South Hebron Hills, Zif Junction
It’s a time of examinations at the schools and winter break for students, apparently from today noon and until New Year.
On road 60 traffic is lively but not unusual, many cement mixers and trucks carrying construction materials. Indeed at the Sham’a settler-colony a whole new neighborhood is being constructed. We turned to the deserted road 317 and entered A-Tuwani. Rumor says a home was demolished there some days ago. We looked for the DOVE volunteers but they had already left for their day’s volunteering out in the field. A representative of Arik Ascherman’s Hakel (“field” in Arabic) association was sitting next to their house, apparently conducting a survey among the villagers. She actually refused to speak with us and the man she was interviewing did took, although he spoke plenty with her. He was also reserved with us when we tried to inquire what the survey was about. We could not locate the demolition, that no one knew a thing about, but we were told that settler-colonists from Ma’on had uprooted olive trees at the northern edge of the village. Several very little and unhappy children from Umm Tuba village sat on a bench, and told us that the army had not come to accompany them on their way to school today. It is the open-clinic day (located at the local council house) – a physician arrives once a week. This week it was an orthopedist, on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, and there’s also a pharmacist. The clinic is clean and orderly, but lacking hardly any basic equipment. And there were no patients either!
We continued through Zif village and went by Amal’s kindergarten – the children are already on vacation.
Settler-colony Carmel has more construction going on. We saw caravans on its south side, and in the settler-colony Susiya at least 2 bulldozers preparing the ground for more building. The man (Israeli Prime Minister) appears true to his word…