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TREE DEMOLITION UPDATES

Update from the Land - #5 - September 3, 2014.

Update from the Land - #4 - August 7, 2014.

Protest Marches Across the States in Support of Gaza

Jewish Voice for Peace video - 7/30/14

Update from the Land - #3 July 22, 2014

Beyond TON - Must-read Articles on Gaza - July 27, 2014

Update from the Land - #2
June 19, 2014

Message from FOTONNA. June 19, 2014

June 19, 2014 - Six -minute Video of Daoud Interview/Scenes from Tree Demolition

June 19, 2014 - Must-Read Ariticles

FOTONNA Petition Results
as of 6/19/2014!
(Comments Included)

June 19, 2014 - Improved Contact Info

 

May 20, 2014 - FOTONNA Emergency Response Plan - Red Alert! Click here for Petition Letter

Legal Basis for Formal Protest of Land Loss - June 19, 2014

Update from the Land - #1 – May 31, 2014

Click here for
Timeline of Events
- May 20j, 2014

Must-Read Ariticles:

Please read each of these related to TON tree demolition.

  1. The Christian Family Refusing to Give Up Its Bethlehem Hill Farm

  2. The Tree Uprooting Heard Around The World


1. 

BBC News Magazine Report – June 17, 2014
The Christian Family Refusing to Give Up
its Bethlehem Hill Farm

By Daniel Silas Adamson - Bethlehem

A hand holding apples 

A Palestinian Christian family that preaches non-violence from a farm in the West Bank is battling to hold on to land it has owned for 98 years. Now surrounded by Israeli settlements, the family is a living example of the idea of peaceful resistance.

On his farm outside Bethlehem, Daher Nassar is picking apples from the ruins of the orchard he planted at least eight years ago. The fruit is scattered across ground freshly opened and imprinted with the tracks of a bulldozer. At the field's edge, branches reach out from inside a mound of earth, the bark stripped and mangled, unripe almonds still clinging to the trees.

On 19 May a Palestinian shepherd from the village of Nahalin was out at first light and saw the bulldozer at work in the field, guarded by Israeli soldiers. By the time Nassar arrived the whole orchard - the best part of a decade's work - was gone. His English is far from fluent, but there's no mistaking the pain in his voice: "Why you broke the trees?"

A spokesperson for the Israeli military authorities in the West Bank said the trees were planted illegally on state land.

Daher Nassar standing where the orchard used to be

Nassar's sister, Amal, has a different explanation. The government, together with the Israeli settlers who live around the farm, is "trying to push us to violence or push us to leave," she says. Amal insists that her family will not move from the land, nor will they abandon their commitment to peaceful resistance.

"Nobody can force us to hate," she says. "We refuse to be enemies."
That phrase, which is painted on a stone at the entrance to the farm, was first used by her father, Bishara Nassar. Long before the concept became widely known among Palestinians, he taught his children a theory of non-violence that was rooted in his own Christian beliefs.

Bishara ("Gospel") Nassar was a child when his father bought this land in 1916. Even at that time, as World War One transformed the Middle East and the Ottoman Empire limped to an end, Palestinian Christians were beginning to emigrate. After the war of 1948 the Christian exodus from the West Bank quickened, and Bishara, who was a gifted preacher and accordionist, began to travel round the nearby villages, singing songs and leading Bible study in family homes. Music and stories, he thought, might deepen the faith and lift the spirits of Bethlehem's Christian children, encouraging them to stay.

Bishara also came to believe that the Christian community had a special role to play in building a more peaceful future.

Bishara Nassar


"My father always said, 'We will never achieve peace in Palestine and Israel just by shaking hands - we need to work on people, to start with the grassroots'," says Amal Nassar. "So what we do now, as a family, is fulfilling the dream of my father that people can build bridges, for hope, for understanding, reconciliation, dialogue, to achieve peace. This is the idea."

Guided by that vision, she and her brothers have transformed the farm into a centre for peace-building and non-violent resistance called the Tent of Nations.

