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.
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