Who cares what is right or wrong when you have superior firepower and dictate what the terms of peace will be?
Olives of Aboud
israelshamir.net
"Olives of Aboud - June 16, 2001
"As the CIA-brokered cease fire went into
effect, I received an anxious call from the
village of Aboud, on the western slopes of
Samarian hills. The village was raided by the
army, and two men were shot. Today I went
there, to see the village and to feel the cease
fire.
Aboud is surrounded by the new Jewish
settlements from all sides. A brand new
Jewish road leads to the area. It forks off to
Aboud some three miles away from the
village, and there the road is blocked by
cyclopean heaps of earth. We tried our luck at
the other end, with the same result. Eventually
we found a narrow dirt track the peasants
broke in this morning, and drove in.
Aboud is one of the prettiest Palestinian
villages, strongly reminiscent of Tuscany. Its
time-mellowed stone houses grow on the
gentle hills. Vine climbs up their balconies,
leafy fig trees provide shadow to its streets.
The prosperity of this well-established village
is seen in the spaciousness of the mansions, in
the meticulously clean roads. The old men sit
in a small and shady, walled enclosure, on the
stone benches, like the aldermen of Ithaca
gathered by young Telemachus. That is the
biblical 'gate of the city', or a diwan. Kids
bring them coffee and fresh fruits. Local
people are not the refugees of Gaza and
Deheishe; here, as in a time warp, one can see
the Holy Land as it should and could be.
Three millennia old Aboud received the faith
of Christ from Christ himself, says the local
tradition, and there is the church ready to
prove it, one of the oldest on earth, built in the
days of Constantine in the 4th century, or
maybe even older, as some archaeologists
claim. The church is a dainty thing, carefully
restored and well taken care of. The
Byzantine capitals of its columns bear the
image of cross and palm branches. They
recently discovered a plaque in old Aramaic
script immured in the southern wall of the
church.
Aboud has more than one church: there is a
Catholic, a Greek Orthodox and an
American-built Church of God. There is also a
new mosque, as Christians and Muslims of the
Holy Land live together in great harmony. On
December 17th all of them, the Muslims and
the Christians, go to venerate the village
patron saint, St Barbara. She was a local girl
who fell in love with a young Christian and
was baptized. It happened in the rough days
of Roman emperor Diocletian, and she was
martyred in the persecutions. The ruins of the
oldest Byzantine church of St Barbara are still
seen on a hill a mile away from the village. At
the foothill, there is her burial cave, and there
the peasants lit their candles and ask their
wishes to be fulfilled.
It is a good place to understand the complete
lunacy of the prevailing Jewish view of
Palestine as of the 'land without people'
sparsely inhabited by the Arab nomad
latecomers. Archaeologists have proven that
this village was never destroyed or abandoned
since the time immemorial, and our eyes agree
with it. Age-old olive trees cover the hills,
confirming the deep roots of Aboud and
providing it with olive oil, its main staple food
and source of livelihood.
Just outside a village, there were two giant
American-built Caterpillar bulldozers slowly
devouring the olive trees. They were huge,
covered from every side by armour plates.
They appeared impregnable, like moving
fortresses. They towered above the landscape
as the mechanical monsters of Evil Empire
attacking Ewocks in the Star Wars.
The peasants stood on the heaps of earth
blocking the entrance to the village and looked
at the machines destroying their livelihood.
They could not walk towards them, as they
were not allowed to leave their village, their
prison. There was a tent, and a few soldiers
with a machinegun on the hill above the
entrance, and they were there to keep the
people in. Last night, on Sabbath eve, they
opened fire on the villagers who ventured out,
and wounded two men. The rest run back in
for safety. Then the army went in, in their
jeeps, driving through the village, met by
stones of the kids. The Jewish settlers and
soldiers sprayed windows and roofs with their
bullets and drove away, apparently feeling
their Shabbat duty fulfilled.
I was allowed to cross the invisible line, as it
was for the Palestinians only. There was an
Israeli officer in a jeep, a wide American
Hummer, who oversaw the devastation. Why
do you do it, I asked, don't you know there is
the cease fire? Say it to Arik (Sharon), he
replied, we are just following orders. But he,
and the other soldiers, and the bulldozer
drivers were not despondent about these
orders. These age-old trees meant nothing to
them, as the village and two millennia old
Church, and the people meant nothing to
them. Just something to be devoured and
destroyed.
Palestine never was the deserted land the first
Zionists claimed they found at their arrival. But
it will become one, unless we stop these
machines." |