For more than 20 years they have held workshops here, welcoming Israeli students, rabbis, and peace activists, as well as groups from across Europe and America. They run summer camps for local schools, teaching Palestinian children about non-violence and encouraging them to develop a love for the land by working and playing on the farm. This is especially important, says Amal Nassar, for a generation that has grown up in the refugee camps and urban sprawl behind Israel's separation barrier. She also trains Palestinian women in non-violence, while her mother - Bishara's widow, Milada - cooks traditional food for the day's guests.


Amal Nassar singing with international volunteers at the Tent of Nations farm


Amal Nassar (in the white T-shirt) singing with volunteers at the Tent of Nations farm

Milada Nassar says her husband would have been proud of what his children have created. But in the years since his death in 1976, the family's commitment to non-violence has been tested in ways he could never have imagined.

At that time the West Bank had been under Israeli military rule for almost a decade, and Jewish settlers were just beginning to move into the area south of the farm. For the most part, though, the hills around Bishara's land were still open countryside, farmed by Palestinian families or used as grazing by shepherds. In the 40 years since, Israeli settlements have been built on every one.

There are five settlements in total, the nearest so close that the settlers' voices carry across the valley to the farm. The most recent, Netiv Ha'avot, is little more than a strip of houses encircled by coils of razor wire and festooned with Israeli flags. The largest, Beitar Illit, is a town of more than 40,000 people, a blaze of lights on the hillside at night. All of them are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.


Map showing the location of the Tent of Nations farm and some Israeli settlements


As they watched the settlements rise around them in the 1980s, the Nassars began to worry. Their farm was in a prime location, close to the main north-south road through the West Bank and on high ground.

In 1991 their fears were confirmed. The military authorities declared that more than 90% of the farm now belonged to the State of Israel. Gush Etzion, one of the biggest settlement blocks in the West Bank, looked set to expand on to the Nassar farm.
The Nassars, though, refused to leave, or to see the land divided. And virtually alone among Palestinian farmers, they had the documents they needed to launch an appeal in the Israeli courts.

In 1924, realising that the Ottoman Empire was finished and worried by rising tensions between Arabs and Jews, Bishara Nassar's father had registered his property with Palestine's new imperial rulers. The British issued land deeds that specified the size and borders of the farm, and Bishara's father, who was a literate man, held on to the documents. Almost 70 years later, those papers would form the basis of a legal case that has been in front of the Israeli courts for 23 years. It remains unresolved.


 Official copy of the 1924 land deeds

Official copy of the 1924 land deeds

"They know very well that the Palestinians cannot afford to defend the land," says Amal Nassar, "so they give up hope and leave." But the family have somehow found the money and determination to keep their appeal alive.

When they were informed, after 10 years in the military courts, that their Palestinian lawyer was not eligible to contest the case in Israel's supreme court - because he carried West Bank identity papers - they found an Israeli firm willing to take it on. When they were told to provide a land survey, they hired (at a cost of $70,000) an Israeli surveyor, and sent him to consult maps and documents in the imperial archives of London and Istanbul. When they were asked to bring witnesses in support of their claim to have farmed the land for three generations, they hired a bus to take more than 30 Palestinian villagers to the military court near Ramallah. "We had to wait five hours outside the court under the sun," remembers Amal Nassar. "And then, after five hours, a soldier come out, they say, 'We don't want witnesses, go home.'

"Every time they see you are ready to meet their demands, they ask [for something] more and more difficult, [so] that you say 'I am fed up, I cannot.' Yes, this [is] always the process. We know it. It's a game to push us to leave."

The way Amal sees it, the Israeli military and the settlers, having failed to evict the family by legal means, are now trying to force them out. She remembers the settlers who uprooted 250 young olive trees in 2002, and who permanently closed the road to the farm with rubble. The demolition orders posted on the gate, threatening to destroy the Nassars' home and water wells. The soldiers who, in 2009, forced her 72-year-old mother out of bed at gunpoint in the middle of the night and made her wait in the cold while they searched the farm.


Vehicles parked where the road to the Tent of Nations farm is blocked


Vehicles park where the road to the Tent of Nations farm is blocked

The Israeli authorities in the West Bank insist that by destroying the Nassars' orchard and posting demolition orders on the Tent of Nations, they are simply enforcing planning regulations. "We are not intimidating the family," said a spokesperson for CoGAT, the body responsible for implementing Israeli policy in the West Bank. "We are not doing any of those steps in order to make the family leave. We are enforcing the law."

