Outposts in caves

_{By Akiva Eldar}

In their verdict on the five high-school graduates - Noam Bahat, Hagai Matar, Adam Maor, Shimri Zameret and Matan Kaminer - who were convicted last Tuesday of refusing to be drafted, the judges of the Jaffa Military Court wrote that they were convinced that the five truly believed that the actions taken by the army in the course of implementing government policy with regard to the administered territories [the court's term] and their residents were illegal and unacceptable, unjustly and inappropriately harmed the local population, and caused moral damage. The judges then declared that the value of freedom of conscience must be weighed against other values that are no less important, such as national security, and that "given the state's sensitive security situation, it cannot permit itself excesses of this nature."

Volunteers from the Ta'ayush organization could tell the court a thing or two about the harm to the local population and about those who are contributing to "the sensitive security situation" that turns refusal to serve into an excess. Amnon Sadovsky of Ta'ayush, who for months has been assisting the battle for survival waged by Palestinian farmers and shepherds in the Mount Hebron area, has documented a new development with his camera: Residents of the settlement outposts, wearing skullcaps and tzitzit (ritual fringes), are no longer content with evicting Palestinian farmers from their lands, uprooting their trees and driving them out of their homes. The residents of the illegal settlements in the Sussya area have also begun driving Palestinian shepherds out of the string of caves in which they live. They take over these shepherds' miserable "houses" and steal their sheep, the poor man's lamb.

"In our tour of the area on Saturday, December 6, we came to the place that the Palestinians call `Gawawis,'" relates Sadovsky. "The place is about two kilometers from the settlement of Abigail. Four families from the Abu-Iram clan used to live there, but they disappeared a few months ago, apparently due to repeated harassment by the settlers. Stone walls separate the carefully tended groves of fruit trees that the residents left behind when they fled. About a month and a half ago, a number of young people from the surrounding [settlements] settled there, headed by a youth known to us as Itamar. With him are his wife, their baby and a several other young people, including two whom our members identified as residents of Havat Maon." According to Sadovsky, "Itamar explained to us that he and his friends decided to take over the caves in order to `redeem the land and return to a traditional way of life.' He took the trouble to say that they are `men of peace' and that they never raised a hand [against anybody]. Later, we saw settlers who had taken over a site known as Hirbat Srura and were not allowing Palestinians to approach the site."

Photos taken by Ta'ayush