Israeli Settlers Killed a Palestinian Farmer on His Own Land, in Front of His Father. Yes, Again - Twilight Zone
It took the bereaved father a long time to tell us the story, in a torrent of fluent Hebrew, almost without tears, four days after a settler murdered his beloved son before his eyes – after the father himself had been shot and wounded.
If you have the feeling that what you're reading sounds familiar, you're right. This is the third time within a month that we're telling the same story – of a young man killed before his father's eyes, a helpless Palestinian farmer cut down by an armed settler, the owner of the land felled by a violent marauder.
On March 13 we related the story of Mohammed Shnaran, from the South Hebron Hills, who saw his two sons shot in front of him, one after the other: Amir, 29, was killed; Khaled, 34, was seriously wounded. Mohammed was beaten on the head with clubs by settlers who invaded his barley field.
Two weeks later – last week – it was the story of a different Amir: Amir Odeh, 28, the father of two toddlers, who was murdered in front of his father in the fields of the village of Qusra.
This week, the victim of violent settler-criminals was Mohammed Faraj, 39, who was killed in the family's fields near the settlement of Tekoa.
The Faraj family are refugees from a village named Malha, now an upscale neighborhood in West Jerusalem. They settled in Sharafat, a village near the Palestinian town of Beit Safafa in East Jerusalem. The father of the family, Ahmed Faraj, is an impressive man of 75 who wears a black skullcap. He has worked as a foreman for 54 years for construction firms around Israel. Most of his children have college degrees.
Mohammed's wife, Arin, is 35 and is pregnant with the couple's sixth child. Mohammed's brother, Hassan – a 46-year-old history teacher with master's degrees in organizational consulting and civil engineering, relates that his younger brother was also a civil engineer but in recent years had worked as a truck driver, delivering produce in West Jerusalem.
We met the bereaved family this week through the good offices of Amer Aruri, a field researcher for B'Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. We arrived four days after their tragedy, meeting in the yard of a Sharafat school, where the Farajs had erected their mourning tent. The day we visited they had started to take it down, after thousands of people came to offer their condolences.
The extended family owns 97 dunams (24 acres) of land in the village of Harmala, between the settlements of Efrat and Tekoa, south of Jerusalem – land the three Faraj brothers had inherited from their grandmothers. Their property, part of which is located in Area C (which is Israeli controlled) of the West Bank and part in Area B (jointly controlled by Israel and the Palestinian Authority), is privately owned and is listed as such in the Israel Land Registry.
"No one bothered us and we didn't bother anyone. We lived a terrific life," Ahmed says, adding that the family grows olives – what Palestinians call "strategic food" that provides fruit but demands relatively little work – and also a vegetable garden.
Their terrific life ended abruptly about a year ago. Settler youths from Efrat and the outposts that have sprung up around it started to encroach on the Farajs' land. The family hired a guard and afterward also fenced off the area, to the tune of tens of thousands of shekels. Half a year ago or so, the guard informed them that settlers had invaded the site with all-terrain vehicles.
Ahmed asked Yehuda, whom he refers to as the settlers' "team leader": "Why are you here? What do you want here?"
"This is our land," the settler replied.
"Did anyone sell it to you? Did anyone give it to you as a gift? Did the state give it to you?" Ahmed wanted to know. Yehuda replied in the negative.
"So how is it that you say it's yours?" Ahmed asked, in feigned naivety.
"The patriarch Abraham gave it to us," came the response.
Ahmed: "The patriarch Ibrahim gave it to you? Fine. The patriarch Ibrahim is your father and my father. He gave to you and he gave to me. He gave to Yitzhak and he gave to Ismail."
The settler Yehuda objected. "Abraham gave the land only to the Jews. Like it or not, the land is ours. I am the law and I am also above the law."
In short order, the unfriendly conversation evolved into a barrage of stones hurled at Ahmed by the settlers. He decided to leave before the situation escalated.
Thus the troubles began. Ahmed still believed in the power of the documents he held and assumed that the law enforcement authorities would protect his rights. He is, after all, an Israeli, a resident of the country. "This is a democratic state for all the peoples; the law is above everything," he asserted.
But last week on Wednesday the guard called him again to say that settlers had breached the fence. Ahmed asked his Israeli employers for permission to leave for a couple of hours. Rushing to his land, he saw settlers wandering about as though it was theirs. It was raining – he left without fixing the opening in the fence.
The next morning he awoke very early in Sharafat, which is about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from his land. A call from the guard informed him that settlers had arrived overnight with a tractor, which was now flattening the earth after entering the property by means of a 10-meter-wide gash they had created. They had also brought spotlights and a generator, and had erected a large black tent held down by iron pegs.
Ahmed arrived at the site at 6 A.M., telling only his wife where he was headed. He took his cane with him in order to walk through his field, where wheat has sprung up again.
