Aboudis Talk About their lives
Interviewed by Steve Bonham Christmas 2005

Mr. Hanna Khoury 

A spokesperson of the Aboud Popular Committee Against the Wall and a leading Orthodox Christian in the village  

160 people from Aboud applied to the Israelis for entry permits to Bethlehem and Palestinian East Jerusalem over Christmas. While most had got them 32 were refused. All my family have been given permits except me. Perhaps this is a punishment for my activism. I want to go to the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem for the ordination of Archimandrite Attalah Hanna as our Bishop of Sebastia. 
 
Construction of wall will take from me 2 separate pieces of land in total 110 Dunums (10 Dunums= One Hectare, 4 Dunums= One Acre) of land. 94 will be isolated behinds the wall. The rest will be in the path of the 60 metre wide barrier. I will lose 300 Olive trees, wheat fields and grazing land.

Interview with a school teacher who did not want his name published

Most of the adult men are unemployed. In the past they would have worked in Israel or in service industries in the village. Now they are not allowed to work in Israel and the road through Aboud has been blocked at the North West entrance to the village for five years. Aboud was a service centre for surrounding villages. Now Aboud is quiet, economically dead.

Many who want to marry cannot afford to do so. They cannot afford a home. My brother is 32 year old and unemployed. He is still unmarried for this reason. He has only been able to find short term, very poorly paid work. Women are often the only wage earners in families. They work in Ramallah in poorly paid jobs as maids, cleaners or factory work, for example in a crisp factory. They might earn about £150 a month. Most of this will be spent on water and electricity bills. These services have to be bought from Israel at exorbitant prices. My electricity bill last month was £70, and it is used for little more than lighting. We do not use electricity for heating or cooking. 
 
We were speaking in his home on a cold winter day, so cold that we could see our breath. Sometimes he uses a bottled gas heater to give a little warmth in his lounge. Some other homes had wood burning stoves, using fuel from their family trees. Despite being located on a major aquifer and close to powerful springs water is expensive and rationed. Families are exceedingly careful with water use. For example toilets are not flushed with every use, and certainly not when just used as a urinal.

He talked about the land:-
 Our land is an important source of food and a supplement to income. We produce Olive oil and make our own olive oil soap. Many grow wheat and ground flour, animals graze on uncultivated land. Many families now stand to lose all or most of their land with construction of the illegal separation wall. A few days a relative of mine was ploughing his land near the Beit Arye settlement and was forced to leave by settler gunmen.When he returned he saw that 75, half of his Olive trees had been marked for removal as they are on the proposed line of the wall. The rest are close by, he fears these will also be lost as the bulldozers are likely to dump soil and rubble on them. In total Aboud will lose 5200 Olive trees with construction of the wall.
 

Yosef Ismael 

Retired teacher and an Islamic member of Aboud village Council

Aboud was the transport hub and service centre for neighbouring villages. Other villagers such as Liban and Rantis did not have secondary schools. Before the roads were closed secondary pupils used to come to Aboud. Aboud provided shops, Olive Oil refineries, Carpenters, a plumbing shop, cement and building materials, electrical services, a café for people coming to Aboud and travelling through Aboud to Ramallah. Now there is no visiting or through trade. 
 
With construction of the wall Aboud could lose 5 200 Olive Trees. I lost trees in December 2000 when settlers and the army burnt or uprooted 4000 Aboud Olive Trees. The Olive tree is my soul. For me the olive tree is the past, the present, the future. It is the name the Holy Land, my father, my grandfather my distant ancestors planted these trees. When they cut down the Olive trees they cut my soul.
 
We can live in peace with the Israelis. Walls cannot build peace. Walls divide. We need to build bridges between people. Walls make enemies not peace. We Palestinians want peace. We need your help. You must raise your voices more.
 

Daniel Sumrain

Son of the Orthodox priest in Aboud 
(In the orthodox church it is permitted to marry before becoming a priest)

The construction of the wall has both morale and tangible impacts on Aboud.

