Report by Johannes Koch as a volunteer at the Tent of Nations (August 2014 – August 2015)
December 2014
Johannes and Daher (right) at the grape press
I have been on the “Tent of Nations” (ToN) project for a good two months now and can say that I really like the work and the project. The other volunteers and the Nasser family are also incredibly nice and friendly. It is also very interesting to live and work with volunteers from all over the world.
The Nasser family is peacefully resisting the Israeli settlement policy. This includes tilling the land and the legal dispute against land expropriation.
In addition, youth and children’s camps are held in the summer to deal with the issue, among other things. The Nasser family has owned the vineyard (ToN) for 99 years and has numerous documents to prove it. In addition, Daoud Nasser ensures that people from all over the world learn about his project and the injustice and oppression against the Palestinians. For example, they are not allowed to build a house on their own land. Furthermore, last year Israeli soldiers destroyed over 1,000 trees.
We have breakfast at 7:00 and start work at 7:30. We have breaks from 11:00 to 11:30 and 13:00 to 14:30 and in winter we usually finish at sunset (around 17:00).
Volunteers playing soccer with Daoud (right)
View from the vineyard towards the Mediterranean coast
Our daily tasks include feeding the animals, including chickens, pigeons, the stubborn donkey Vicky and our two puppies Pikachu and Lapras.
We usually receive our work orders the day before from our boss Daher, Daoud’s older brother, as he usually only drives up to the vineyard in the morning from Bethlehem, where he lives with his family. As a person, Daher is very friendly and always up for a joke. Simon and I usually work together. Our activities are very varied and our work often differs from that of the previous day. In the first few weeks, Simon and I worked a lot on the newly built cave. There we covered the outer walls of the “cave” with stones to give it a natural look. We also put up fences around various fields to prevent the newly planted trees from being eaten by deer. We also laid out beds, built walls, cleared fields of bushes, dug up soil around young trees and helped to build the new kitchen for us volunteers. We have also built and designed cages/hutches for chickens, pigeons and soon also rabbits. The work is very varied and a lot of fun. All the fresh air, the fantastic views and the great opportunity to help shape craft projects myself make the vineyard the right project position for me.
The puppies Pikachu and Lapras
Rainbow over the Animal Farm on the ToN
I celebrated my birthday with the other volunteers in Jerusalem. My parents also visited me to take a closer look at my project and Israel/Palestine. I spent Christmas with Simon and Florian on the vineyard. We went shopping in Bethlehem beforehand and then cooked a delicious meal on Christmas Eve, although our limited cooking skills were restricted to the limited facilities in our kitchen. Nevertheless, the tea lights brought a little Christmas spirit. Although we spent Christmas without family and not at home, it was a very nice Christmas for us.
Snow on the vineyard
The snow arrived shortly after New Year. Three days of snow covered the vineyard in a white veil and sent us crawling into our cave. As we are not well prepared for snow here, Daher and Daoud were unable to get to the vineyard and we were more or less on our own. The positive thing was that we had the day off.
Even though the “Tent of Nations” project deals a lot with the conflict between Israel and Palestine, you don’t notice much of it directly. Of course you see the illegal settlements surrounding the vineyard every day, but during the day you work very quietly in the shadow of the settlements. You only find out about the attacks on the synagogue or the clashes in the Old City or on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem when you read the news. However, there was one incident: when the neighbor found a sheet of paper wrapped in plastic foil on the ToN by chance, you could directly witness the way the Israelis deal with the Palestinians. On this sheet was written “Demolition Order” and this means that if the Nasser family does not object, trees will be cut down on a marked piece of land. This deliberate placing of the demolition order, which is also exposed to the weather, somewhere on the land, instead of giving it directly to the person concerned, shows the extent to which the Palestinians are discriminated against.
April 2015
I have now been in the country for 8 months and on the ToN for 6 months. The daily work has already become part of my everyday life, but I still really enjoy my work and our cave here has become my second home. Although I’ve been here for so long, every new encounter and experience is very exciting and interesting. On the one hand, there are the many visitors and volunteers with whom you interact, but also the locals who tell you their own view of the conflict.
Time goes by pretty quickly. It is slowly getting warmer and we are looking forward to more volunteers coming again soon. Ruth, who has been here for four months, is on her way back to Scotland. In the meantime, three volunteers from the Netherlands have been here, but only for a week. Cyril from Switzerland was here for a month and we got on very well with him. I was also very happy to have my big sisters, my aunt and my uncle visit.
Simon plants an olive tree
Tree seedlings
The work continues to be very varied and there are many new projects that we volunteers are implementing together with Daher and Daoud. One major project was the tree planting campaign, in which we planted around 4,000 new trees across the entire site to replace the destroyed trees in the valley, namely grape, apricot, apple, fig, almond, peach, plum and olive trees.
We were supported by many groups and volunteers, After the tree planting campaign was completed, we helped a wine specialist from Bethlehem to plan and lay out the so-called “vineyard”. We laid out lines 2.50 meters apart in a field. On these lines, we hammered iron rods into the ground every 5 meters, which I had welded with Daher in front of them and to which we then attached wires. The vines would later grow on these wires.
Work on the “vineyard” of the ToN
Johannes and Daher welding
We are also expanding the “Animal Farm” so that we can also house goats and rabbits there in the future. We are also renovating a cave in the valley so that volunteers can sleep there in future and work in the surrounding fields. In the near future, we will also have to water the young trees, as the weather is getting warmer and the soil is becoming increasingly dry.
