The Psalmist writes, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort." (Psalm 23:4)

This most famous psalm describes a shepherd leading sheep to clear running water through a valley that is dark and fearsome. On Tuesday and Wednesday I walked through a valley that has shepherds and sheep, as well as lush grass for them to eat, and also a well rich with clear water. But it was a valley of fear for the Palestinian people living there in the village of Yanoun. And I had to admit that I, too, was afraid.

Traveling

I traveled from Jerusalem to Yanoun by taking the Palestinian bus from the "station" (an outdoor area where the buses park) just north of Damascus Gate to the Qalandia checkpoint, just outside Ramallah, where buses, vans, and taxis mix, wait, and exchange passengers. The cost of the half hour ride was only 3 and a half Shekels, or about 75 cents.

At Qalandia I had to wait for twenty minutes, before the van bringing another EA back from Yanoun arrived, to drop him off and pick me up. There is no waiting room at this major transit center, for there is no shelter. Four roads converge at the intersection, where there is a roundabout. All the vehicles bringing passengers to Qalandia, and picking up other passengers, park along one road or another, or in a couple of dirt areas just off the road, and wait until enough riders board to justify the cost of driving to wherever the vehicle is going.

Traveling to Yanoun could have involved at least three transit changes, at places where there would be fewer travelers, and thus longer waits before proceeding. But an arrangement had been made, because one of our EAs was alone in Yanoun. So each day another EA was going out to be with him, as no EA should be left there overnight alone.

Once in the van, the trip to Yanoun took an hour. We followed highway 45 east to highway 60, and heading north on highway 60 we soon turned onto highway 457, which took us to highway 458 and straight north on a road that is about 5 miles west of highway 60, the main north-south highway through the West Bank.

The land along highway 458 was drier to me than along highway 60, which is over a range of hills to the west. Looking east I could see all the way to the Jordan River valley. There were very few olive trees on the hillsides of this semi-arid environment, but things changed when we turned west briefly on highway 505, and then followed a terribly rough dirt and gravel road for about a mile in order to get to the paved road that leads to Aqraba.

Here there were olive trees and even some fields of wheat, and Aqraba was a town with a mosque, a secondary school, and some houses that were new and quite substantial. But the road we had to travel through Aqraba was being prepared, I believe, for a new surface, but has yet to be adequately graded. For several blocks we were bouncing and lurching in the van, as I observed two boys, who were obviously friends, as one rode a bicycle and the other a donkey.

Beyond Agraba we had a short drive to Lower Yanoun, which is further down in the valley. Then we entered a valley where wonderfully green wheat was waving in the wind, all the way from Lower Yanoun to the steep road that curved part way up the hillside at the end of the valley. And, after gearing down and climbing the hill, we were in Upper Yanoun, where my friend is staying.

Yanoun

While I visited him I learned that there about 16 families in both Lower and Upper Yanoun with perhaps 100 people, more than half of them children. These families descend from two families, and as many of the marriages in the village have taken place between these original families, everyone in the valley is related one way or another.

There are no new houses here, and the largest house in Upper Yanoun is empty, because the family has fled. Those who remain in Upper and Lower Yanoun life in fear of the Jews, who live in the settlement on the hilltop above Yanoun. Itamar, as the settlement is called, has a population of about one thousand. There is one main area of buildings, some of which are clearly visible from the village below. But the settlement has also established outposts along the hilltops on both sides of the valley, so on the top of the hill it has the shape of a U. The village is effectively surrounded, and the only way out for the villagers is by the road I took coming in.

The sad story of Yanoun is that as the settlement developed above, the settlers took more and more land from the Palestinians. They confiscated land first for the settlement, then for the security perimeter and the access roads they built to reach and defend their land. As the settlers created outposts, they took more land for the same reason. The villagers estimate they have lost 90 percent of their land to the settlers.

The remaining 10 percent, however, is very fertile land in the valley, and the lower slopes where olive trees grow, some with trunks so thick that they must be hundreds of years old. (The Palestinians call these "Roman trees," for they believe they date back to the times of the Romans.) Also there is an excellent well in the valley. So, with good soil and water, the valley immediately below Yanoun and between Lower and Upper Yanoun is the source both of food for the people and sheep, and also a cash crop that enables the villagers to make a reasonable living.

Although the villagers resent being robbed of their land by the settlers, they can make a living on the land that they continue to have. Therefore, they are willing to accept their loss, if this is what it takes to live in the valley in peace. But in 2002 the settlers tried to drive the villagers out entirely, for the settlers wanted to cake control of the well and to have the fertile land of the valley, as well as most of the hillsides where olive trees are planted.

After harassing the farmers and the families for several weeks, one Sabbath evening the settlers came into both Upper and Lower Yanoun. They broke into the houses, carrying their M-16 rifles, and they dragged men out into the street and beat them. Then they threatened to kill everyone in the village, if the people did not leave within the week before the settlement celebrated its next Sabbath.