The Israeli military did not respond to the specific allegations made by the Nassars, but they, too, denied that the family is subject to a campaign of harassment: "The assertion that the IDF seeks to intimidate as a means of eviction is farcical, and an absolute contradiction of the reality on the ground in Judea and Samaria [West Bank]. The reality of Judea and Samaria, in which acts of Palestinian terrorism and extreme violence continue to rise, presents a complex security challenge. Nonetheless, the IDF remains committed to fulfilling its mission of safeguarding security and stability in the region, in a highly professional manner based on the morals and code of ethics that stand as a pillar of all IDF activities."

Amal Nassar's younger brother, Daoud, is not impressed by the moral code of the men who uprooted his orchard. But neither is he angry: "We are willing to build up a better future in a non-violent way… without hatred," he says. "Our response to this injustice will never be with violence, and we will never give up and leave."


Sign with words 'Fight violence with love'


Palestinians have a word that captures this refusal to be provoked or demoralized: sumud. Sometimes translated as 'steadfastness', sumud describes the stubborn, patient determination to stay on the land and to carry on in spite of all the difficulties of living under military occupation.

It is a quality embodied by Daher Nassar, who, even as he walks across a scarred and empty field, is imagining the orchard he'll harvest 10 years from now.  "I will plant more trees," he says. "Double trees."

Sign with the words 'We refuse to be enemies'




2. 

The tree uprooting heard around the world 

The Nassar family had its fruit trees in the West Bank uprooted by the army last month despite a pending legal appeal, which the army now says wasn't done properly.

By Ilene Prusher | Jun. 12, 2014 | 4:55 AM

Daher Nassar points to the place where his fruit trees were uprooted by the IDF, near the village of

A mural mosaic at the Tent of Nations. Photo by Ilene Prusher

Ilene Prusher

Daher Nassar points to the place where his fruit trees were uprooted by the IDF, near the village of Nahalin. Photo by Ilene Prusher

Daher Nassar keeps farmer’s hours, rising early to tend his fruit trees. But on one recent morning, one of the villagers overlooking his orchard called him extra early and woke him. His trees, which he says numbered about 1,500, had been bulldozed and removed by the Israel Defense Forces before the sun rose over the West Bank hilltops.

Now, he looks out wistfully at the hard earth of the valley known as Wadi Salem, a few leftover branches jutting out here or there. “I raised those trees like I raised my own children,” he says, standing in the valley just below the Palestinian villages of Nahalin and lying low beneath the high-ground settlement of Neve Daniel. “I had figs, apples, apricots, olives, grape vines. Why would they destroy them?”

The uprooting happened on May 19. A few weeks prior, the IDF’s Civil Administration left a notice under a large rock near the trees, saying that it was state land that must be evacuated. In response, on May 12, the Nassar family filed an appeal through their lawyer, stating that they could prove that the trees were planted on family land. Although no verdict was given and only a week had passed, the trees were uprooted and removed anyway, the land bulldozed.

What has followed since then has been nothing less than an international maelstrom. Various human rights groups — including Jewish American groups who since 2000 have been coming to visit the Nassar family’s “Tent of Nations” up the hill — have expressed outrage at what seems like an inexplicable act, one that violates Israel’s own legal procedures. And as the Nassars are Christians involved in peace activism, running summer camps for Palestinian youth and seminars for local and international adults focused on nonviolence, many American Christian groups and have also taken up the family’s cause, particularly the Presbyterian Church. An article last week in Commentary, a conservative American Jewish magazine, seized on the issue under the headline: “Presbyterians’ Tent of Nations Propaganda,” suggesting that “traditional anti-Semitism” was behind the American church’s interest in the matter. CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, has also jumped on the issue, accusing Christian activists of “passing on anti-Israel propaganda offered to them by Palestinian Christians in the West Bank as the gospel fact.”

CAMERA, which focuses on criticizing the media’s coverage of Israel, quoted Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in defense of the May 19 uprooting of the trees, saying that no appeal on behalf of the Nassar family had ever been filed. This week, however, ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told Haaretz that that information was incorrect, following evidence that such an appeal had in fact been made.

