CPTnet
11 August 2005

AL-TUWANI: Donkey justice

by Michael Goode

Several weeks ago, Al-Hajj (not his real name), a Palestinian Bedouin
living near At-Tuwani, asked CPT to accompany him to the Israeli police
station in Kiryat Arba so he could file a complaint against settlers from
nearby Carmel who had stolen his donkey.

As I soon learned, filing a simple complaint can turn into an all-day
affair. When we arrived at the police station, at least an hour away from
At-Tuwani via Palestinian roads, we had to enter at the rear. Several
phone calls and forty minutes later, an officer finally walked out to
unlock the gate and let us enter. Once we were inside, an Arabic-speaking
officer informed us that we would have to make the complaint at Carmel and
a police jeep would take us there in forty-five minutes.

While we waited, a friendly Israeli settler passed by and assured Al-Hajj
that, although he was a settler, he carried no weapons and only wanted to
live in peace. Even assuming his sincerity, the settler still missed what
was obvious to the Palestinians sitting in an Israeli police station: he
did not need to carry weapons. He and his settler cohorts had arrayed
around them a sophisticated security apparatus dedicated to their
protection.

We waited almost two hours before we learned that the jeep would not be
going out that day and that Al-Hajj would have to find his own way to
Carmel. Since Al-Hajj is a Palestinian, he was not permitted travel on
Israeli-only 'by-pass' roads. This meant taking an indirect route that
added an extra hour of travel time.

Our Homeric trek to Carmel included taking three separate taxis, crossing
two Israeli military roadblocks, and walking four miles along an Israeli
'by-pass' road before Al-Hajj managed to flag a Palestinian taxi to
Carmel.

When we arrived, I could see a police jeep at the main entrance with four
settlers, a private settler security officer, and a donkey waiting behind
the gate.

The police at Carmel took Al-Hajj's complaint while the settlers walked up
to the jeep with the donkey. They photographed themselves next to the
donkey, and one of them even turned to me and smirked, "Peace and love,
right?"

The most remarkable part of the story is not that Al-Hajj got his donkey
back. It is rather the manner in which the Israeli police handled his
case. It was obvious to me that Al-Hajj wouldn't have his donkey without
international help. The biggest scandal of all was the barely concealed
fact that the Israeli police knew who had the donkey all along. It was
there when we arrived. Perhaps the most outrageous sight was watching one
of the Israeli police officers get chummy with the settlers, putting his
arm around one of them and patting him on the back while they exchanged a
good laugh.

Imagine that you called the police to report a stolen television, and the
officers showed up with the thief acting as if they were schoolyard
buddies. You, too, would wonder whose side they are on.