Documenting Zionist crimes.
Cara MariAnna
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31 JULY—Six days after publishing “Zionist terrorism in the West Bank”—a report documenting settler attacks on the Bedouin community of Deir Alla—a text arrived announcing the evacuation of this tiny Palestinian herding community. It was Wednesday, 23 July.
Over the next couple of days and nights my friend and contact, Adnan al-Abayat, sent a stream of texts including videos and photographs documenting the ethnic-cleansing of Deir Alla. I share all of it below, and in Adnan’s voice—the voice of a Palestinian man reporting as his family and friends are forced from their homes and ancestral grazing land.
Adnan’s reporting is as close to the ground as it gets. We must hear such voices as often as this is possible. They bear witness to the brutal oppression and violence daily inflicted on the people of Occupied Palestine. We owe it to our Palestinian brothers and sisters to listen to what they tell us. We owe this out of care and respect for their humanity and indeed our own.
With each entry I include the time it was sent from the West Bank, time-stamped EEST, Eastern European Summer Time, the Time zone Palestinians reference. The interpolations are mine, provided for clarification, and are in italics.
I publish this with a heavy heart, weighted down by sadness for the families of Deir Alla and concern for their uncertain future.
May this report add to the weight that finally breaks Zionism.
—C. M.
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Text thread begins, 23 July, 6:36 p.m., EEST: “We are in dire need of solidarity to stay with us all the time so that displacement does not occur.”
C.M.: “Is Deir Alla under threat of displacement?”
A.A.: “Correct. Starting tonight, livestock will be removed from the compound. The nature of the settlers is to kill the sheep of the community’s residents, which is their source of livelihood and for which they are very afraid.”
C.M.: “Where will you put the animals?”
A.A: “They will be placed in pens in Kisan village. Now I have left my job so that I can return to them [Deir Alla] and document what is happening, given that the settlers have built a residence next to them, only a few dozen meters away.”
The penning of animals within villages—to protect them from being stolen or killed—is now common. I’ve witnessed this in the villages of Umm al–Khair and al–Mughayyir. Without the ability to graze their animals, goats and sheep must be sold one-by-one to purchase fodder—an inferior feed. Grazing animals quickly become sick when penned in small areas. Slowly these herds, upon which people depend for food and economic security, are lost.
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Text, 24 July, 2:00 a.m., EEST: “It is now 2:00 a.m. and we are still guarding what remains of the belongings in the houses in the Deir Alla gathering. Tomorrow we will continue to move the remaining properties. The houses have been evacuated of children and the elderly, leaving only the young people.”
The video below shows a trailer laden with possessions ready to be moved in the morning.
Text thread begins, 24 July, 3:19 a.m., EEST: “Tonight, a large portion of the contents of the houses was removed, along with the elderly, children, and women. The young men remained in the houses to protect them until they were completely emptied.”
C.M: “The houses of Deir Alla are being completely abandoned?”
A.A.: “Yes, for fear of theft or burning of its contents by settlers. Until now, we have not slept and are exhausted, and we are still awake for fear of erasure by the settlers who the army left behind and did nothing to stop it.”
In this photo below, Adnan keeps an overnight vigil to guard what remains in one of the homes. His legs are just visible.
In the following video, Adnan can be seen talking with Z.O.F. soldiers as residents pack to evacuate. As he explained in a follow-up query:
These soldiers were telling me that they would protect us from settler attacks, but after half an hour of conversation, they left the place and left the settlers free to carry out the sabotage.
The Arabic scrawled across the video is a common Muslim prayer: “God is sufficient to us, He is the best disposer of affairs.” In this way Muslim faithful leave judgment and all due punishment in the hands of God alone, no matter the degree of injustice that is suffered.
A.A.: “One of my cousins is tired and exhausted and is sleeping now.”
This photo of Adnan’s cousin is from the same night.
A.A.: “Frankly, after all these tragedies, I have lost hope that a good day will come. Because every day that comes is harder and worse than the day that passed. My children see tragedies and ask me why this is happening to us, and unfortunately I cannot answer.”
Text, 24 July, 3:13 p.m., EEST: The final message from Adnan on this saddest of days arrived twelve hours after the previous one. It consisted solely of videos and photos showing the last vehicles, loaded with belongings, to depart from Deir Alla. Thirteen families left that day. Four families remained, those farthest from the illegal Zionist settlement and outpost. These families evacuated over next two days, abandoning their homes.
This video shows the final departure on Thursday, 24 July.
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Text thread begins, 25 July, 9:28 a.m., EEST: The message began with a series of photographs and videos of the now-abandoned homes. Adnan, a community activist and documentarian, had returned to Deir Alla. In the few hours these houses had been left empty, settlers had stolen the roof from the home of one of his relatives.
A.A.: “While he was away from home for 6 hours, settlers stole the roof of citizen Arif Ayesh Al-Abayat's house.”
Zionist settlers did additional damage breaking the protective screens covering windows—screens put in place to protect the Bedouin families from attack by Jewish settlers. See photo below.