“It now seems that the information was partly erroneous, and that an appeal was actually filed by Nassar on May 2014, as he claims. We’re waiting for clarifications from COGAT,” Palmor said in an e-mail response, referring to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, a branch of the IDF.

In the latest development, however, the IDF says that the appeal was not done in the proper way, and therefore, it was never discussed in court. The Civil Administration, the branch of part of the IDF that carries out demolitions in the West Bank, thus was not told there was any reason to halt their order to uproot the trees, says Maj. Guy Inbar, the COGAT spokesman.

“We just yesterday talked with the [Ofer Military] court, and the court told me that Mr. Nassar’s appeal was not discussed because it was not made as it should be,” Inbar told Haaretz Tuesday. “First, there’s a tax that you need to pay to make an appeal, and they did not pay that tax. Second, Mr. Nassar’s lawyer gave this appeal without showing that he has power of attorney, and that is necessary to start the appeals process,” said Inbar, referring to Daher Nassar’s younger brother, Daoud, who is the family’s main spokesman but was away in the United States when the trees were uprooted.

“After a court decision that Mr. Nassar has not shown any ownership of the land, on land that the state says is state land, and after Mr. Nassar was given the opportunity to remove those trees himself, after all of that, we enforced the law and removed those trees,” Inbar said.

Reporters in the Middle East are accustomed to the extreme sport of trying to figure out whose version of the story is closer to the truth, and this one is no exception. While the Nassar family says they had 1,500 trees planted in the valley, Inbar says there were only 300 and that there are aerial photographs to prove it. The Nassars say the trees were there for 10 or more years; Inbar says there was nothing there until 2007.

Moreover, Inbar says that the trees seem to be an attempt to blur the issues. The Tent of Nations, which is located up the hill about a kilometer away, is also a subject of ongoing dispute with the state. Inbar said it is considered an “illegal post,” with some of it on private Palestinian land and some of it on state land. The dispute is awaiting a decision by the High Court of Justice, he said.

“Until we will have a court decision, we won’t take steps to demolish this illegal post,” Inbar said. Even if you’re living on private land, you have to get permits in order to start building.”

The Nassar siblings say they clearly hold the deeds to the land that their grandfather bought in 1916. They’ve been in the area for generations; their families once dwelled primarily in caves. Their father, Bishara Daher Nassar, had a dream of turning the hilltop into a place for peacemaking, and even had a motto: “We refuse to be enemies.” In 2000, several of his nine children established the Tent of Nations, an educational and environmental farm. It’s become a place to welcome peace-oriented groups — including Jewish groups — and host summer camps for Palestinian kids.

One of those groups is Encounter, which brings Jews — mostly Americans but also Israelis — to the West Bank to meet Palestinians, particularly those dedicated to nonviolence. In their trips to meet Palestinians with an eye toward better understanding the conflict, Encounter often stops at the Tent of Nations on their way to or from Bethlehem.

“I met the Nassar family in 2008. They were immediately warm and welcoming of us bringing groups, including Jewish Americans and Jewish Israelis. Their whole mission is to bring groups of people together to increase understanding of what’s happening to Palestinians,” explains Ilana Sumka, the former Jerusalem director of Encounter and now a volunteer consultant to the group living in Belgium.

“It’s in Area C, and that means that it’s a rare place that’s accessible for people with Israeli citizenship to meet Palestinians,” added Sumka, who recently organized a conference call with the Nassar family and 30 Encounter alumni — many of them rabbis and lay leaders in the American Jewish community.

Independent of Encounter, Sumka is organizing a delegation of Jews to come to the site to do a tree-replanting mission. It is planned for next February, the planting season. “I want to let the Nassar family know that the Israeli government’s bulldozers don’t represent my Jewish values,” she explained.

Daoud Nassar said in a phone interview yesterday that he was surprised to hear that the IDF now argues that the appeal against the tree uprooting was somehow not legitimate.

“We appealed on May 12, and that appeal was stamped by the authorities. The lawyer has the documents to prove that. The question is why this happened, after we appealed, which according to the law is not right,” Nasser told Haaretz. “For us, this is about justice. We’re trying to do everything legally. The Supreme Court decided in 2006 that we are able to re-register our land here according to Israeli law, but the authorities are always postponing this process, until today. We keep investing our frustrations in a positive way, and are trying to do something hopeful.”


