Third try at reconstruction!

Last Saturday, we were invited to the village of Al Walaja for breakfast by two contacts, Basil and Machmud, two young men in their 20’s. We got our signals crossed, of course, as often happens between our Arabic and their English, with us waiting for them at the Ansar community center where Machmud works and them waiting for us at Basil’s house. We were not surprised when they did not turn up at 9:00 as arranged – we just assumed they were operating on ‘Palestinian time’ as opposed to ‘Westerners’ time’. When I called Basil at 9:30, they scurried down to the centre, breakfast in hand. Machmud operates the Ansar centre and his salary is paid by Oxfam and Basil just got a job as a pharmacist in Shufat Refugee Camp after spending two years looking for work, or as he says “talking to Machmud”. Both these young men are highly opinionated, well-read, and well-informed in current events from all around the world. We were so engrossed in the conversation that 2 hours passed before anyone even mentioned the reason that we had travelled to Al Walaja.



Al Walaja is set in beautiful rolling terraced hillsides which slope down into a deep valley. This beauty as well as its proximity to Bethlehem makes it attractive to Israeli’s plan to extend the settlements of Gilo and Har Gilo. The village has about 2500 residents and is located in the Bethlehem Governorate. Thirty Al Walaja houses have demolitions orders on them because they block the view from the new buildings in the settlement or are in the way of further development of same or of the Separation Barrier route which eventually completely surround the village. Hard to believe! (I just realized I wrote a bit about this village earlier when we visited Abed, the man who lived in the cave.) This time we visited another remarkable individual named Seham Salm, her father-in-law and two of her three sons.



Seham told us her story. She and her immediate family had moved from country to country before eventually settling where her mother’s family had lived, in Al Walaja. In 2003, they built a family home but did not have the proper paperwork (i.e. title to the land), so not only did the Israeli government order the house to be demolished but also ordered them to pay a fine of 70,000 NIS as well as the cost of the demolition. On January 31, 2006, the IDF arrived at the house with bulldozers, ordered the family out and gave them just enough time to collect their ID’s and money before the bulldozers went to work. It is common for the people whose houses are being bulldozed by the IDF to have to bear the cost. Some of the family went to live with other relatives in Al Walaja and her two oldest sons lived in a tent. The community rallied and help them rebuild another house, albeit smaller than the first.

In November 2006, the bulldozers and the IDF arrived again, unannounced and flattened house number two. This time the Holy Land Trust intervened and assisted with financing a third house, with help from international and even some Israeli organizations.



As we sat in the small but cozy house enjoying Seham’s Palestinian hospitality, the view from the window is a pile of rubble from the demolitions and in the not-too-far distance, the ever-approaching settlement of Gilo. She said, “the first two houses were bigger” and it “hurts her heart to think about it”. Her eldest son, Mu’taz, told us of being approached in CPs by soldiers wanting to befriend him, but with the hidden agenda (not too hidden), to become a collaborator with the army. Many generous offers and large promises are made to young Palestinian men to turn on their fellow Palestinians.

Now Seham and many other Al Walaja residents just wait for the next time. The demolition order is still in place.