Awarta - from a history of cooperation and respect to alienation and neglect

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Place: 
Observers: 
Nurit, Irit (reporting and photographing), Mustafa (driving), Translator: Charles K.
Mar-23-2022
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Morning

We drove to the center of Awarta, straight to the well-known tomb of Mofdal /Itamar. Itamar was the son of Aharon HaCohen, in whose name the Itamar settlement was established in 1979 on Awwarta’s land.

In front of the large and neglected tomb is the Awarta taxi rank. There we were lucky and meet Samir, the rabbis’ researcher. Samir arranged an invitation to the municipal council and a meeting with the council’s head, Abu Samek, and joined the meeting. Abu Samek received us very openly and warmly. We gave him three booklets of the Makam survey in Arabic; three pages are devoted to Awarta. The booklets were received with surprise and appreciation.  While we flipped through them the conversation proceeded in a jumble of languages ​​that I didn’t think bothered anyone.

 

The conversation moved on from the history of cooperation and mutual respect for Makamim named after figures from the Bible to the present Jewish violence and nighttime pilgrimages that are conducted like military raids and blockades of the Palestinian residents.

This conduct apparently alienated the inhabitants and led to neglect of the graves. (At the next meeting we’ll inquire more about how the two things are connected). The recent events at Joseph’s Tomb and the repeated attacks on it manifest its transformation from a site holy to all the Children of Abraham to a tomb hated by the Palestinians, a tomb that symbolizes the Israeli takeover and the protest against it. The fact that there is an entire chapter in the Qur'an dedicated to Joseph - because Muhammad identified with Joseph’s life – has been severed from the reality of the Joseph’s Tomb compound in Nablus.  A compound around which the Palestinians pay with their lives for the fervor of the Jewish pilgrimages that are conducted as overbearing military operations contemptuous of Palestinian lives. (See Haaretz, Gideon Levy 21.4.22 "The soldier fired while driving and killed a 34-year-old lawyer bringing his son to kindergarten")

Back to Awarta:  In 2005 Awarta took the Itamar settlement to court because it had trapped 5000 dunums of olive groves within Itama’s security fence.  The council head told us that the result was the severing of an additional 3,000 dunams. In 2011, members of the Fogel family from Itamar were murdered by two residents of Awarta. Since then, there has been no pilgrimage to the tombs nor has the Civil Administrationinfo-icon permitted the harvesting of those olives.  No ceremony conducted in the settlement omits mention of the murders, repeating that the village is home to the Fogels’ murderers.

The Itamar settlement, which sits on a high ridge, is known to have given rise to more and more outposts and many organic farms - such as the Ran farm, which is the largest supplier of organic eggs to Supersol and Nitzat Haduvdevan.

The tiny Palestinian village of Yanun lies at the foot of the ridge’s eastern slope. A few months ago new houses were erected very close to Yanun which are easily visible from the village homes.