"Stop!" Yehuda shouted at him, as he approached.
"Who gave you the land? Who gave you permission to put up a tent?" Ahmed asked. "God gave it," came an answer. Ahmed persisted: "God gave the Torah to Moses and the Quran to Mohammed." To which the settler responded: "God gave me the power. Get out of here now. Thirty people are waiting for you. You don't know what's waiting for you if you don't get out of here immediately."
Ahmed left the fenced-off area to phone the police, and later got a call from the army requesting that he forward a video of what was going on. Some 10 minutes later, three military jeeps showed up.
"Unfortunately, the soldiers and the settlers started hugging one another," Ahmed tells us now.
The commander of the unit advised Ahmed to file a complaint with the police; only that way, they said, could they remove the trespassers. Ahmed drove to the police station in the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Betar Ilit to submit a complaint.
The duty policewoman first questioned him. "Why did you enter the area? You're an Israeli, you're not allowed there. It's a 'red area,' a closed military zone." Ahmed proved to her that it's not red, not military and not closed, rather his property; a military zone exists further along, near the ancient Herodion site. "Now file a complaint," she told him.
By the time he got back the tent had been dismantled, but the settlers were still in evidence, hiding in a nearby cave. The soldiers left – for them the mission was accomplished – but then the settlers began to put up the tent again. Accompanied by a few members of his family, Ahmed approached the fence and then the shooting started, directed at him and the others. They were also pelted with stones by the settlers, who were about 15 meters away and held their ground, while Ahmed and his relatives stayed outside the fence.
"I stood in the OPA," Ahmed says, and explains: "open public area." His son Mohammed, behind him, suggested they go to the police to file a complaint. His father now asks furiously: "Why did the army leave? Why didn't they stay? Why did they leave us near people with weapons? The army is to blame for what happened."
He recalls feeling an object grazing his head – six stitches now show that spot. A paramedic later told him it wasn't a stone, but a bullet that missed him by millimeters. He realized that his face and clothes were drenched in blood, and then someone said: "Look at Mohammed, your son."
The young man was lying on his back, blood streaming from his mouth, nose and eyes. Ahmed, though wounded, rushed to him in an effort to staunch the bleeding, but to no avail: There was a hole in Mohammed's forehead above his right eye.
Now, for the first time during our conversation, he is about to break into tears, but holds himself back.
Father and son were initially evacuated to a Palestinian military clinic. From there they were taken in an Israeli ambulance to the Mazmoria checkpoint abutting the post-1967 Har Homa neighborhood of Jerusalem, and from there, in separate ambulances, to Shaare Zedek Medical Center. Attempts to resuscitate Mohammed were unsuccessful. Police officers arrived at the hospital to question Ahmed, who was released the following day.
An Israel Police spokesperson this week told Haaretz: "Evacuation of illegal outposts is under the responsibility of [the Israel Defense Forces] Central Command by virtue of its being the sovereign in Judea and Samaria. In the wake of the event of friction that occurred a few days ago, during which two Israeli civilians were wounded, one of whom was later pronounced dead, the IDF was summoned to the site and police forces, which arrived as well, launched an investigation into the case. Within the framework of the investigation a suspect was arrested; following his remand he was released under restrictive conditions. The investigation continues."
The IDF Spokesperson's Unit stated this week: "Last week (Thursday), IDF forces entered the Harmala area under the Etzion Brigade's jurisdiction. The forces were deployed following a report of a confrontation between Israeli and Palestinian civilians near an unauthorized outpost that had been established on private Palestinian land that same night. The outpost had been removed earlier that day but was reestablished illegally.
"The forces acted to disperse the confrontation and remained on site until all those involved had left the area. In addition, the forces conducted searches in the area before departing.
"After the forces left, an incident occurred in which one person was killed and three more residents of East Jerusalem were wounded. Further investigation of the incident has been handed over to the Israel Police."
The family agreed to a partial post mortem of Mohammed, only to remove the bullet from his head. Before the funeral on Friday, Ahmed was summoned to the Moriah Police Station in Jerusalem, where he received a list of restrictions regarding the funeral. No signs, no calls of "Allah is great," no shouting. "If you do something, you'll have a mess on your hands," the police officer warned. Ahmed promised quiet.
Sharafat is a quiet, calm neighborhood. But someone brought a poster to the funeral with a photograph of the victim, whereupon the family immediately received a call from the police. "There's a sign that I don't want, take it down. I'll give you five minutes to take the sign down or we'll come and shut down the place." The poster was removed and the funeral proceeded quietly.
This week an invasive tent was again erected on the family's land, this time a white one, smaller than its predecessor. It was taken down three or four times by IDF and Border Police forces, and three or four times the settlers erected it again.
"Last week I lost my beloved son," Ahmed says softly.