Children in the village were terrified, and began to wet their beds at night. They would cry hysterically at the sight of settlers walking on the hillsides, or coming down from the hills and moving through the valley. The Israeli army was notified, but did not make any commitment to protect the people. Yanoun is in Area C of the West Bank, under the division of the West Bank into three areas of control, and the Israeli army administers all of Area C. Having no assurance of police protection, the villagers decided they couldn’t remain in Yanoun. The day before the Sabbath, they all fled, mostly to Aqraba.

Their story became known, however, to Israeli activists, and two of these were so outraged by the conduct of the Jews of Itamar that, with great courage, they came to Yanoun to live there in order to make it safe for the villagers to return. After a week or so, internationals also came, and one of the houses in Upper Yanoun became the international house. Together, Israeli activists and internationals pledged to maintain a presence in Yanoun, and with that pledge many of the villagers returned.

Presently, the Ecumenical Accompaniment program carries the burden of fulfilling the pledge, for it sends two or three EAs to live in Yanoun for three months at a time. During the three months that I’ve been in Jerusalem, two members of our group have been living in Yanoun. As one of these EAs needed to leave for awhile, other EAs in our group working in other places, as well as other internationals from other groups, have been coming to Yanoun to fill in.

Of course EAs have no weapons, and no group of international can stop the settlers from doing whatever they choose to do. But the EAs can call the army, human rights groups, and the press, if anything happens. And this has brought enough pressure to bear on the settlement that there has been no attack on the Upper and Lower Yanoun since the villagers returned three years ago.

There have, however, been incidents. The day before I came, three horses grazing in a field near Upper Yanoun were stolen by settlers. The army was informed, but they didn’t do anything. The EA living in Upper Yanoun discussed the problem with the mayor, and they decided they would not try to go up to the settlement. Only the week before, a Palestinian farmer had been beaten and chased from his olive groves, and the settlers then had tried to set his tractor on fire.

The settlement of Itamar is frequently written up in the Israeli press, which characterizes its occupants as among the most extreme and violent in the West Bank. Israeli activist groups and international human rights groups have protested against what the settlers of Itamar have done to the people of Yanoun, and perhaps as a result one of the settlers is presently under house arrest.

But life in Yanoun remains tense. At night, the village is well lit by its own street lights, for a European NGO with a grant from the United Nations Development Program has built an electric generator below the Upper village. This new source of power is heavily fortified so it is at least be more difficult for the settlers to destroy it, than the village generator they did destroy.

If fact, the Upper village is too well lit on many nights, for the settlers have spotlights they turn on, which bathe the village in moving light all through the night. For whatever reason this did not happen the night I was there, but the records kept by the internationals living in Yanoun verify that it is more common than not. Perhaps celebrating of Pesach (Passover) all week distracted the settlers, and they were enjoying themselves too much to bother putting more pressure on the villagers right now.

The Good Life

When I arrived in Yanoun the EA staying there now by himself, Arne Essen, was sitting in front of the international house, reading. The view over the valley is spectacular, and the road ends just after the house, so there is no traffic. The smell of sheep and manure is present, because in these villages the sheep are kept at night in the lower part of the building. And that is true for the house where Arne stays in the upper level. But the smell was not overpowering, and there was a night breeze bringing fresh air from the valley. The sheep also wake early, as I found out, for their cries woke me the next morning a little after dawn.

Arne speaks only a little Arabic, and only a few of the villagers speak a little English. So, life in Yanoun involves a lot of visiting, drinking tea or strong coffee, and smiling and nodding.

The English teacher in the elementary school in Upper Yanoun, which opened two years ago with support of European NGOs as a sign of the commitment Israelis and internationals were making to support the villagers, is an exception. He speaks good English, but he lives outside the village in Aqraba. So, he is only available for conversation when school is in session.

We did have tea with him the next morning, while the students were on break. We talked not only about the problems in the village, but also about Islam, teaching, and America. (They had an American map on the wall of one of the two classrooms, that had been given to the school by an American visitor.)

While I was in Yanoun Arne and Ialso visited the two older sisters, who live immediately next door to the international house. Arne says these women take care of him, and I can verify that they surely do. Before I arrived Arne had sprayed the floor to get rid of ants, but the odor of the spray continued to pervade the room. So, we carried the mat outside and laid it over the thistles growing beside the door. While we were inside the two ladies came and laid the mat on the black asphalt street, with a milk jug on top to prevent it from blowing off the hill.

The ladies also brought Arne some cooked wild peas for dinner, and when we ate that evening Arne shared with me sweet rich wrapped in bay leaves, goat cheese, and olives all given to him by his lady friends. They also bring Arne fresh bread each evening. The bread in the villages is not like the city, for it is baked on heated stones. Sometimes, when the bread is picked up, a stone remains attached. And we had a stone about the size of my thumb in the large, circular, thin loaf of bread that the women gave to us for dinner.

