Seeds of Hope

As we do UCPA (Unarmed Civilian Protection Accompaniment) work year-in and year-out, our doubts can outweigh our confidence. It helps to see and hear success stories that can buoy our efforts.

The last time I was in Palestine, I joined the struggle to protect the village of Khan al-Ahmar which was a typical extended Bedouin family spread across several villages. When an illegal settlement stole some of the village’s traditional lands, the village asked that the illegal settlement educate the Khan al-Ahmar children too, especially since the school bus went right through Khan al-Ahmar everyday. When that request was flatly denied, the village built its own school. The walls were made from used automobile tires filled with cement. Over time, as enrollment grew, the school expanded from one room to about twelve rooms. The walls were decorated with wonderful murals created by generations of students.

However, the illegal settlement Ma'ale Adumim wanted the land and felt that demolishing the school was both legal and their right. They also believed it would weaken the will of the community. Ma'ale Adumim was a powerful, though illegal, settlement with ten-story buildings, higher-education institutions, and industry. They believed they could get anything they wanted. In order to discourage bulldozers from doing their dirty work, our UCPA group spent many nights sleeping in the school. We returned to Khan al-Ahmar to demonstrate during the daytime when the danger to the village was especially high. Some days Palestinians from all over the West Bank gathered to show solidarity with the village. 

During this time there were elections in Ma'ale Adumim and one of the campaign promises was to once and for all just get rid of Khan al-Ahmar. Besides the expansion goals of Ma'ale Adumim, there was a bigger strategy. Khan al-Ahmar was one of the few remaining obstacles to cutting the West Bank in half with illegal settlements. As international awareness of the threatened school grew, the illegal settlers devised a new strategy. They started building a new road, a settler-only road that would imprison Khan al-Ahmar between two roads with no access to any of their traditional and life-giving grazing land. We watched as they cut the road so close to the village that the bulldozer actually tore parts off some of the buildings. Honestly, as I left, I was discouraged and thought that under threat from the powerful Ma'ale Adumim and Zionist goals, there could be no future for the school or the village of Khan al-Ahmar.

When I returned this year and rode from King Hussein Bridge to Jerusalem, some five years after attempting to save the village and school, I kept a despondent eye out to see what, if anything, remained of Khan al-Ahmar. As we came over the rise, there it was: Khan al-Ahmar with both the village and the school looking healthy. The only thing that had obviously deteriorated and fallen into disrepair during the five years was the illegal settler road that was designed to finally strangle the life out of Khan al-Ahmar. The road had succumbed to the ravages of time, reverting back to sand.

The sight of Khan al-Ahmar and the school still standing, was inspiring. It’s a living testimony to the efficacy of UCPA. Personally, I was surprised when I realized something. For me, seeing that the road built to strangle the village had been erased by nature gave me a vindictive joy. There are victories in the midst of struggle.