CPTnet
December 21, 1999
Hebron: When I Visited You in the Hospital
by Joanne Kaufman

"I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me...
Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are
members of my family, you did it to
me..." Matthew 25.

The phrases above from Matthew 25:31-46, read for the sermon on Sunday,
caught my attention especially since I had just visited someone in the
hospital the day before. The familiar admonition from Matthew to help
those in need took on a different tone than usual, though, as we lit
candles and said prayers to remember those who are suffering in Palestine
today. I wondered, "What does it mean to do something for those who are
the least..."

"Muhammad," the bearded Palestinian farmer whom a Palestinian journalist
and I visited Saturday, had been beaten by Israeli settlers when he went to
work his land that morning. He had 12 stitches in his head, kidney bruises
and was hooked up to an IV, though he was released later that day. Four
other members of his extended family were also hospitalized with injuries
from the confrontation.

Israeli settlers and Palestinian farmers near Ma'on have had bitter
relations. Like many Israeli settlers who live in trailers or tents on the
remote hilltops of the West Bank, the settlers were driven by an ideology
of Jewish manifest destiny to claim all of the West Bank as "Judea and
Samaria" for Israel. Comparing their situation to the "pioneer" settling
of the western United States in the latter half of the last century, these
Jews had built a farm on a hilltop confiscated from the Palestinians.

Confrontation led to tragedy a year and a half ago when Israeli Dov Dribben
was killed with a settler gun by a Palestinian shepherd. Since then,
settlers have prevented the farmers from planting the fields below the
hilltop settlement with wheat, olive trees or forage for their goats and
sheep.

Israeli settlers were supposed to have been removed from Havat Ma'on (Ma'on
Farm) as part of Israel's peace agreement early Wednesday, November 10. But
some of the settlers hid in caves near the fields below the settlement. On
Saturday, November 13, as the farmers were negotiating with soldiers to
work their fields, 60 settlers surrounded them. According to the farmers,
Dov Dribben's widow was present and told them that she would never give up
claims to the land since her husband was killed there. Settlers and farmers
exchanged a barrage of stones. When an Israeli soldier attempted to assist
a wounded Palestinian, the settlers attacked him too. The Palestinians were
eventually taken to the hospital for treatment.

Four days after the confrontation, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began
evicting the Palestinian families from their homes and land. This was in
keeping with an agreement between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the
Israeli Yesha Council, which oversees settlers in the West Bank, that the
removal of Israeli settlers from hilltop settlements would be matched by the
removal of Palestinians from the same areas. At Ma'on Farm, a handful of
Israeli homes were removed while 20 Palestinian families totalling around
400 people were evicted by soldiers now posted at the farm.

For the Palestinian farmer and families in the area of Ma'on, giving first
aid and visiting them in the hospital does not solve the root cause of their
problems. How may we also address and counteract the injustice which denies
them the basic human rights of home and work?