Blog

by Kate Raphael

A report from longtime Direct Action writer and activist Kate Raphael, who has travelled to Palestine many times in the past 20 years.

December 1, 2024

I have never watched a shepherd work before this trip. It’s a study in nonverbal communication. S, the shepherd we accompany walks ahead of the flock, sometimes keeping them together with food scraps, sometimes by throwing rocks in the direction he wants them to go, sometimes by lightly beating them with a stick. If they stray, he makes a whirring sound with his tongue. For the first hour, he covers ground quickly, ascending or descending over rock terraces and tromping through olive groves and trash heaps. The animals eat whatever they can find, leaves, trash, grass.

We walk behind the flock, trying to stay out of their way, as we have been asked to do. The sheep and goats are supposed to bond with him, not us. But one of the goats is extremely friendly and comes up to nuzzle me, making it hard not to pet him. The sweet brown donkey hangs back, loping along, but from time to time, will kick dirt at an unruly goat. We aren’t supposed to pet her either, but sometimes I can’t help it, because she literally puts her nose under my hand.

At some point, a friend of S’s comes out to serve us coffee or tea. Since he’s constantly on his phone, I assume he calls them to tell him when he’s coming by. Sometimes he goes one way, and sometimes another, but fortunately he has friends or family in all directions. One day we were served coffee three times and tea once. Palestinian hospitality is legendary, but it can pose a challenge for small Western bladders.

After the coffee break, there is usually a rest of an hour or so, when everyone lounges, the goats and sheep in the red dirt, we and S on the flattest rocks we can find. Parts of S’s land are directly under the settlement of Esh Kodesh and its outposts. When he chooses to graze his animals in those areas, we need to be particularly vigilant, watching for settlers or army to descend from the road or drive through the fields in all-terrain vehicles. When internationals first came to Qusra, settlers attacked S and the volunteers twice, both times badly injuring volunteers. When we are not near the settlement, I sometimes read Elena Ferrante while we sit on the rocks.

The women of Douma used to graze their sheep and cows on the spacious lands belonging to their village. Under the leadership of the only woman on the village council, they formed a cooperative which makes cheese and labneh, and set up a market to sell both the cheese and the milk. They explained that cow milk is best for sweet dishes like knafeh, where sheep milk is the best for hard cheeses. Douma is a small village in the Nablus region, surrounded on three sides by settlements. Even before October 7, the women were unable to access most of the land that should have been available to them for growing crops and grazing their animals. Since October 7, they have faced constant attacks ad threats by settlers, and the Israeli army, which by policy backs the settlers, told them they are permanently forbidden to use their own land. Of the 10,700 dunums belonging to the village, the farmers have access to only 900.

The women have reason to be terrified. In 2015, settlers from a nearby outpost built on Palestinian land burned two homes, killing 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh and his parents and critically injuring six others. To demonstrate the seriousness of their threats against the women, the settlers killed many of their cows and destroyed their taboun, the clay oven they use for making bread.

The woman are tough and resourceful. They built a new underground taboun and created a hidden well, so that settlers will not see it and poison the water supply, as they have done in so many other villages. But they cannot risk going to their land, so they had to rent a space for their cows and build a pen for the sheep and goats in the chicken coop next to the workshop where they make their dairy products. They are forced to buy food for the animals, which cuts into the small profit from the products. Moreover, they say that people are afraid even to come to their market to buy the products, because they have been targeted by settlers and the army. This is particularly hard on them, because the sixteen women belonging to the cooperative were selected based on need – one woman’s husband is in prison, another has a deaf child, a third is a widow with eight children.

The cooperative gets some support from the Nablus-based Women’s Support Center, run by the irrepressible woman Shireen Zeidan. The Women’s Support Center provides counseling and legal help to women experiencing violence, and works to empower women and girls through media training classes, forums and voluntary work. They also work with women from Gaza who had been living in the Nablus region before the genocide began and now cannot go home. The Center helps them with basic necessities and job training.

Hakema Hassan coordinates the Agricultural Cooperatives, which gathers donated seedlings and seeds for the dozen women’s cooperatives around the region, and organizes planting days where women from different communities come to support one another. The other day, I attended such a day in Jamai’in, a village with a huge quarry which is famous for stone. Hakema had invited youth from the village and neighboring villages, and after planting a dozen olive trees, we toured the beautiful old town, which dates to the Ottoman period.

I invite you to help the Women’s Support Center to provide lifesaving and empowering services to the northern West Bank by donating at the PayPal account tanweer.nablus@gmail.com. Be sure to note that it is for Women’s Support Center.

Copyright 2024 Kate Raphael.