Wajdi 'Ubeid, land owner, resident of Yasuf
I have six children, ranging in ages from twenty years to one month. I used to have a permit to enter Israel, and I worked in construction in Israel. For the past two years, I have been unemployed. My brothers and I have land totalling around two hundred dunam, on which olive trees are planted. Last year was a bad harvest, and produced only a very small amount of olive oil. Like other village residents, I have been banking on this season, when the trees are full of olives. However, in the past two years, village residents have been unable to get to about seventy percent of their land because of the growth of the large number of settlements in the area, the closures on the village, and the prohibition on leaving the village via the northern exit, in the direction of the so-called Trans-Samaria highway.
My brothers and I were hoping that the present olive harvest would enable us to produce between ninety and one hundred casks of olive oil. Based on the division among us, I would receive twenty to twenty-five casks. Selling a large portion of them would provide my family and me with a livelihood for the coming months.
Settlers from Tapuah began to bother Yasuf residents during the harvest of 1995. At that time, they began to pave a road through our land to join Tapuah with the Ariel settlement. We then fought an unsuccessful legal battle through the Palestinian DCO, and the settler's road was paved. In 1998, the settlers began to place caravans on the mountain ridge, south of the Tapuah settlement, in the middle of our olive orchards. A procession of villagers on the way to the orchards was met with gunfire by the settlers. Eighteen villagers were wounded that day.
In 1998, we tried to pave a dirt road within our lands to make it easier for us to move about during the olive-picking season (we usually transport the sacks of olives on donkeys, or young men carry them on their backs for a distance of two kilometers). The army did not allow us to pave the road. It also seized the tractor that was used there. The soldiers burned down a small portion of the olive trees in orchards between our village and the Tapuah settlement, which was the only land that village residents had access to.
Despite all this, those disturbances were few and did not bother us to get to our land, cultivate it, and pick the olives.
Last season, we did our work without any particular disturbance by the settlers, but as I mentioned before, last season was a poor crop. We were anticipating a good season this year. The village residents had made preparations for the olive picking this year. The season starts on 15 October, but we received a circular from the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture that we should begin on the 20th of October.
It is hard for me to describe the shock we had when we saw dozens of settlers working all day picking olives in our orchards. They had all the right equipment for picking. In the past, they just tried to bother us; this time, they began to pick our olives for their own use.
The olives are still green and not ripe, so I think the settler's intention was to prevent us from making some money from the last source available to us - olives. If this continues as it is, we shall find ourselves on 20 October without any olives to pick. That would be a tragedy for us. It would be like killing us. I hope that you find a way to prevent these criminals, the settlers, from stealing our olives. As of now, there is a chance that we can manage to save something from this year's harvest.
Today, a group of Israelis came to help the villages pick olives, so a large contingent of soldiers and police arrived to prevent the settlers from interfering. The question is, why didn't they stop them earlier? I am sure they knew what was happening. Now Israelis are helping us, but what will happen tomorrow, the day after that, and throughout the olive-picking season, which lasts about two months?
I want to turn to everyone who reads my testimony to help us, and to ask how we unfortunate villagers can withstand this trauma.
Our village has never caused problems and has never had a confrontation with the army. The army only entered the village when the settlers invaded the village and came into our homes. All that we could withstand, but to take away our food and the sole source of livelihood left to us, that would be too much for us and would be tragic for the village and its residents.
Wajdi 'Abdullah 'Ubeid is married with six children. He is a resident of Yasuf, Salfit district. The testimony was taken by Raslan Mahagna on 3 October 2002.