Suddenly I noticed that we were quite alone on the road. A wonderful road, six lanes wide, parts of it still in the building stage. Completely empty.

This is a bypass-bypass road, an invention of the occupation. First, they built the cross-Samaria road, from Kafr-Kassem to Ariel and beyond, so as to by-pass the Palestinian villages. But the Palestinian village of Bidia, which, on Saturdays, has become a shopping mall for Israelis, slowly crept up to the road. In anticipation of the next intifada, Benjamin Nethanyahu and Ehud Barak (each in his turn) decided on an even more sterile, bypass-the-bypass road. Again great stretches of Palestinian land were expropriated, again we demonstrated together with the Palestinian villagers (November ‘98), again we were tear-gassed (one does not shoot at Israelis), again to no avail.

But now the road is empty. Only from time to time we meet groups of cars. The settlers are driving in convoys for fear of stone-throwing children. But we were lucky. Here and there we saw stones lying around on the road, remnants of previous stone-showers, but we passed unmolested.

On the previous evening we received a SOS call from the villagers of Hares to please come there. This Palestinian village, near the big Ariel settlement, is cut off from the world. The army is blockading it, no one is allowed to enter or leave. The olives, the only product of the village, are going to rot on the trees, especially in the orchard bordering the Revava settlement. Anyone trying to harvest there is in mortal danger. A 14-year old boy was shot and killed there only three days ago, when he was alone in the orchard with his father. The villagers hope that the presence of Israelis will restrain the settlers and soldiers, allowing them harvest the olives on which their livelihood depends.

A woman from the village also called. She cried excitedly that at that moment the soldiers had opened fire on the village and on her. She begged us to come the next morning. Until darkness, she promised, there is generally no shooting.

Hares is situated on a hill, 100 meters away from the road, at a stretch where the bypass-bypass joins the bypass road. The stretch is an ideal place for throwing stones, and therefore the settlers are angry. We know the landscape well, because in March, 1999 we helped a family in the next village, Kiffel-Hares, to build a house demolished by the army.

It was not easy for us to decide what to do. It was clear that this is a war zone. In order to get to the place, we had to risk being stoned or shot at by Palestinians, who would think that we are settlers. On the other hand, our presence would be like a red rag to the settlers. The army would consider us breakers of the occupation laws. All this in order to pick olives a few dozen yards from a settlement.

Gush Shalom activists who can come on a workday include youngsters in their teens and elderly people. Men and women. Was it responsible to advise them to enter a war-zone?

On the other hand, in these difficult days, in the middle of the Palestinian war of liberation, it is very important that the threads still connecting Israelis and Palestinians are not broken, as extremists on both sides would wish. It is also important to show the Palestinians that there are peace forces in Israel who want to display solidarity during their hardest hour.

These arguments won. It was decided to mobilize by phone the activists who were ready to leave their work on a working day

and to take part in the action. Within an two hours, 20 volunteered. And so, on Friday, we were on our way from Tel-Aviv in a minibus driven by an Arab-Israeli. From Jerusalem, another contingent, led by the “Rabbis for Human Rights” group, were also on their way.

We arrived at Hares without mishap. On the way we did not encounter any army checkpoint. Even the checkpoint which was located for years on the green Line, near Kafr Kassem, had mysteriously disappeared.

We entered the village by foot, climbing the hill, crossing a field of desolation – old olive trees cut down, ancient terraces destroyed, apparently to enable the army to shoot without hindrance.

From the direction of the mosque we heard the Friday prayers as we crossed the quiet village by foot and left it by the western entrance, on the way to the plantations. There the army stopped us with armored jeeps and heavily armed soldiers. A tough major (or perhaps lieutenant-colonel, the bullet-proof vest made it difficult to be sure) quickly filled out a prepared form, signed in advance by the C/O Central Command for all occasions, declaring the Hares plantations a ”closed military area”. We were requested to leave.

We refused, of course. We pointed out that the settlers, who were shouting slogans and cursing us, were allowed to pass freely in their cars. Then a superior officer, a lieutenant-colonel or perhaps colonel (as above) appeared. We were told that he was the brigade commander.

We argued with him. He was a sympathetic, intelligent officer, with a sense of humor, one of those who are called “regular fellows”, which made what he said sound even more objectionable. Why the discrimination between the settlers and the Palestinian villagers? Well, it’s because the villagers throw stones. Why punish a whole village for the deeds of a minority? “I am not sure it’s a minority.” It was quite clear that his heart is with the settlers, whose life, as he said, “had become hell.” For him, the Palestinians were enemies, no sentiments attached.