In this modern world in 2005, human rights are respected and generally enforced. In the preceding decades most colonies have gained independence. But Palestine is still under occupation and Palestinian rights denied. Yet the world stands idly by and does not confront Israel. The clearest manifestation of Israel's denial of our rights is the confiscation of our land which started in 1948 and has been continuous ever since. The Israelis will not stand still. Always they want to expand, to take more land. They should have their land then leave the Palestinians alone to live in our land. World institutions, the UN and world court have issued judgments without enforcing them. The countries of the world are only bystanders and spectators as our land is taken from us.

Despite the absence of action so far the Palestinian people continue to appeal with hope to the world to act, to condemn and halt land confiscation.

We want our children to have land for building homes and for cultivation. What is there here for future generations without land? Watching land confiscation without being able to do anything effective to stop it is draining our morale. Many are losing hope.

Other nations may have fences and concrete walls on their borders. But here these fences and concrete walls separate us from our own land. We are not free to move in our own land. This contradicts in a horrible way human decency. What is happening to us is not suitable for human beings.

The tangible effect on me will be the loss of 250 Dunums of land, 25% planted with Olive Trees. 300 Olive trees in total producing 1200 kilos of Olive Oil each year. 80 of these trees are at least 1000 years old, some may have been growing when Jesus Christ passed through here. They have belonged to my family for countless generations. Loosing them will be to loose my history, to loose part of my soul.

The Sumrain family

Our new generation expects us to defend the land. What will future generations feel if we surrender our land and rights without a struggle? We have to defend what little remains of our Palestinian land. But we feel we are on our own, abandoned by the world. The world is not acting to protect Palestinian rights. It does not insist that Israel stop land confiscation. But it demand that the Palestinians `stop the violence' and condemns Palestinian resistance as terrorism.

The Palestinian people are not by nature violent. We are not the terrorists that we are often portrayed as. Indicative of this is the peaceful demonstrations against construction of the wall in Aboud. We have remained peaceful despite the Israeli Army attempts to provoke violence by clubbing people and firing tear gas and rubber coated steel bullets. 
 
I believe that a peaceful demonstration is a far more powerful statement and has a greater impact than a thrown stone. But our demonstrations alone cannot stop construction of the wall. We need the world to act. Our peaceful protests are largely ignored by the world. Therefore some believe that they can make a stronger impact by strapping explosives to themselves and blow themselves up. If our youth saw that the world was concerned for our human dignity, if the world took note of our peaceful protests, stood by us and acted to defend our rights then no one would wish to blow themselves up. Both we and Israelis can live in security if they return our confiscated land.

Despite this bleak situation we remain hopeful that the world will wake up and recognize what is happening here. We look to the future with hope. We appeal to all who have honour and a conscience, all who support human rights to act, to tear down the wall and end the occupation.
 

Suhaila el Khoury 

Head teacher of the Protestant Primary School in Aboud

We had a lovely Christmas Party for the children. There were 14 outside guests. Some from the USA, others were from our church in Nazareth. They put on a puppet show for the children. The visitors from Nazareth did not have permission to enter the West Bank. They prayed and trusted in God and their prayers were answered. They met no flying checkpoints and were not stopped by soldiers.
 
Our church is the 'Church of God' a Pentecostal Church with its international centre in Tennessee. We also have congregations in Nazareth, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. In Nazareth the congregation is Palestinian. In Tel Aviv and Jerusalem our congregations are of international migrant workers who have replaced Palestinians in the Israeli economy. In Jerusalem the congregation is Rumanian, in Tel Aviv African. As a West Bank Palestinian I cannot travel freely to visit the other congregations of our church. I have not been able to get to Bethlehem since a school trip there in 1999. Sometimes I have been granted a permit to travel to (Occupied Palestinian East) Jerusalem. You don’t realise it when you are here, but when you cross the checkpoint suddenly you feel free, like a caged bird released and able to fly. 

My family will lose some land with construction of the wall. Other members of our church lost many olive trees when thousands of trees were destroyed at the entrance of the village in 2000.
 