Unfortunately, the Israeli government is still making things very difficult for the Nassar family. The court in Israel claimed to have lost all the documents submitted so far by the Nassar family. This means that the Nassar family will have to obtain all the documents again, which is very time-consuming and expensive. After 23 years in court, the family is back to square one.
August 2015
I’m still doing very well here, even if the approaching farewell and the joy of seeing my family and friends again are causing mixed feelings.
Motto of the summer camp
There has been a lot going on in the last few months. We have experienced and helped shape the summer camp at the ToN. 20 volunteers from all over the world came to help shape it. Every morning, around 30 children were brought to the ToN in buses. Simon and I prepared the morning sports for the children. The rest of the day we worked on our projects as usual. After two weeks of summer camp, there was a party on the last Friday where the children presented to their parents everything they had done during the two weeks. In the afternoon, there was a small show where the children danced, played music and we volunteers danced Dabka
(Palestinian national dance).
We were also in Hebron for the first time, where we took part in a tour organized by “Breaking the Silence”. Former Israeli soldiers told us about their experiences and impressions from their time as soldiers in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which they themselves perceived as unjust and inhumane. This gave them a completely different perspective on the situation in Palestine. In addition, the extreme injustice towards the Palestinian population is very clear in Hebron, as part of the old city is completely closed off to the approximately 160,000 Palestinians in order to ensure the safety of the approximately 350 settlers.
Another important task was watering the approximately 4,000 trees that were planted, which have to be watered every week for the first few years. To do this, a hole is dug next to each tree, which is filled with water canisters and then closed again with soil as soon as the water has seeped away. The water was collected as rainwater and stored in the cisterns.
New fence at the Animal Farm
Finished “vineyard”
In the mornings, we mostly worked on our projects. Before the summer camp, this was the Animal Farm, which is now almost finished. We put up a new fence around the enclosures to protect the animals. After the summer camp, the focus was more on the vineyard because the vines were due to be planted there at the beginning of September. However, there is still a lot to do there before we leave and we hope to finish it by then. Otherwise, we harvested some grain fields for the animals and dug a pit for a water treatment plant.
Now it’s almost time to go back to Germany in two days. It has been an incredibly wonderful and eventful time, which makes it all the more difficult to say goodbye. Nevertheless, I’m already looking forward to going home.
Helga Lenz: As a volunteer on the ToN (5.-26.11.2024)
Back on the ToN vineyard after two years
The road to the vineyard is long.
After three flights canceled by the airlines, entry via Jordan is possible and safe. In the West Bank, the highway is closed to Palestinians, and the short path from the highway to the Tent of Nations is blocked by settlers. Another stone blockade has been erected by the settlers and the roads are no longer passable for us. Instead of a 10-minute drive to Bethlehem, we now need 50 minutes, unless a road check or blockade comes in between.
It’s quiet on the vineyard
Only a few visitor groups reach the Tent of Nations in times of war. Among them, however, are high-ranking visitors from the Archbishop of Canterbury and Luise Amtsberg, the Human Rights Commissioner, with an embassy representative. No construction noise can be heard from the settlements. These had always accompanied us in recent years. Now the settlement has grown significantly again, but work on the shells is at a standstill and the new road is not being asphalted. Since the war, very few Palestinians have a work permit. My neighbor in the shared cab, who works for an Israeli construction company, is also unemployed because he has already been arrested once – without justification. It happens all the time at checkpoints, when soldiers enter residential areas … The supposed calm is “only” interrupted by drones, helicopters taking the soldiers to their deployment sites and jet fighters flying north towards Lebanon or Gaza. On the balmy, windless evenings, we hear the explosions from Gaza.
It’s light in the vineyard at night
Two years ago, we were only illuminated by the settlers’ headlights. Now there are lights and cameras installed on the mountain. The gates are always locked, so we always have to announce our arrival by phone. When it is dark, two people go to the two gates to lock or unlock them. Attacks and fear have increased.
It is unsafe on the vineyard and outside
A container and a camper van stand two meters away on the settlers’ side of the property boundary to the side of the Weinvilla, the accommodation for volunteers. The security service drives close to the fence. After the attack on the two Nassar brothers, there were many break-ins. Even the dogs, the donkey and the chickens were stolen. And: in August, settlers erected a wooden hut on the land in the valley and came with a bulldozer to build a road on the Nassars’ land. According to the settlers, the land was given to them by God. The police were called, but did not come, and the Nassars’ lawyer was able to get the construction stopped and the building removed. In times of war, when the military has a lot of freedom for “security reasons”, this is already a success.
On the day of my visit to the women’s carpentry shop in Walajah, a snack cart that had been standing on the street for many years had just been destroyed by the Israeli military because the owner had died and no one else was allowed to continue the business (picture). The village of Walajah is also surrounded by settlements. Since the war, 26 houses have already been demolished. For “security reasons”, the military can also override recognized property.
EAPPI observers, who support the Tent of Nations every Saturday in its rural work, report that the military attacks schools several times a week.
The presence of the EAPPI, which before the war prevented soldiers from attacking with tear gas in the schoolyard and taking children with them, is ignored. Children are arrested because they allegedly wanted to throw stones or made comments about Hamas on social media.
https://www.eappi-netzwerk.de/al-walaja-ein-jahr-im-zeichen-der-abrissbagger/
https://www.eyewitnessblogs.com/children/
https://www.eyewitnessblogs.com/behind-closed-do
Support from Israeli activists, who established contact between families of prisoners before the war, is hindered. The anti-war community is also very small. In Jerusalem, 50 demonstrators are attacked by pro-war protesters and pushed off the street by 25 police officers.