Um Salamona

The camera (and a foreign passport) is mightier then the ak-47? Unfortunately no, but sometimes they can scare the guns away for the time being. Such was the case today in the village of Um Salamona, a small village in the Bethlehem District, which has the misfortune of occupying land desired by Israel. Some of Um Salamona’s fields are now situated between the foundation for the separation wall and the illegal settlement of Efrat both well inside the borders of the 1967 Green Line.


Here we are walking toward the road and wall foundation, you can see them right above the first hill

Last year villagers told us, with no internationals or film crews present, when they attempted to harvest olives from their trees on the land across the settler road that hugs the walls foundations soldiers set off a noise bomb, scaring them away, they thought it was a tear gas bomb, often used by the IDF to disperse Palestinian crowds and ran. While the villagers waited on the other side of the road, settlers came in and stole all of the olives they had already picked and their tools and supplies. They complained to the soldiers who did nothing.
This year, they were accompanied by a group 8 international volunteers and a host of Palestinian journalists and Ministry of Agriculture workers. In fact in the beginning it seemed like there were more folks documenting the harvesting of the olives then actually harvesting the olives.



At first I was a little put off by this show but put in perspective it makes a lot of sense. What the villagers needed was not our hands, they have plenty of their own and know how to harvest olives a hell of a lot better then us novices. What they needed was our white faces, funny clothes, foreign passports and cameras. Sure enough after a few minutes of harvesting two Israeli soldiers showed up.


IDF! I was a little too nervous to get a good shot at first...


I don’t think they were expecting the heavy press and foreigner contingent because they tried to hide their faces as we gathered around, filming and taking pictures. Very quickly they retreated into the olive trees and we were not bothered for the rest of the day.

Now I don’t have any disillusions of grandeur here. I think the two very young soldiers were just caught a bit off guard as it were and weren’t prepared for the onslaught of press. There are plenty of occasions when the IDF is more then willing to kick people off their land, fire tear gas, shoot and arrest, in front and onto foreigners and press. But of course it felt good to see guns turn away in the face of cameras. We spent the rest of the day picking olives and then relaxing with coffee, bread and grapes under the olive trees where the villagers showed us their documentation of prior confrontation with the IDF and one lucky young Italian woman received a marriage proposal from an elderly widower. When the separation wall is completed, and Um Salamona just received notice that it will be soon, there will be no way for them to access their farm land, with or without cameras and foreign faces.


The serious business of olive harvesting


The serious business of relaxing