Walls create division. Togetherness and sharing create love and understanding. The wall does not help anything.
 
Some in our church have moved to Ramallah because of the economic hardship here. But none are considering emigrating from Palestine.

Article by the Roman Catholic Priest Father Firas Aridah
Originally published in the Toronto Globe and Mail December 24th, 2005

As a parish priest in the West Bank village of Aboud, my Christmas preparations include recording the identity card numbers of my parishioners to request permits from the Israeli authorities to allow us to travel to Bethlehem.

Some may be denied permits and prevented from worshipping there. While decorating our church for the joyous birth of Our Lord, we also prepare banners for the next protest against the wall that Israel began to build on our village's land a month ago.

Aboud is nestled among terraced olive groves in the West Bank, west of the city of Ramallah. The village has 2,200 residents; 900 of them are Christian. Within the village are seven ancient churches and the oldest dates back to the third century. We believe that Jesus passed through Aboud on the Roman road from Galilee to Jerusalem.

The wall that Israel is building through Aboud is not for the security of Israel. It is for the security of Israeli settlements in our area.

The Israeli government continues to claim that it is building the wall on Israeli land, but Aboud lies six kilometres inside the Green Line, the pre-1967 border between Israel and the West Bank. The wall will cut off 1,100 acres of our land for the sake of two illegal Israeli settlements.

Sometimes the Israelis give special treatment to the Christians in our village. Sometimes they give them permits to go through checkpoints while they stop Muslims. They do this to try to separate us but, in reality, we Muslims and Christians are brothers.

Our church organist Yousef told me: "Some foreigners believe that Islam is the greatest danger for Palestinian Christians rather than Israel's occupation. This is Israeli propaganda. Israel wants to tell the world that it protects us from the Muslims, but it is not true."

In Aboud, we Muslims and Christians live a normal, peaceful life together. Last week our village celebrated the Feast of Saint Barbara for our patron saint whose shrine outside our village was damaged by the Israeli military in 2002. We invited the Muslims to share the traditional feast of Saint Barbara. They also invite us to share their traditional Ramadan evening meal. We have good relations. Muslims are peaceful people.

With signs, songs and prayers, our village has been protesting against Israel's apartheid wall. Through peaceful demonstrations and the planting of olive trees, we want to tell the Israelis and the international community that we are against Israel taking our lands.

We are working for peace here, but still the Israeli soldiers have attacked our peaceful protests with clubs, sound bombs, tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets.

Two weeks ago, we were honored with a visit to Aboud by the highest Roman Catholic official in the Holy Land, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah. Patriarch Sabbah, a Palestinian, planted an olive tree on the planned route of the wall, and told 1,000 peaceful protesters, "The wall doesn't benefit the security of either Israel or anybody else. Our prayers are for the removal of this physical wall currently under construction and the return of our lands.

"Our hearts are filled with love, and no hatred for anybody. With our faith and love, we demand the removal of this wall. We affirm that it is a mistake and an attack against our lands and our properties, and an attack against friendly relationships between the two people.

"In your faith and your love you shall find a guide for your political action and your resistance against every oppression. You may say that love is an unknown language to politics, but love is possible in spite of all the evil we experience. We shall make it possible!"

Just after Patriarch Sabbah left, an Israeli protesting with us was arrested by Israeli soldiers as he planted an olive tree.

We have good Israeli friends. We do not say that every Israeli soldier is bad, because they are just soldiers following orders.

Yes, there are Palestinian Christians here in Aboud, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Gaza. We are the Salt of the Earth.

My religion tells me that I have to love everybody and accept everybody without conditions.

We have here good Jewish people, good Muslims and good Christians. We can live together. This is the Holy Land.

If we in Aboud can send a message to the world this Christmas, it is that Jews, Christians and Muslims have to live together in peace.

Father Firas Aridah is a Jordanian priest serving the Roman Catholic Holy Mary Mother of Sorrows Church in the village of Aboud.