Ya’amun: There is no work and no money to eat

This morning A. phoned again. His spirits were down. He told me that the streets of the village are still desolate, but the real problem is that his home is empty. All of his necessities are used up and he has no money to buy food. A. said that the Palestinian Authority doesn’t offer help to those in need. “It’s not like with you, where every child receives NIS 500.” According to him, in the village of Ya’amun, there is also no mutual or reciprocal help. A. says that he requested NIS 200 from his neighbor (as a loan?) and the neighbor refused to give A. the money.

According to A., the mosques are closed and will also remain closed during the month of Ramadan. However, visits to relatives—for example, his sister’s family—are allowed during the month of Ramadan. I was surprised and he explained that among them, they know who is sick with the Corona virus, “Not like you.”

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’