In the night from friday to saturday at around 3 a.m. israeli soldiers occupied a house home to two families with 15 people and expelled the residents. I arrived in the following afternoon, 4 other ISMers were already there. When being asked about the reason, the soldiers told us that youths would frequently throw stones targeting the nearby road that leads to the settlement of Bitar Elit. The house is located on the main road of Husan, a village of 5000 souls near Bethlehem, and the soldiers closed the part of the road next to the house, which caused a detour of about 1km for cars as well as for pedestrians.
On Sunday morning something unexpected happened: A jew from Bitar Eilat settlement arrived and expressed his disagree with the army's actions. He also confirmed that there had never been an incident of stones thrown on the close-by road which he uses every day. It was not clear if it was because of the settler's complaint, but a few minutes later the army opened the road. Then at noon reporters from "al arabiya" and another arbic TV channel arrived and started filming and the soldiers closed the road again. Soon children arrived, on their way home from school. When they understandably started to raise their voices, the locals immediately calmed them down to avoid any violent reaction from the army, though the kids seemed a bit angry, but not aggressive. Finally, after about one hour they opened the road again.
At night, the director of the Khalil branch of the ministry of interior of Palestine, who is a resident of Husan, arrived and told us that he negotiated with the responsible army commander under mediation of the red cross, and was promised that the soldiers would leave still at this night, which eventually happened at 3.40 a.m.
Even if I try to put myself in the position of a hardcore zionist, I could not see a reason for the occupation of the house. Probably they wanted to find out about the attendance of the residents to take violent measures against the occupation, which turned out to be 0. Or they just wanted to show them who has the power and can ignore laws - palestinian, israeli or international ones - without any consequences.
I slept at the formerly occupied house and in the afternoon I took a walk in the beautiful surrounding of Husan. Together with one youth from the house I crossed a valley of stone terraces of vegetable fields and olive groves with a lot of springs emerging from caves in the slopes. Then we crossed a coniferous forest on top of the hill which marked the israeli border. I was a bit worried, rather about my companion than me. We took a rest at a recreation area where strollers passed by and boys made barbaque. Then on the way back a police car stopped us, but after I showed them my passport we could continue to cross the border again, illegally. He told me that he used to walk this path every night at around 4 a.m. on the way to his work in Jerusalem. Almost every Husani works or used to work in Israel or in one of the settlements and they have comparatively normal relations with some of the settlers.
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