A spa for Samaria

Water trickles quietly down the rock, sending grasshoppers skittering to safety as it flows into two small ponds at the foot of the hill. Fields of stubble glisten in the valley below. A gentle wind breezes by. It's an enchanting landscape, but the abiding tranquillity is just an illusion. The waters of the spring are pure, but nothing here is clean.

Like a rising fountainhead, the battle for this spring has thrust another Palestinian village into what has become known as the "white intifada." For the past four months, the residents of the village of Nabi Saleh, accompanied by left-wing activists from Israel and abroad, have staged demonstrations over the spring, which settlers have appropriated for themselves. One more piece of stolen private land - this time for a spa in Halamish, once known as Neve Tzuf, a settlement in Samaria.

The Israel Defense Forces, of course, didn't waste any time in declaring the spring a closed military zone on Fridays. Signs put up by the Civil Administration's staff officer for archaeology now prohibit entry into what has been designated an "antiquities site." On one sign, someone scrawled: "No Arabs allowed," and also, "The Lord is the king." Dozens of Stars of David have been plastered on the white agricultural building in the Palestinians' fields at the foot of the spring - the settlers' handiwork.


They've also come up with a name for the Palestinian spring, accompanied by a memorial plaque at the entrance: "Meir's Spring, in blessed memory of Meir Segal, a founder of Neve Tzuf, a man of faith and deed, possessing the virtues of grace and humility, lover of the Land of Israel, who fought for its well-being and clung to its soil."

Armed with the virtues of grace and humility or not, the settlers took it upon themselves to install tables, camping benches and lean-tos at the site; one table is bound to a tree with an iron chain. There is also a barbecue set up and the remnants of a hafla, a large feast, with an empty orange juice bottle lying nearby. Yet another picnic site in the large and promised land, recommended for use on Shabbat and holidays. "Meir's Spring," always and for all time, it's all theirs.

in full: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1164738.html

It's no wonder his articles are so widely reprinted.

I think his writing style has a lot to do with it.

This is the story of a small village whose lands were plundered and whose residents decided not to take it lying down. It's also the story of a village that decided to fight without arms. "Neve Tzuf, it's all for you," declares the sign at the entrance to the white, appallingly uniform Lego-like houses of the settlement that was built on village land and now wants the village's spring too. "No to a Perestinian state," another sign at the entrance asserts, as a nod to Israeli President Shimon Peres. And also: "For sale, two-family house, 101 square meters, plus 101 square meters of surrounding land."
By the gas station at the entrance to Nabi Saleh, a bit of a stench hangs in the air. Keren Manor, an activist in the photographers' organization ActiveStills and an employee of B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, explains that the lingering odor is from the "skunk bomb" the IDF used to disperse the demonstration the Friday before. The windows of a few houses were shattered by rubber bullets fired by soldiers.

Tamimi, 43 and a father of four, works for the Palestinian Interior Ministry. He is also trying to reshape the struggle against the occupation, though perhaps this is naive. By 2004, he had been placed in administrative detention - arrest without trial - 12 times. In 1993, he was shaken so violently by Shin Bet security service interrogators that he fell into a coma and was paralyzed for a month. That same year his sister, Basama, was killed when she went to the military court in Ramallah, where Bassam was being remanded in custody. An army interpreter pushed her down a staircase and she broke her neck and died, leaving five young children behind. But all of that, he says, was long ago. Now Tamimi is offering his village, and actually his entire nation, a new model of struggle.

The settlement of Halamish, which was previously called Neve Tzuf, was established in 1976 on the ruins of a British police station from Mandate times - but on land belonging to the village of Nabi Saleh. The name Neve Tzuf was disallowed by the authorities and changed to Halamish, but the settlement itself was permitted. When the first intifada erupted, Halamish expanded its territory and built a new fence, 100 meters from the first fence - all of it on land belonging to Nabi Saleh. A court petition resulted in the dismantling of the fence, but Halamish did not stop expanding. In the summer of 2008, the settlers seized control of the spring; they started to develop the site and even brought goldfish to the pool.