Meitar CP - a handcuffed Palestinian boy for cutting the fence

Route 317 At-Tuwani

We went to hear first-hand about the destruction of the school near Umm al-Kheir (we couldn't get there by an ordinary car).

We were sitting in front of the house of Basel's father Nasser, who recorded the event almost in real time on the website "Sicha Mekomit ". (Roughly the local conversation). Basel came and sat with us with a blank face. He has a lawyer's certificate but doesn't have a job, and says that in any case maybe he also prefers to be a journalist which is what he does. In the internal network between the villages, messages are passed and that's how they came to know about the army's organization for the demolition and evacuation operation.

The school has 23 children, and the eviction order was frozen until this week. But the army brought the matter to court and obtained a cancellation of the freeze. A large force arrived and at the head the bulldozer which belongs to a settler named Yinon who himself has built an illegal farm (a wild outpost) near Zanuta. Besides his sheep, he also has heavy mechanical equipment from which he makes a living, building settlements and breaking roads for the settlers. Now the violator of this law is called upon to destroy the little school.

The force evacuated the staff, the children locked themselves in the classrooms and some of them, when they heard the noise, broke the windows and left through them. Then, when the area was free of people, the army cleared all the equipment, confiscated it and the area was free for Yinon and the bulldozer.

Women's Day was celebrated in At-Tuwani: the school was decorated and girls in shiny uniforms walked along the road with lollipops in their mouths...

At the exit of the village stands the deserted oil recycling factory whose construction was stopped due to the protest of the settlers. They planted a sign at the entrance to the village - "We want to breathe clean air.”

We went to Susiya to see what was going on there. Nasser, who works as an investigator for "B’tselem" greeted us standing up. He is also discouraged and angry about the so-called dialogue that the left has with Ben Gvir. The reference for his words is a Tiktok video that brought a clip from an old film in which MachsomWatch women talk to Ben Gvir, and try to understand his position towards the Palestinians. (Probably taken in 2016). In his opinion, the person should be boycotted.

On the way back, on Route 60 quite close to the Meitar barrier, on the side, in front of us is a car belonging to the separation fence's policing unit, and next to it is a handcuffed Palestinian boy, when one soldier performs a physical examination on him, turns his pockets, takes off his shoes to see if he has any explosives in them. When we stopped to see (for obvious reasons there is no photo) the other soldier came to us and explained that a youth squad tried to cut through the fence and move to the Israeli side. The unit was called, arrested the young men, and in the end was taken for questioning.

The usual routine of the occupation.