Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Diary from Palestine, 7 - 24 years to Volunteer

Andrea looks at the transition of children with attention from the road leading from the other villages in the South Hebron Hills, far south of the West Bank, that of At-Tuwani, where there is the school (6-15 years). Twice a day, when the children arrive and when they return to their homes. The passage is dangerous, because many attacks have been documented by Operation Dove (an NGO of which Andrew is a part), by the settlers of the outpost of Ma'on and Hill 833 (also considered illegal by the military Israelis).

These settlers are the most fanatical fundamentalists and the West Bank, attacked and repeatedly stabbed in the volunteers of Operation Dove escorting children. In fact, Andrea (who prefers not to say his last name "to avoid any problems when I return here from Italy") can not do it, but is the result of an agreement with the army and police in Tel Aviv: the cover are them.

But Andrea continues, along with other volunteers from Operation Dove, watching with apprehension until he sees the children disappear behind the hill. At-Tuwani is a poor village under full Israeli military control, where two hundred and fifty people, farmers and their families, live in small cottages (all with the demolition order of the army).

"Some still live in caves. Others, like the mayor, in tents, because their house was demolished by soldiers. The mosque was pulled down, rebuilt and now there is a new demolition order, "says Andrea, who decided to spend so its 24 years, a degree in physics from behind. This commitment is renewed every three months from December, "ended the quarter back in Italy.

The second day of my second round in March, just got up I found myself lying on the ground outside the door a young man of thirty. A villager who had made the mistake of walking too close to the grove in front of here, into which the houses are illegal settler outpost. He had been stabbed.

Luckily it was saved, but they are sporadic. " While Andrea talks about her experience at an international delegation (including the group led by former Italian MEP Luisa Morgantini) visit to the village, an Israeli police van approaching. Mark, another volunteer, goes to hear what it is.

The agent asks, "Who are those people, what they do? I want to talk to the manager. " Here Margrete Auken, MEP of the Greens, which is presented to the police, explaining the reasons for the humanitarian visit. The first policeman at Auken requests the documents, but then says that it does not matter: "But you go away from here, is dangerous.

It could burn everything. " It is only "harassment," explains Andrea then: "They prefer that the condition of the villages south of Hebron and Yatta, surrounded by Israeli settlements and outposts, it transpires, that we speak in Europe." , April 26, 2011 In the photo, an Israeli soldier talks with the green MEP Margrete Auken.

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