return from their fields between 10 and 11am instead of 12-1pm. They are not hopeful. (We also phoned the DCO to support them, but don't know of the outcome.)
The farmers were quite certain that our presence helps them to pass through-- and more quickly, and many thanked us for just being there.
We walked thoughtfully back along the track, this time with birds singing and with views of the distant hills. We had a full programme before us, but this was a memorable beginning…
