Report during corona days - villages along Road 443

I spoke with A. about an open police case from 2014 which we are trying to help close, with the help of attorney Tamir Blank. I asked about how they were doing and about the situation in his village and he, for his part, asked how we were doing.

There are no sick people in Beit Ghur Al-Tahta, but in the nearby villages there are - 5 in Khirbet al-Mazbah and another 5-6 in Beit Likiya. To the best of his knowledge, these are workers who have returned from work in Israel. The road between the villages is not blocked (it is doubtful if they have another road through the villages), but people avoid gong out because of the fear of the disease. There are supplies in the shops, but many people are in financial distress and there is no help from the PA. Concerns about how they will mange in the month of Ramadan and the Eid al-Fitr holiday ...

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’