CPTnet
20 June 2011
ARTAS: Roof destroyed on Palestinian farmer’s summer home

On 17 May 2011, vandals, whom local Palestinians assumed to be settlers from the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, destroyed the roof on an agricultural home belonging to the family of Mohammed Saleh Abu Swai.  In the summer, Palestinian farmers often sleep in stone houses out in their fields.  Abu Swai had come out to his olive orchard two days earlier to fertilize his trees and put the roof on the house.  When he returned, he saw that the planks he had laid across his house were broken and up-ended.

Artas, a nearby Palestinian village where the family stays in the winter, has about 3600 residents.  Most of the people live in the village during the school year and in the summer go out to work the land.  Mohammed’s entire family of eleven often stays in his small home located in the middle of the olive orchard.  Before this latest destruction of the roof, the military had confiscated much of Mohammed’s land, declaring it state land.

When asked if the Palestinian Authority might help repair the home, a neighbor of the family in Artas said that Palestine’s Ministry of Agriculture has virtually no finances to work with and cannot help farmers with their crops.  While sitting under a fig tree, the neighbor spoke of what the trees suffer under the military occupation—including lack of water.  “Honestly, I talk to the trees,” he said.  “This tree is very sad.”