The Austin Stone Community Church, in Austin, Texas, sent a film crew to the Tent of Nations/Nassar family farm during the June 2011 Summer Youth Camp.  In this 23-minute film, Daoud Nassar talks about his faith as a Christian and follower of Jesus, and how the family's vision lead to the creation of the Tent of Nations Project.  Daoud also talks about the family's responses to the evils of the occupation, and how their faith, like all faiths, teach the concept of "Refusing to be enemies."

Love Your Enemies from The Austin Stone on Vimeo


Friends of Tent of Nations North America (FOTONNA) is a non-profit corporation.  Our mission is to support the work of other nonprofit organizations in the United States and internationally devoted to the nonviolent resolution of conflict and peaceful coexistence between all faiths and nations.   FOTONNA is managed on a volunteer basis by a core group of people in the United States and is governed by a Board of Directors. A growing group of supporters assist with a variety of tasks, including publicity, writing, event organizing, and community outreach. Churches and Interfaith NGOs form an important base of spiritual and financial support. 

Use the contact page to join and the donation form to help us in our work. 

In pursuit of our mission, we work closely with other non-profits committed to the search for peace.  Organizations we have supported in our inaugural year include the following: 

TENT OF NATIONS

Daoud Nassar is a Palestinian farmer living and working in the fertile hill country south of Bethlehem. The Nassar's farm, in the family for four generations, is ringed by Jewish settlements and the encroaching Separation Wall.  The family has been offered millions for the land, but they remain steadfast. "This land is our mother," says Daoud. "Our mother is not for sale." Under his leadership, the family has taken the case to establish the family's land rights to the Israeli Supreme Court.  To demonstrate their commitment to peace and coexistence, the Nassar family has established "The Tent of Nations" providing arts, drama, and education to the children of the villages and refugee camps of the region. In addition, Daoud and his family have also established a Women's Educational Center offering classes in computer literacy, English, and leadership training.  In recognition of the Nassar’s courage and groundbreaking work for peace, we have named our nonprofit “Friends of Tent of Nations” to underscore our commitment to building a bridge between our country and others like the Nassars working for world peace.  Learn more about the Nassars at www.tentofnations.org,  

INTERFAITH PEACEBUILDERS 

Interfaith Peace Builders (IFPB) is a nonprofit organization based in Washington DC that sends delegations of Americans to Israel and Palestine to connect with peace groups and to understand the facts of the conflict first hand.  IFPB and FOTONNA enjoy a close relationship:  the Nassar farm is a regular feature of the IFPB delegation to Israel-Palestine.  In November 2008 FOTONNA co-sponsored an event the San Francisco Bay area with Interfaith Peace Builders featuring Daoud Nassar and several Palestinian and Israeli artists.    www.interfaithpeacebuilders.org  

COMBATANTS FOR PEACE 

FOTONNA maintains close connections with faith communities here and in Israel-Palestine and often co-sponsors events in support of non-profits working for peace in conflict areas.  In March 2009 we co-sponsored an event with Trinity Presbyterian Church in Arlington, VA.  The event was a presentation by Combatants for Peace, an Israeli-Palestinian organization devoted to reconciliation and a peaceful resolution of the conflict.  Combatants for Peace carries out its educational and fundraising work in the United States through the nonprofit Rebuilding Alliance.  Learn more about Combatants for Peace at www.rebuildingallliance.org  

LOVE THY NEIGHBOR 

FOTONNA is committed to working with and supporting the work of other organizations committed to non-violence in the search for a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.  In early 2009 we co-sponsored an educational and fundraising event with Love Thy Neighbor,.  LTN is a Washington DC-based nonprofit organization that provides educational resources and programs to train young people in non-violence as a way of resolving conflict.  www.ltneighbor.com 

Your information will not be shared with any organizations or individuals, nor will you be “spammed” with frequent emails! We will send out periodic newsletters and notices of special events such as events and program by partner nonprofits and organizations sponsored by FOTONNA.  Use the contact page to join and the donation form to help us in our work. 


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