We pass a beautiful oasis of houses with children splashing around in a small pool at the foothill of a luscious vineyard. Our driver tells us this is the nearby Israeli settlement. I’m in the backseat with two other international activists. This August, we joined Palestinian families in the West Bank to provide protective presence from encroaching settlements. We drive a few more minutes along Highway 60, the longest highway in the West Bank, before the driver says we’ve arrived. There is no discernable road as the jeep manoeuvres between rocks and occasionally scrapes a few. Finally, some tin and concrete structures and a few rusty tractors emerge in the distance. We’ve arrived in the village of Susya. Susya, not to be confused with the archeological site or settlement of Susya, is home to around 500 people from 35 families. Relocated after an ancient Jewish synagogue was discovered, the village of Susya is now surrounded on all sides by settlements, military bases, and the archeological site. Particularly since October 7th, leaving the village can be quite dangerous. With military checkpoints constantly emerging to limit Palestinian movement, any car ride could result in arrest and administrative detention. After October, most villagers were unable to even reach their olive groves for fear of being shot.
In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Palestinian lives are controlled by an intricate web of laws that control movement, suppress culture, and remove children from homes. The similarities between Canada’s Indian Act and Israel’s apartheid regime are not coincidental. Indeed, Israel takes inspiration from South Africa’s Bantustans, which were modeled off the Canadian reserve system and pass system. The countries also share the tactic of whitewashing Indigenous death through discourses of democracy, equality, and civility. In Netanyahu’s recent speech to U.S. Congress, he described the ongoing genocide in Gaza as a fight between “civility and barbarism.” This language closely mirrors the language of Sir John A. Macdonald, who regularly referred to the Indigenous population as “savages” in need of assimilation.
Though not named as such, Palestinian villages in the West Bank, particularly in Area C, function essentially the same as Canadian reservations. While settlements next door enjoy electricity, water lines, bus routes and paved roads, villages must rely on solar panels, overpriced water stored in tanks, and rocky dirt roads. In the village of Umm al-Khair, a few minutes from Susya, the nearby settlement of Carmel has hooked up its electricity to chicken coops on the other side of the village. Passing directly over Umm al-Khair, the villagers aptly note that Israeli chickens have more rights than they do. Even when solar panels are constructed to bring electricity to a village, they are frequently destroyed by nearby settlers. With settlements or army outposts surrounding each village in Masafer Yatta, the goal is to make life uninhabitable until whole villages are forced to evacuate. Entire plots of Area C in the West Bank are deemed “closed military zones” or “firing zones”, which the Israeli military claims it needs for training and security purposes. Entire villages in the southern tip of the West Bank face demolition orders that are carried out on Palestinian structures regularly.
Our group travels to the Jordan Valley to meet other activists and work together on water conservation projects. Rashid, the head activist from the village of Bardala greets us and explains the situation in the area. He speaks about the extreme lack of water access for Palestinians in the region and the work of his group, Jordan Valley Solidarity. Though historically the Jordan Valley has held the highest concentration of water in the area, today most villages are restricted from accessing more than 100 cubic metres of water per hour. Most villages contain several hundred people who all require water for drinking, cooking, cleaning and agriculture. Despite these restrictions, illegal Israeli settlements that neighbour these villages can access 3,000 cubic metres of water per hour. Much of this re-routed water goes to cultivating dates and other thirsty crops. Rashid and his activist group have tracked at least 100 Israeli and international exporters working in the Jordan Valley. This produce, labelled as Israeli and sold in stores around Israel, Europe and North America, directly contributes to the loss of life and livelihood for the many Palestinians who still remain in the region. But with deeply restricted access to resources coupled with extreme settler violence, over a dozen villages have been abandoned.
I tell Rashid about the role of water theft and poisoning in Canada’s First Nations communities. He is shocked and exclaims: “But Canada is a very rich country!” I tell Rashid the story of Grassy Narrows First Nation and how the community’s water was poisoned by illegal mercury dumping from the Dryden Chemical Company. He notes that it is a common tactic of illegal settlers all across the West Bank to poison Palestinian wells, many of which are centuries old.
Beyond regulating access to land and water, access to cultural activities is also deeply restricted in Palestine. In Burin, the annual kite festival (where children gather to simply fly kites) is regularly targeted by settlers and the army. In Umm al-Khair, wedding tents are targeted and dismantled by settler soldiers. Within the bounds of Israel, displaying a Palestinian flag, or even a watermelon, warrants arrest. Similar to Canada’s potlatch bans, this suppression of traditional cultural practices serves to further alienate Palestinians from their traditional ways of being.
As we see images of mass unmarked graves livestreamed from Gaza, the deep parallels between settler colonialism here and there must not be lost on any Canadian. Justin Trudeau and Mélanie Joly express deep concerns about Israel’s actions while continuing to fund and arm the siege on Gaza. Yet, to point out the violent project of settler colonialism in Israel/Palestine is inconsistent with Trudeau’s multi-million dollar court fight against Indigenous communities here in Canada. To stand against violent settler attacks in the West Bank might require an admission that Canada’s Indigenous communities still do not have clean water.
Almost 10 years after the Truth and Reconciliation commission report was released, Canada has achieved 14 of the 94 calls to action. As calls for landback and decolonization grow louder in Canada, we can observe the same colonial practices being enacted by the State of Israel. While the context may be different, the similarities are unmistakable. Rather than waiting for commissions and days of remembrance, the world has an opportunity to stand up against settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing before the project is completed.
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