Update during Corona: Tamoun - Impossible to work in Israel now

I met A., inhabitant of Yamoun, because of a work accident he endured and reparations he didn’t receive. It’s a long and difficult story. This morning he called to ask how I was faring.

He and his family are alright. Everyone is stuck at home in Yamoun, hardly go out. He said that in Yamoun (the Jenin district) and the area there are no Corona virus patients. He said that nearly all the hospitals are either in Bethlehem and its surroundings and a few in Ramallah. He has received work offers in Israel which can be reached without going through the checkpoints, but will not do this on any account for fear of his heath and that of his family. I asked whether he knows construction workers employed with work permits in Israel, who must now stay there overnight. He said he does know a few, and that although their contractors promised them good conditions, they are now sleeping at construction sites on the ground…

He also told me excitedly that before the closure info-icon , a Jewish resident of Afula gave him a ride to Yizre’el Junction (not far from the Jalame checkpoint) and said that now, in times of Corona, everyone’s equal…

He gave his special regards to our friend Tammi Sh. who helped him a lot to obtain his work permit in Israel and health care after his accident.

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’