ביקור סולידריות ב- 26 במרץ

Last week, settlers from the area of the Maon settlement spread barley
grains poisoned with deadly rat poison in the fields belonging to residents
of the villaes Tawane, Mufkara and Haruva in the South Hebron Hills. The
poison was spread in an extensive area and its' collection will take a few
weeks. As of now 4 sheep have died and several wild animals. There is
concern that also sheep that have not died but ate large amounts of poison
will become sick. The main livelihood of  the residents is based on grazing
herds of sheep. During the years, the pasture lands have shrunken due to
settlers seizing control of  larger and larger areas and! the violent
eviction of shepherds from their land. This goes on as the army turns a
blind eye or even worse is an active participant.

The poisoning of the sheep is a death blow to the livlihood of the
residents, dangerously threatening their ability to stay on their land and
the continuance of  Palestinian life in the area. The poisoning of the
fields is another stage in the endless torture of the Palestinians by the
settlers of Maon and Maon Farm. In the past drinking water wells have been
poisoned, children have been attacked on their way to school and trees have
been uprooted by the settlers.

We are in urgent need of donations to help support the residents, who have
been hurt by the poisoning of the fields, in their struggle to stay on their
land

Cheques made for Taayush can be mailed to:
P.O.Box 4441
Jerusalem
92542

(Please notify that the donation is for the shephreds of the South Hebron
Hills)

Thanks,
South Hebron committee.

Who poisoned sheep at outpost?

Matthew Gutman, THE JERUSALEM POST      Apr. 4, 2005

Who sprinkled a potent rat poison in the terraced fields near the Maon Farm
illegal outpost over the past two weeks? Was it, as police believe is most
likely, the Maon outpost settlers, or was it local Palestinians, or perhaps
even the foreign and Israeli activists that the settlers here sneeringly
call "provocateurs"?

The Judea and Samaria Police say they don't yet know and haven't ruled out
any possibilities. What is clear, however, is that with the implementation
of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement drawing nearer, the battle
for tiny parcels of land like this one outside Maon Farm is to become
ever-more contentious, possibly even violent.

The Palestinians said Sunday that 15 of their sheep – the primary source of
income in the village – died and a dozen others took ill since an alert
shepherd detected what looked like green candies in the fields almost two
weeks ago. Local shepherds said they tossed out dozens of liters of milk and
tens of kilos of meat from contaminated animals.

Israel Nature and Parks Authority autopsies confirm part of the carnage. The
authority found that several gazelles, a snake and a rare squirrel died from
consuming the poison which was laid in neat piles in a pasture claimed by
both the settlers and the Palestinians. However, an authority veterinarian's
autopsy found that only wild animals had traces of poison in them. Sheep
from the At-Tuwani flock, provided to the authorities as part of the
investigation, had no evidence of poison in their systems.

The authority's toxicology expert Dr. Batik Peled said that "such cases of
poison are not difficult to detect, because generally animals the size of
sheep have eaten a substantial amount of the poison to have been killed by
it." "What's fishy here," she added, "is that the poison was carefully laid
out in piles in linear rows, which made clearing it quite easy."
While government permission is required to purchase the poison, "it is very
easy to get your hands on it," said Peled.

A few days after the first detection of the poison – in fields declared "an
IDF firing zone," in early March – shepherds reported that two sheep had
died and that 15 more had become ill, while an additional sheep was said to
have died this week. Some 300 people live in At-Tuwani.
Police see a steady proliferation of settler-Palestinian strife, said Supt.
Shlomi Sagi, spokesman for the Judea and Samaria Police Division. "Each side
seems more intent on harassing the other and making sure to send complaints
about it to the police," he said.

Juma Musa Raba'i, an At-Tuwani shepherd and farmer said Sunday that the
settlers harassed the villagers continuously over the weekend, snapping
their olive saplings in half and laying down even more poison.
Pro-Palestinian activists from the "Christian Peacemakers Team" and "Dove
Operation" have issued seven press releases on the subject since Thursday.

However, Raba'i said no one in the village had witnessed the dissemination
of poison, which villagers claim settlers sprinkle in the fields at night.
"They [police] always say we lack evidence. They are right. But when I do
something they always seem to have enough evidence."
But the Hebron Police Department, ostensibly tasked with keeping the peace
in these remote sparsely populated hills, said they had received only a
single complaint in the past week: the Maon settlement's security officer
complained on Saturday that Palestinians broke his camera. "What this man
was doing in those fields with his camera on Shabbat only God knows," said
one of the district's police officers on Sunday.

Yehoshafat Tor, founder of the six-family stronghold of Maon Farm denied any
connection to the poisoning. "There is no love lost between us [and the
Palestinians] but those were our own wheat fields, why would we poison the
wheat we planted?" After hearing of the incident he wondered why the
Palestinians took their flock along when they came to remove the poison.
For the past half year the Palestinians and the settlers of Maon have waged
a running battle of retaliation. The Maon Farm settlers so regularly harass
local villagers that the IDF now escorts children of the neighboring hamlet
of Tuba to and from their school in At-Tuwani. Last month, police arrested
Gadi Levanon, one of the repeat harassers. Some beatings have left
international pro-Palestinian activists and local Palestinian shepherds with
broken bones.
The settlers claim that the Palestinians are encroaching ever-closer to the
boundaries of the community. They also complain that the Palestinians
uprooted their olive saplings and damaged their crops – farmed outside the
boundaries of the settlement and technically in the same firing zone the
Palestinians are forbidden to use as pasture.

This pasture is just a ridge away from the site of the original Maon Farm,
which became the first settlement outpost ever dismantled during the Ehud
Barak administration in 1999. It was also here that the biblical David,
declared an outlaw by King Saul, hid out from the vengeful king over 2,500
years ago.

Their neighbors, said Maon's Dudi Eldar, are emboldened by the presence of
international observers whose cameras are constantly switched on. "There is
constant provocation here," he said, "and when there is repeated threatening
provocation, what do you expect might happen?" Both Eldar and Maon Farm
founder Yehoshafat Tor are mystified by the media attention. "Why here?"
asks Tor, who believes that God designated this land for the Jews.
The overburdened police force in Judea and Samaria and the IDF have a hard
time reining in the settlers – preferring to act as buffers instead. They
are, however, also so stymied by the Palestinians and highly-organized
activists that they have essentially thrown up their hands in defeat.
"The bad news is," said a Hebron-area officer, "this is only going to get
worse as disengagement approaches."