These women also run the only store in the village, which has six shelves each about five feet long. These shelves held soft drinks, soap, olives in bottles, olive oil, cookies, and a few other items. Arne swears by the olive soap, so I bought two cakes for 5 Shekels each. Arne told me that the women were selling the items for the same price they bought them in Aqraba, but that he had persuaded them to add one Shekel to the cost of each item. The entrepreneurial spirit of capitalism has reached the village of Yanoun!

The store, which I believe is also their one room home, was about twelve feet square, and the walls and ceiling were unpainted slabs of cement. There was no window, so the only light in the store came through the open door. There was no screen door, so flies swirled in the moving air in the middle of the room. There was a bench along one wall, where we sat as we drank the strong coffee they served us. The women both had their hair covered, and their clothing was faded and a bit tattered. But although poor, they possessed a quiet dignity. Their smiles were warm and welcoming, and they were very patient with our attempts to communicate with them in English.

They did have a treadle sewing machine in the room, and Arne said they did clothing repairs for people in the village. They also had a black and white television, and it was on while we were having coffee. The program involved a woman commentator, who was dressed in western clothing and did not have her hair covered. She was visiting a hair dresser, as we sat in silence, drinking our coffee.. Arne said we were watching a channel on a Jordanian television station.

During the afternoon Arne and I took the walk he takes every day in the afternoon. We went down the hill and out the road toward Lower Yanoun, then east along an intersecting road for half a mile or so, before climbing a hillside to see the stone remains of what the villagers say was a mosque. The hilltop is known as "Nabanun." Arne learned the derivation of this name one day, when he encountered on this hilltop a settler family, a man and his wife, and their ten children.

They settlers are not supposed to come down here on the lower slopes, but the settler spoke English and told Arne that they had come to honor the burial site of Nun, the father of Joshua. He explained that Muslims also see Nun as a prophet, which is why they join the word in Arabic for prophet with Nun and call the hilltop Nabanun.

The settler was cordial and invited dArne to visit him in Itamar. He said that if Arne came up and gave his name to the guards, he would come out and escort Arne into the settlement. But Arne has not done so. He is not sure it would be safe to approach the settlement, and he thinks the villagers would not want him to be too friendly with any of the settlers.

The day we walked up Nabanun to see the stone remains there, we found three shepherds and all their sheep enjoying the shade of the trees and the thick grass nearby. Arne knew the shepherds, and we said hello in Arabic. Once before, when he encountered them here, the shepherds were preparing lunch and invited him to join them. They had slaughtered one of the sheep, and they roasted pieces of meat over an open fire. It must have been like stepping back into the world of the Bible in the hills of Samaria, for here we are not far from the ancient city of Shechem.

As we walked back to the main road, Arne explained that he isn’t able to walk east along the intersecting road, because the settlers have blocked it passes below their outpost. This road was the main way to travel from the village to Nablus. Now the villagers have to go around through Aqraba, which is much longer, and so requires both more time and gasoline to make the trip.

Walking back up the valley the horseshoe shape of the hilltops, with the settlement and the outposts on them, was clearly visible, with Upper Yanoun sitting just below the main part of the settlement. In the valley below a man was in the wheat field, bent over, cutting feed for his sheep with a sickle held in his had like a knife. A donkey was tethered beneath an olive tree, and birds were singing, as the afternoon grew cooler. It was almost an idyllic scene, except for the fear of the settlers, their M-16s, and their determination to drive the Palestinians from their land.

Had I not visited Yanoun, and met the people, and talked with Arne, I might have found the facts I have related so contrary to the pastoral setting I saw, that these harsh facts would hardly be believable. But I knew, sadly, that the facts were true. Without internationals in the village, drinking tea and coffee with elderly ladies, visiting the school, and spending the night, as the lights of the settlement remind the villagers of what might happen to them, the settlers would likely return to the valley with their guns and their threats. And the Palestinians in Yanoun would be driven from their homes and their land.

Bob Traer, 28 April 2005

The views expressed above are personal and do not necessarily represent the World Council of Churches. If you wish to publish or disseminate this letter beyond personal friends, please contact the EAPPI Communications Officer (eappi-co@jrol.com) for permission to do so. Thank you.

Photographs from my visit to Yanoun are at http://christian-bible.com/Ethics/photos.yanoun.htm. 

For other Letters from Jerusalem, go to http://christian-bible.com/Ethics/lj.letters.2005.htm. 

Home   Exegesis   Scripture   Worship   Ethics   Dialogue   Parables   Email   

1 in Faith: A Christian Bible Study † Copyright © 2000 by Robert Traer