Qalqiliya, Sun 18.9.11, Morning

Route 5: 

Our goal – to familiarize Dvorka with route 5 and inspect the road between Beita and Userin, and from Userin to Akraba and then to Kusra.

We started at 10:00

We took highway no. 5, went through the Shomron crossing and continued straight to Tapuach junction.  We saw no cars detained there and continued to Huwwara.  There we found the side road toward Odalaand Beita that’s almost invisible from the main road.   We saw the Luna Park from a distance, but didn’t go in. 

We turned from Odalatoward Beita, where we wanted to find the road to the village of Userin.  Here we made a mistake and reached a road farther to the north which isn’t visible on the map we photocopied from the Carta atlas, but it is shown on B’Tselem’s map.  It’s the road farther to the north that begins at Beita.  Instead of reaching Userin,we got to Aqraba.

Right at the entrance to the village we met a group of young men sitting next to a grocery store.  We understood from them that we’d taken the wrong road and driven straight to the large village of Aqraba– which is really a large town in a beautiful location overlooking the Jordan Valley. 

The young men were very happy to see three grannies getting out of the car and beginning a conversation with them.  Some of them spoke Hebrew well because they work in Israel (without permits).  They brought chairs from the store, cold juice and water, and started asking questions.  And we asked them questions as well.

We wanted to know what they thought about the Palestinian Authority’s move.  Most of them, like everyone else wherever we’ve been recently, don’t think that it will change their economic situation, which is what they’re most concerned about.  Some said: “Fayad is a thief, only distributes money in Ramallah…”

Then they started telling us what happened in the village yesterday (that is, on Saturday, 17.9).

Four residents of Aqrabadrove on Saturday afternoon to the village of Yanun, located north of Aqraba.  They’re actually residents of Yanun who left a few years ago because of harassment by the settlers from the outposts around Itamar (such as Avri Ran from Giv’at Olam and a settler named Victor who terrorizes them and whom the law enforcement authorities aren’t able, or don’t want, to apprehend); also the residents of the settlement of Itamar itself.  Only a few inhabitants have remained in Yanun, most of them elderly.

Near Yanun they ran out of gas; they sent the youngest passenger to bring gas from Aqraba.  While they waited five settlers came down from the hills and began to curse and beat them, and took them away.  They were able to telephone their friends from Aqraba, and almost the entire village came out to the fields toward Yanun.  In the meantime, the army arrived and asked what was happening.  When they said that settlers took three of their people an army jeep drove toward the settlers, then returned and said that there weren’t any Palestinians.  The villagers threatened the soldiers that if the people weren’t returned they would ”really make trouble.”  Only at 22:00 did a jeep again go out and return with the Palestinians who were taken.

The Palestinians said that even when the military commander told the settlers to release the Palestinians, they refused, and fired near their legs.  No settler was arrested for that.

We saw many large rocks lying on the road and were told that the villagers put them there to prevent the settlers and the army from entering.  We saw the car that had run out of gas.  When we asked why they didn’t take it away they said they were afraid that the settlers had booby-trapped it at night and that it might explode.

We drove to Yanun, the village which was almost deserted.  The location is amazingly beautiful, and we remember it from the olive harvest season many years ago as a place full of life, but today almost all the houses are deserted and most of the residents moved to Aqraba.  We reached the home of one of the guys who drove with us.  He told us his mother returns home from time to time to clean and wash the floors to maintain it.

We ate figs and pomegranates.  We drove into the village; in the upper portion, where a slightly larger number of residents remain, we met three women from ISM (International Solidarity Movement) who live in one of the houses and are in contact with the head of the village.  They take photographs and write a daily report that they send abroad in which describe everything the settlers are doing to the place.

We returned to Aqraba, drove around the large town and saw that some of the homes belong to wealthy people who’d gone abroad, “made money,” and then return to build large homes for their families.  It’s like that in most of the villages; people who get rich abroad build attractive homes for their families but don’t make any investments in the village itself.

We drove with our three new friends from Aqrabato the village of Userin, and understood the mistake we’d made when we wanted to reach Userinfrom Beita.

Userinis a village up in the hills which isn’t very big, with a lovely landscape.  It also has some attractive homes and others which are very poor.

After saying goodbye to the guys from Aqraba we drove back to Beita, to Highway 60, Tapuach junction and home.