Text thread begins, 25 July, 6:18 p.m., EEST:
C.M.: “How many families left Deir Alla yesterday?”
A.A.: “Thirteen families.”
C.M.: “How many families are still there?”
A.A.: “Four.”
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Text thread begins, 26 July, 12:27 a.m., EEST: “The departure of the last families is imminent. These were the furthest from the settlers. Now the settlers can easily attack them after the displacement of the families who formed the frontline to repel the attacks. Soon there will be no one left.”
The following video shows the evacuation of another family just after midnight on Saturday, 26 July. As trailer beds are loaded with belongings and building materials, Adnan’s voiceover, as translated into English, says:
Right now the people are being displaced. A few moments ago an attack occurred.
The settlers continued to attack until all the families of Deir Alla left.
Text thread begins, 26 July, 1:24 a.m., EEST: “Today they seized one of the houses that was under construction.”
Adnan, still reporting and texting in the early hours of 26 July, even as the last families were being evacuated, next sent to me a remarkable photo from the day before. It shows a settler surrounded by his herd of goats, his arms raised high over head as if giving thanks to God as he claims a house that does not belong to him. It speaks volumes about the twisted depths of Zionist corruption and Jewish-supremacist racism.
Text, 26 July, 1:31 a.m., EEST: A few minutes after the previous text arrived, Adnan sent the following. It’s a heartbreaking summary of all that occurred and a eulogy for Deir Alla.
A new tragedy is added to the calamities and displacement of the Palestinian people. After appeals and cries for help from the people of Deir Alla community during the previous period, which fell on deaf ears and blind eyes, what was expected finally happened. Like all Bedouin communities, as families were displaced after continuous attacks by settlers—who destroyed, ruined, and tightened the noose on the people in the area—and through the occupation army— which quickly carried out arrests [of Palestinians] after the attacks and forced the people to pay heavy bail—and a policy of marginalization by the responsible authorities and institutions, they left their homes.
They left after a long period of harsh suffering, the last of which was last night, with homes being destroyed, and property being smashed and stolen. This forced them to leave for a dark destination with no less suffering ahead of them than what they have been through and still endure each day. They leaving behind memories swallowed in a land they never thought they would ever leave in this painful and hurtful way. We can only say, ‘God is sufficient for us, and He is the best Disposer of affairs.’
Adnan’s late-night cry from the soul, a lament for the ruin of his beloved Bedouin community, came to its inevitable conclusion hours later: On Saturday afternoon when the last families left Deir Alla.
Text, 26 July, 11:02 p.m., EEST: “The last 3 families in the compound left this afternoon.”
Later that night, Jewish terrorists went on a rampage that made the pages of Haaretz: “Settlers Torch Palestinian Homes in West Bank, Residents Flee Village.” Four houses were set ablaze, including the home belonging to Adnan’s aged parents.
Text, 26 July, 11:23 p.m., EEST: “This is a picture of our house after the evacuation.”
Text 26 July, 11:46 p.m., EEST: “This is why the residents dismantled everything when they left. But before that, there was an opinion that they should close the doors to the homes so that they could return to them in the future. They were surprised in the morning by the destruction of the houses, theft, and burning the previous evening.”
Adnan’s text continued:
An hour ago, I was with my mother. I saw her tears running down her cheeks, and she was asking me about the smallest things. Are they [the homes] still the same? Is there hope that we will go back?
They [Zionists] are keen on destruction and devastation so that there is no hope of return, but the home is not what hurts our hearts, it is also the land that we have loved and still love since childhood.
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This report should have ended here. But On Sunday, 27 July, more devastating revelations emerged when Adnan drove to Deir Alla earlier that day to check on the empty community and homes—including the home his mother had hoped to return to. This was his message:
Text, 27 July, 6:48 p.m. EEST: “Shocking tragedy happened. The settlers used heavy machinery to demolish the houses and raze them to the ground. When I returned to film, I was chased by them.”
The photos below need no explanation.
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Coda.
I had set to work on this report and the arduous task of sorting texts, photos, and videos to create a coherent account when an anomalous photo arrived from Adnan: A helicopter. The Zionist Occupation Force was using the recently abandoned and destroyed community for military training purposes.
Text, 27 July, 11:46 p.m., EEST: “They train in and near destroyed houses and next to settlers. Before that, they trained by landing helicopters on houses. I have a video before my family’s homes were destroyed and the helicopters were training on them. Sometimes the pilots would train using helicopters over houses without shooting so that new pilots could be trained on how to lower the planes next to or over houses. This made our lives miserable because of the dust, dirt, and loud noises.”
The following photo shows a helicopter training in what is left of Deir Alla. The video below that, taken on an ordinary day before the community was destroyed, shows a helicopter training next to a house. Imagine. This is life in Occupied Palestine under the relentless oppression, humiliation, and violence of the Zionist entity.
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This is where Adnan’s report ends.
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