– by Anna Lippman – 29/7/2024
This article was first published in Mondoweiss and we are grateful to share it here with the permission of the author. Anna Lippman recently attended the Burin Kite Festival, a multi-day festival of Palestinian culture, livelihood, and resilience in the face of military occupation. Members of the Green olive Collective were honored to attend the festival along with her and with community residents demanding an end to land expropriation, military violence, and settler attacks.
All around me I hear the laughter of children and see their smiling faces as they fly kites. It is hard to believe that just a few hours earlier, over 700 olive trees had been set ablaze. In the village of Burin just outside of Nablus, where settlements encroach on almost every side, flying kites is an act of resistance. This is why Burin holds a kite festival annually for the local community to join together in joy and resistance. This is the 19th kite festival, though the festival has not been held for consecutive years due to circumstances like COVID and settler violence.
Ghassan, the organizer of the festival, explained some of the festival’s history when we first arrived. Ghassan had been arrested twice for putting on the kite festival. Just last year, three kites were shot down by Israeli settlers. These instances of settler violence and state repression are not new for Ghassan or the other residents of Burin.
Located in the north of the occupied West Bank in the Nablus region, Burin is home to roughly 3,000 people. Nestled amongst rolling hills and known for its olive production, Burin’s main source of income is agriculture, particularly after Israel revoked Palestinian work permits for inside 48 boundaries in October. Burin is most well-known for its olive production, which occurs around the end of fall. While it is difficult almost every year to harvest their olives, this year many of the villagers were unable to even visit their groves, for fear of being shot by settler-soldiers. Still, Ghassan managed to find some olive oil from a local family for me to buy.
Burin is nestled between two encroaching settlements that continue to attempt more land grabs. On one side is the illegal settlement of Yitzhar. On the other side, the illegal settlement of Har Brakha. Both founded in the early 80’s, they started as small outpost and then grew into large settlements with a reputation for right-wing ideology and its accompanying violence. Ghassan talk about his friend Massoud, who is the only villager to live across the highway (built through the village for settler use), and who built his house in the 1960’s. For two decades his family enjoyed a large grazing area for his flock, plenty of room for his olive trees, and a large house for his ever expanding family. Now, directly under the settlement and isolated from the rest of the village by highway 60, the only highway in the West Bank. What was once an idyllic and quiet neighborhood has now turned in to his personal hell.
Ghassan himself was first imprisoned when he was fifteen. For four months he was kept in solitary confinement. He says that he used this time to write out all his plans for the kite festival. Sketching out the details of his vision is what kept him going while in isolation. I’m struck by Ghassan as he speaks. His dry wit breaks the tension as he cracks jokes in between sharing stories of immense pain and heartbreak.
Ghassan mentions a child in the village who he also wants to be interviewed. He explains that earlier this year, the ten-year-old witnessed his nine-year-old best friend shot dead in front of him from settler-soldiers. Now, he is afraid to leave his house, leaving only once a week when Ghassan picks him up to play soccer. We are hopeful that he will attend the festival, but he doesn’t make it out.
Usually, families from the nearby Balata refugee camp attend, but this year they were too worried to travel. With new checkpoints popping up almost daily, travel even between nearby villages can leave people stranded, arrested, or even dead. Moussad, a villager who lives directly under the settlement is also unable to attend the festival. Since October, he’s been unable to work or leave his house because he must constantly defend his home and family from settlers seeking to harm and displace him. Though he lives only a few minutes away, settler-soldiers refuse to let him drive his children from one side of the village to the other. He sends Ghassan video of his two children playing alone in the backyard. They do not understand why they can’t go play with the other children. Only in Palestine is flying a kite considered a crime.
Anna Lippman is a 3rd generation Ashkenzi Jewish migrant on Turtle Island. She is a PhD student in the Sociology department at York University. Anna organizes with several groups in Toronto including Showing Up for Racial Justice and Independent Jewish Voices.
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