IN STEREO

They still intervene today. But no matter how much they do, no matter how they try to steal lands, no matter how much they try to cancel projects, the area’s people still work. They work; we work. We don’t stop. So there’s resistance here, not with a stone or with arms or anything. Resistance here is with law. [That’s] the culture of the area’s people. I mean, it’s not too different. Sometimes we resist with stones, with anything we can [use to] prevent them, not only by law. But what can I tell you? Maybe Battir is a bit more culturally developed than the other villages around. And since a long time ago, by laws we had, and the agreements between us and them, and the old papers that prove that the land is ours, we don’t need to resist [as much], because we refer to law. Maybe four or five months ago, they came wanting to take a whole mountain.

Settlers came first, without police, without anyone. And they opened the road on the mountain, and they put a barrack, a beginning of a settlement. It was between Beit Jala and Battir, you may remember. So the area’s people started to go there every day – at night, in the morning – to stand in that area, approach them, scare them. The police came, opening cases against them, because the area’s people started going and coming back a lot. They wanted to [show] that the land belongs to them, so the area’s people brought them papers from the Ottoman time of where lands were. Because nobody sold [and] today nobody sells in the area. All of them are farmers, I mean, so it’s impossible that somebody would sell. So by law, we were able to get them out there. – Mohammad