Dorothy
Cotton keeps referring to “our pilgrimage” and as we set off for the village
of Budrus, Vincent Harding starts us singing,
voices blending, harmonizing, “On my way to Budrus, stayed on freedom…Gonna
tear down the wall, stayed on freedom…. Hallelu, hallelu, halleluiah.” Against
my better judgment, I am starting to agree with Dorothy. Our guide informs us that Israeli news
announced that AIPAC had cancelled a meeting with the board of Protestant
churches because the leaders had issued a statement claiming that the Israeli
government is violating human rights and the Evangelical Lutheran Church called
for an end to unconditional military aid to Israel. I am beginning to rethink my atheism, or perhaps
I have spent too much time in Jerusalem.
We
pass Birzeit and the Arab villages of Nabih Saleh, Um Safa, Qibya, Ni’lin and
the Jewish settlements of Ateret, Halamish, Nahali’el, Much of the road is high above the rocky
hills and valleys, so it is strategically important and thus the placement of
the settlements. I am beginning to
understand that rarely does something happen accidentally, particularly in the
department of acquiring Palestinian land. I can see Ateret, a neat row of red
roofed houses, surrounded by electrified
fencing and a military outpost, all built on the former Palestinian town of
Atara, the name neatly Judaized using some Orwellian sense of historical
continuity. The Palestinian villages are more of a jumble of houses, reflecting
their age, lack of civil planning and resources. On the left is the Jewish
settlement of Halamish; I immediately
spot the forest of tall straight pine trees, a Jewish National Fund forest
which means that it is likely covering a destroyed Palestinian village or two and
that the land is available for Jewish use only. This is a neat and fairly
cynical trick to allow the state agencies involved in land to avoid the
accusation of racism and discrimination, as the land is owned, controlled,
managed (name a legal maneuver) by the JNF which is a private charity. This
highway leads to Route 443 which conveniently gives the settlers in the heart
of the West Bank a straight ride into Tel Aviv. We pass our first Israeli
checkpoint on the road to Nabih Saleh, and gaze at a row of Palestinian
cars. In the distance we can see the
high rises of Tel Aviv. Everything is amazingly up close and personal. Dorothy belts out, “I’ve been in the storm so
long…” and our voices carry us forward until we see the sign for Budrus, a
village famous for its nonviolent resistance to the wall and the focus of a
powerful documentary of the same name.
There
are two plants that always grab my attention: the spiky, yellow-green saber
cactus growing profusely, often six to eight feet tall with egg shaped orange
fruit. This cactus was used to denote boundaries and is the living memorial to
a Palestinian home. Like the
Palestinians, this cactus refuses to die despite efforts to eradicate its
presence, so it inconveniently pops up in JNF forests, in the midst of settlements,
and other Jewish only areas. I am also
constantly fascinated by the olive tree, growing resiliently on terraced rocky
groves, along the road, in rusted metal cans, accommodating to the environment
and adversity; some thick, sturdy, pock marked with gnarled limbs and a shimmer
of leaves, one to two thousand years old, others more like quirky defiant
teenagers or toddlers sprouting from the center of a protective rubber tire;
the whole family is here. For Palestinians the olive tree is almost holy,
passed down through generations, a major source of oil, food, and income, and a
treasured inheritance. The older they get, I am told, the more they produce.
They seem to die only when attacked, bulldozed, or burned to the ground, which
is a regular occurrence in these parts.
Budrus
has the distinction of being located on the Green Line and has been encroached
upon by the settlement of Modi’in Illit which was built on the no man’s land
created in 1948. (It is now apparently
some man’s land.) A small hilly village, Budrus is 35 kilometers from the
Mediterranean Sea and we can spot Tel Aviv and Jaffa from the top of the hill, while
standing near an ancient sapphire domed mosque.
The wall is of the electrified fence variety and we can see a military
jeep at the bottom of the hill, watching us, periodically moving when we move. The village is also adjacent to the largest
Israeli military training camp, so there is the frequent sound of the machinery
of warfare, in case anyone was not already stressed by the loss of land and
years of demonstrations. We are here because Rabbi Brian Walt showed Budrus at
his temple and one of the Dorothy Cotton Institute fellows suggested that DCI
organize a delegation of African American civil rights leaders to visit Budrus,
meet with Ayad Morrar and other village leaders featured in the documentary and
engaged in nonviolent civil resistance.
While
the film beautifully documents their years of resistance and the ultimate
moving of the fence to the Green Line, Ayad remarks, “They built the fence to
protect themselves, now they have to protect the fence.” There is an intensive security system with
cameras that are so powerful they can take clear pictures of villagers’ faces
and then the soldiers easily identify leaders and arrive in the night to drag
them off to administrative detention and prison. The hill and the cemetery are littered with
tear gas canisters; we stop and sing at the grave of a martyr in the struggle,
a shahid. On the way back to the community center we stop to marvel at
an olive tree that is almost 2000 years old, some of the holes in the trunk
packed with stones that get imbedded as the tree grows. It seems that trees are
often named for women and this tree is called Hadra. Ayad explains that when the army or the
settlers uproot an olive tree, they are killing so much more than a tree, they
are attacking a beloved member of the family, a source of food and income that
is often hundreds of years old, a symbol of the Palestinians attachment to the
land and the rhythm of the seasons. That is why the village women gather to
wail and keen such an intense heartless loss.
There is an Arabic expression that if anyone uproots an olive tree, God
will damn them twenty times. The
mythology of the holes in the older olive tree trunks lies in a story that when
the Prophet Mohammed died, the heart of the olive trees burned in grief and
created the holes. Once again in the
unforgiving Mediterranean sun I am walking, sweating, and stumbling on sacred
ground and marveling about the power of villager resistance; the ugliness of
the occupation is palpable.
Alice Rothchild
Reports reflect the views of the individuals writing them
and do not necessarily represent the Dorothy Cotton Institute, the Center for
Transformative Action, Interfaith Peace Builders or other delegates or the
organizations with which they are affiliated.
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