Corona Times Report: Kafr Sur – Sal’it checkpoint is closed and the farmer cannot access his olive groves now

12 noon - speaking with G. from Kafr Sur. He said that every family is at home. There are no Coronavirus patients in the village. In order to travel from village to village, people have to obtain permits from the Palestinian Authority. He said that Sal'it checkpoint is closed. He is a farmer owning about 50 dunams inside the seam-line zone and cannot access his olive groves now, where he needs to plow and spray at this time of year. He also reported that permits are only granted framers with seasonal crops. He said they are in contact with Nehaya of the Center for the Defense of the Individual, who is trying to solve the problem of permits for farmers.

He asked how we were and expressed wishes for this closure info-icon to end...

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’