From Check Points to Olive Trees

From Check Points to Olive Trees

I have talked a lot about Check Points.  Living in the shadow of the Separation Barrier (The Wall) between Israelis and Palestinians in the occupied territories and visiting the Checkpoint on a regular basis, makes Check Points loom big in one’s mind.  But being an Ecumenical Accompanier is not all about checkpoints.   It is about visiting with the many people who have stories similar to the story in an earlier post about Siham and her family.  The details vary, but the story is surprisingly and sadly way too similar from person to person.

Another one of the villages we visit is al Walaja.  It is one of the many villages around Bethlehem that is being negatively impacted by the Separation Barrier and surrounded by illegal settlements.  When we arrived at the end of June, al Walaja was a quiet place.  There was a court case pending concerning The Wall and the path it would take.  In the past there had been many demonstrations, but it was quiet when we first went to visit.  We sat under pine trees while plans were being made for a Summer Camp program and an Israeli soldier in a watch tower on the other side of The Wall looked on.

But, it was not long before the bulldozers were moving and the road the EU had built was being torn up to make way for The Wall to enclose more of this quiet village.  The plan is to completely surround this village so that all entry is limited to those now living in the village and it can only be accessed through a military gate. 

What will this do to the life of the village?  Everyone is doing their best to be prepared for the very long period of siege that is coming as The Wall marches relentlessly around to complete its circle.  And, for right now, it is causing a building boom as people are preparing for the time when they will not be able to get building supplies.    But in the long run, it will stifle all growth and development and eventually snuff out the life of this once prosperous farming community.  That is if nothing is done to stop this process and even to reverse it.

So, this quiet village has become the site of many demonstrations, with soldiers chasing people up very steep hills, throwing concussion bombs at little old ladies like me, and even tear gas and rubber bullets and an occasional live bullet.  And now, the court case has been lost.  What the next step is I do not know. 

But what I want to tell you about is one man and his olive trees.  It turns out that not only does the IDF guard the cutting of the trees, but they will not allow the owner of the demolished trees to have even the use of the wood.  It is taken away from them at gun point and taken somewhere for someone else to use or to simply be burnt.

Imagine a picture of your grandfather or one of his brothers, looking on as bulldozers came and put a wall through his pasture, uprooting the coastal hay he had been fertilizing and nurturing and destroying the pastures he had so carefully tended.  They will not let him have the hay to use or to sell.  Then, when they come back to take all the bales of hay he has in the field, they see your grandfather sitting on the hay, refusing to get down.   

This is the picture I saw.  Only it was a white haired Palestinian grandfather who had used his walking cane to help himself climb up on the pile of bulldozed stumps of his once living olive trees.  The front end loader nudged the pile, but he did not move.  The soldiers and private security came with their M-16s pointed at him and tried to make him see the error of his ways.  Many voices were raised, the machine operator backed up and came from a different angle to nudge the pile of stumps again to shake the old man loose.  But he was staying put.  Eventually the man was moved and his tree stumps taken away.

Last time I was at al Walaja, the pile drivers and bulldozers were out of sight around the bend on the back side of the mountain side.  All that is left where the soldiers, horses, dogs and a white haired man had tried to protect his olive trees and then to rescue the broken stumps is the leveled off road bed where The Wall will snake its away around the ridges until it meets its tail at the entrance to the village and eventually snuffs the life out of a once prosperous farming village. 

It is easy to say, “Yes, this is the way things work in this world.”  But, isn’t there a better way for the Children of Abraham to get along?

                                            In his letter to the Ephesians St. Paul thought so:

                                                For he is our peace

                                                    in his flesh he has made both groups into one

                                                    and has broken down the dividing wall,

                                                    that is, the hostility between us. 

                                                                      Ephesians 2:14

             

Why is it so much easier to break things down with pile drivers and bulldozers than it is to break down the hostility between people with love?

Planning a Summer Day Camp









The Soldier watching Camp planning





Walking along the Wall that will
very soon snake its way around
the village and cut them off.





After the Olive Trees were removed construction moves
quickly around to the far side of the hill.