Somewhere in one of Israel's official warehouses there is a brand-new saw: it was purchased only a week before it was confiscated by the state. The manufacturer, Stihl, calls it "farm boss." It has an orange fuel compartment, a nervous motor and a silver chain. The manufacturer notes proudly in its brochure that this saw was featured in the movie Die Hard 2. It is, then, a real star. More than other much more violent incidents, this saw can teach us something about the routine of the occupation, 40 years on.
On December 14, 2006 Mohamed Asfour, a resident of the village of Sinjeel in Samaria, took the saw he had bought and went to his olive grove east of the village. Asfour is 57 but looks at least 10 years older. He has a long white beard like a dervish, thick eyebrows and peeling skin from decades of work in the field. At the edge of his grove there was a carob tree.
He crossed the narrow road connecting nearby settlement Ma’aleh Levonah to the Jerusalem-Nablus road, climbed one terrace up and went to work. He sawed and sawed until only a stump was left.
One of the Ma’aleh Levonah security officers was driving on the road below. He noticed the change in the landscape.
"Who did that?" he asked Asfour.
"I said 'me.' 'What's wrong with you,’ he asked, 'are you crazy? Are you drunk?'"
While Asfour was considering the choices, the guard called the police on his cell phone. A policeman took him to the settlement of Eli, where he made him sign a detailed testimony.
"And then he said ‘go home.’
"I said ‘I'm going, but give me the saw.’
"He said ‘no saw.’
“I said, ‘if you're not giving me the saw, give me a paper that you took the saw.’
“He said ‘no paper.’
“I said ‘give me a paper. You won't steal my saw.’
“He said ‘if you don't go I am taking you to jail.’
"I said ‘go ahead, take me to jail.’
"He called his commander to get instructions and gave me a paper."
Asfour pulls the paper out of his pocket. It is crumpled after having gone through many hands. "I hereby certify that a gasoline motor saw with an orange body was seized for a police investigation," wrote the policeman and signed: Kobi Elul.
"A month later," says Asfour, "I went to the Binyamin police. ‘What about my saw,’ I asked. ‘We have no such thing,’ they said. I showed them the paper. They said they would check and then a guy called me. He told me to meet him at the Tapuach junction. I thought he was going to bring the saw but he brought me a summons to the military court."
The man who met Asfour is Motti Shefi, an inspector for the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.
"It is not that we harass Palestinians," Shefi told me in a phone call this week. "If somebody harms nature it doesn't matter to me at all if he is wearing a skullcap or a Keffieh. A carob is a protected species. It is an offense to cut it down. Even if the tree was on Asfour's land, which is not the case, he was not allowed to cut it down."
Asfour, I said, claims he cut the carob for two reasons: one is that he has a well there and the tree was taking its water; secondly he was afraid children would climb up the tree and throw stones at settlers’ cars.
"That is a bizarre excuse," said Shefi. "By that logic you would have to cut down all the trees in Judea and Samaria."
He told me about a settler who was caught after cutting down 50 Palestinian olive trees. "That man told me he had detected a dangerous parasite that was killing olive trees. He cut down the trees to save other trees. He just happened to begin his rescue operation with 50 trees belonging to Arabs."
We laughed. Why are you holding the saw, I asked. What can the saw tell you that you don't know?
"A saw like that is worth NIS 2000 in the Ramallah market," said Shefi. “If he is convicted, that will be the sum of the fine. We will impound the saw for the state.
"The carob tree cut down was hundreds of years old. It is a shame to lose a tree like that. Anyone who loves nature would feel terrible. Part of the story is deterrence."
But when the settlers cut down Palestinian olive trees, I said, you stand by.
"The olive tree is not a protected plant," said Shefi.
Michael Sfard is the legal advisor to the Yesh Din organization, that gives Palestinians legal aid. Whatever you say, I said to Sfard, your client cut down a protected plant.
"What is terrible about this story," he said, "is the selective enforcement. I saw it the first time when soldiers at checkpoints began confiscating bags of hyssop. The hyssop is also a protected wild plant. Palestinian women gather it in the fields. The soldiers got an order to confiscate it from them. But when the settlers raze entire mountains of hyssop to establish an outpost they are not touched. I have never seen either a building inspector or a nature inspector in the outposts, even though they are building without permits and destroying natural assets. We have 10 cases of settlements dumping their sewage into rivers, including rivers that run into the green line, and nobody says a word. Only Mohamed Asfour is handled with the full force of the law.
"And by the way," added Sfard, "they are holding on to the saw but they haven't indicted him to this day. Let him wait, they tell me at the Civil Administration, there is a queue."
Asfour shows me his olive trees. Six years ago a malicious hand cut down 300 trees. Now they are slowly recovering: new, fresh branches are springing up. One of his neighbors picks a bunch of hyssop branches. It smells great: strong and pungent. Protected or not, it will do wonders for the pita it is sprinkled on.
