When Israel’s bulldozers escape our attention
22 February 2016
A child sits next to a shack demolished by Israeli bulldozers in the village of Fasayil in the occupied West Bank’s Jordan Valley on 10 February.
ActiveStills
Last autumn, when word came that the unpaved road to al-Hadidiya would be repaired, villagers in this Jordan Valley herding community looked forward to a winter of less hardship.
Now, even when the rains arrived and turned the track into muck, supplies could get through, children could walk to school and the sick could reach clinics.
“I can’t tell you how happy we all were,” said Khadijeh Bsharat, a widow with 11 children, who was interviewedby the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. “We said to each other that life would be better, and we would be able to get from place to place in summer and winter.”
Residents began working on the road, leveling ruts and spreading gravel over the surface. Although Israeli army officials had issued a stop work order on 15 November, an attorney had won an injunction, and the work, supported by aid from donors, went forward.
Nevertheless, Israeli bulldozers arrived before dawn on 25 November and began to destroy what had been accomplished, piling gravel in heaps.
“The bulldozers began raking up the road,” said Bsharat, “taking our hopes with it.”
Although a member of the Bedouin regional council persuaded the crews to leave after an hour, a full 400 meters had become impassable again.
Now, it seemed to Bsharat, her children could not come to visit her, and sick members of the community would continue to have to ride for help in a tractor or on the back of a donkey.
