The electricity in Attwaneh village by Basil Adara

Prior to 2010, Tuwani was not connected to the electrical grid. In the village, we shared one generator to light all of our homes and for other electronic appliances like televisions and refrigerators at night. After three hours, we would have to turn off the generator because the cost of oil was high. Before 2005, I remember we used X for light. A few years before that I remembered that we had an old version of light and nothing works with electricity.

Our life was very different than it is now. I could not finish my homework at night and my mother faced many difficulties preparing dinner due to the limited amount of electricity. The village was very dark at night but I cannot deny that it was beautiful on clear summer nights when the moon lit up the whole village.

We submitted applications to the Israeli authorities for connection to the electrical grid, preparing all the necessary plans and maps, yet they refused our requests every time. In 2010, people in the community started to build electrical towers. The towers were being built along the road from the town of Carmel, which is 3 kilometers away, is the closest town with an electricity network to Al-Tawana. Most of the work was done during the night and by monitoring the entrances to the village and the streets, where if a military vehicle passed by, the workers would flee.

Applications were submitted before 2006, and in 2008 Tony Blair visited. He was briefed, and the situation of the village was explained to him by the local community. Since there was no electricity and water network, people asked him to help put pressure on the Israeli government to allow the village to obtain these basic services for life.

Four years passed since submitting applications for the electricity network, and then four years passed since the visit of Tony Blair, and the electricity had not yet come.

On a winter's day, the rain was pouring down the valleys where we were sitting by the fire, a neighbor shouted, “the army!” I looked out the window, the army came to seize the electricity towers. The people of the village were running to the entrance of the village, where the forces were entering. Two large tractors, three border police jeeps, two army jeeps, and two civil administration cars were coming. I put on my mom's slippers and ran.

Two soldiers were standing in front of X and preventing anyone from crossing into the mechanisms that had already begun to dismantle some of the towers. The soldier yelled at me in broken Arabic. “Go back,” he said while aiming his rifle at me. My mother, who was standing with the rest of the family and others from the village, crossed the soldiers and arrived at the truck carrying the towers. She screamed, “Come with to the field!”. I started to walk through the field. I was shivering in the rain, and for fear of the soldiers. My shoes got stuck in the mud and it was hard for me to walk.

I arrived where the majority of the villagers were shouting at the soldiers. “Why are you taking the towers? We must have electricity. You allow settlers to have electricity,” they said. Next to the settlement there is a cow farm for the settlers, and these cows have lights and water, while it is forbidden for us. They live in better conditions than us on our land.

We started putting rocks in the middle of the road to prevent the forces from reaching the rest of the towers. The force officer said whoever lifts a stone will be arrested. Immediately we, the youngest of the generation, stood with our mothers and daughters in the village. We stood in a line from one end of the street to the other, holding hands. Police women approached in order to suppress the women of Al-Tawana. Everyone started screaming, and the police women pulled out some of the village's young women, but we were very attached to each other, and they didn't succeed.

The Jeep approached us and began to make a sound to frighten us but this tactic didn’t work either. After three hours, water was dripping from our clothes. The soldiers took only three military towers with them, which they succeeded in dismantling, but we succeeded in preventing them from completing the confiscation of the towers.

The army left and we walked back home to the village, gazing at the entrance all the while to make sure that they weren’t coming back to confiscate the rest of the towers. Six months later we replaced the towers and set up the car electrical transmission cables plus, and the network was ready to be turned ON.

On the first day of Ramadan all the houses were connected to electricity. The guys from the company continued working on it until the Iftar time was out, and until all the community houses and streets were lit. We were clapping so loudly that no one noticed the call to prayer

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