CPTnet
October 30, 2003
HEBRON REFLECTION: "Accidents" that happen

by Greg Rollins

In life, accidents happen, some suspicious, some real. In the West
Bank, accidents are often suspicious. Take, for example, the spring
of 2001, when an Israeli soldier in Hebron "accidentally" dropped a
percussion grenade into a crowded schoolyard. The soldier was on the
roof of a building across the lane. The army said he was playing
with the grenade when he dropped it. Why he was "playing" with a
grenade in the first place, and how he "dropped" it across a lane is
suspicious if you ask me, especially when the result was a dozen
Palestinian children hospitalized.

     Not long ago, another suspicious "accident" took place. During one of
its drills, the army set off a bomb that set 1200 olive trees on fire near
Idna village. Fifteen families lost their trees. The army will not
compensate them.

     My teammate, Chris Brown, and I drove down to Idna . A cab driver took
us out to the burnt orchards. In the distance, we heard the army practicing
their drills somewhere else. The trees were not all scorched, but they
were dead.

     As I stood there surveying the damage, I found it interesting
that the Israeli army had practiced its drills in that valley. It was
farmland. Just over the hill, there were Palestinian houses within easy
range of a stray bomb. I doubt the army would have
practiced drills that close to a civilian area in Israel. I found out
something even more suspicious when I got home. I looked on a map of the
Hebron District that shows the route the Israeli wall/fence will take in the
Idna area. It appears that the wall/fence will go right through the burnt
olive groves.

     Some people might think this is a coincidence, but I am not too
sure. This is how the Israeli army usually "sterilizes" an area. They start
with an excuse. Something like a Palestinian gunman shot from an orchard, or
a bomber came from a certain neighborhood. The army then declares the place
a closed military zone and does what it wants in that zone. No one can stop
them, not even the Israeli High Court.

     In this particular case, Palestinians did nothing to provoke the army's
actions, but the army now has a convenient argument for the wall/fence. The
army can now say they are not destroying many olive trees when they put the
wall/fence through the Idna area. No one will notice that the army already
destroyed 1200 olive trees there. Sure, the Palestinians of Idna noticed,
but no one will listen to them.

And if the Palestinians of Idna feel bad about what the army has done to
their orchards recently, the further destruction that the wall/fence will
inflict on the lands of Idna will be a catastrophe in their eyes.