Beit Anan - Corona days report

Report in Corona days

Abed worked for many years making pitta in the Mahane Yehuda market. Tour guides would bring tours there to see the ancient oven where the pitas were made and he would explain and demonstrate to them. He is fluent in Hebrew and proficient in what is happening in Israel. About a year and a half ago he stopped working after suffering from his health which made it difficult for him to stand on his feet all day. He was already 60 and a grandparent. He has worked in the market since he was a teenager.

He said he and his family were fine. Staying at home. There is a shortage of groceries. They mainly eat the pita he bakes with olive oil and za'atar, but maintain their health. The Corona hit the nearby village of Biddu, but did not reach them.

Why do we take the trouble to report in Corona times as well?

Because democracy’s watchdogs have fallen asleep on their own watch, so Israeli citizens have no idea what is actually happening in the Occupied Territories, especially now.

Day and night, Israeli soldiers (as the State’s emissaries) help extreme settler-colonists take the law into their own hands, unhampered. They do not stop even in days of a raging pandemic and do not hesitate to harm Palestinians – their bodies, property, and sources of livelihood.

Unceasing harassment of the weakened Palestinian population inflicts psychological harm as well. All – from babies through and including the elderly and the ill – are open prey to Jewish violence and terrorism which the settler-colonists are only too eager to exert.

We of MachsomWatch will not cease to report, certainly not now during these Corona times and under the threat of annexation, about the settlers’ increased rampages, those who hurry to set facts on the ground helped by the Israeli army.

Israel rules the West Bank, and by force of the Geneva Convention, article no. 27, it is committed to enforcing law and order there. The inhabitants of these Occupied Territories have the legal right “to decent treatment of their body and dignity, and should be especially protected against any act of violence”.

Ironically, this is not at all upheld.

Nor shall we cooperate with the commonplace ignoring of the Palestinian people’s suffering, and with the Israeli public’s indifference to it. We shall continue to follow up closely and report the goings-on in the West Bank, in its villages and encampments.

No one should be able to say ‘We knew nothing, we heard nothing’