Why does he not permit us to harvest olives? “Because you came here to provoke the settlers.” We answered honestly that we had no such intention.

While this argument went on, our activists started to infiltrate into the plantations one by one. The brigade commander had to choose between several alternatives: he could call for reinforcements to get us out by force, or he could allow us to harvest olives. Wisely, he chose the latter course.

The next six hours where an experience taken straight out of an old Zionist propaganda film. We picked olives, one by one, from the trees nearest the settlement. We used our hats as containers, until buckets were brought. We climbed trees in order to get at the higher branches. Hard work, but really enjoyable. On the hill, opposite us, at a distance of some fifty meters, a cluster of angry, bearded, scull-cap-wearing settlers had gathered, but soldiers prevented them from approaching us.

When the villagers saw us working, families of the tree-owners dared to come and harvest too. Friendships developed quickly. Everything was done at a hectic speed. The Palestinians knew that they could work there only as long as we were there. They chose work methods that were damaging to the trees, hitting the branches, gathering the olives on nylon sheets spread on the ground, in order to gather as many olives as possible in a few hours.

At 3 p.m., when we were about to finish, we received a call on the mobile phone. We were asked to come as quickly as possible to the other side of the village, where a confrontation was developing with the army. The villagers wanted to use the presence of Israelis (those who had come from Jerusalem) in order to remove the roadblock put up by the army to prevent them having contact with the neighboring village and the world at large. The Palestinians calculated that the army would not open fire in the presence of Israelis and foreign TV crews. Since the situation was deteriorating rapidly, we were asked to come and try to prevent a fatal clash.

We boarded the minibus and drove into the village. Along the main street, a lot of children were standing around. At some distance, children were playing (training?) throwing stones at each other. Some local youngsters volunteered to walk in front of our bus and tell the children that we were not settlers. Proceeding this way we were nearing the place of the clash when we were stopped by the village head and a very authoritative lyoung man. The head said that the confrontation had ended and that he would show us the place. The young man said that the confrontation was still going on and that we should not go on any further. It was clear that he was the boss. He strongly suggested that we go by the way we had come. But first he gave as a short, passionate speech, in which he called Ehud Barak some highly uncomplimentary names from the animal kingdom.

The village head volunteered to show us the way, so that we could view the site of the clash from the army side, from the main road. But as we were leaving the village, we encountered an army jeep. A sergeant with Russian features stopped us with a movement of his hand generally reserved for Arabs. One of us asked him to be polite. He became very angry and told us that we could not leave the village. A blockade was in force; no one comes in, no one goes out. He doesn’t give a damn whether we are Israelis or not. Orders are orders.

Only with great difficulty did we convince him to call his superior, who told him, of course, to let us pass. We reached the main road (the cross-Samaria) and had to drive behind a convoy of settlers, when suddenly we were hit by a shower of stones. At some distance we saw a group of small children. Fortunately, only the body of our bus was hit. At lightning speed police and army jeeps appeared on the scene and took up firing positions opposite the village. But the children had already disappeared.

In the meantime, we were told over the phone that the confrontation was really over, so we decided to make for home. On the way, the village head (a renovation contractor active in the Tel-Aviv area) alighted. We waited for a few minutes, to make sure that he got home safely. He started to climb the hill, but before he had gone no further than a few meters, soldiers ran after him, rifles ready to shoot. We got down from the bus and convinced the soldiers that the man was not a dangerous terrorist, but a villager who had been kind enough to show us the way. They let him return to his village. But in the meantime, police had stopped near our bus and made out a traffic-violation ticket, because it was standing on a part of the road where it was not allowed to stand. A stubborn young police woman refused to yield, but we finally convinced the Druze policeman at the wheel to relent. After all, the bus had been standing there only because we were talking with the soldiers.

Over the phone we heard that two activists from the Jerusalem group had been arrested during the clash at the roadblock. (Neither of the two belonged to Peace Now, as was erroneously reported on the Israeli Channel 1. Peace Now had taken no part in the events of the day.)

This is how the reality of the occupation, November 2000, looks.

We returned home tired but content, as they say. The time was 4 p.m., the hour shooting usually starts.

For me it was a long day. An old friend of mine had invited me to a dinner-party in Ceaesarea. The elite of the elite was there, financiers, doctors, senior bureaucrats, media people, artists. Wonderful food, excellent wines. I had no strength left to get into arguments. So I just sat aside, looked and wondered about what was happening at the time in Hares, some light-years away.

At midnight, on the long way home, I heard on the news that a settler woman had been slightly wounded by stones near Hares village.