The Way To Aboud

By Dr. Maria C. Khoury

Foolishly thinking the closure is getting better, I set out in the hills and countryside of the west bank to travel to a small Christian community in Aboud where we offer elementary and junior high school education in the Latin Partriarchate School next to the church where Fr. Aktham Hijazin has been serving for the last three years. A very young and kind priest, Fr. Aktham Hijazin is proud of the active youth group in the village where he serves about 100 families. They publish a quarterly youth magazine entitled "the voice of the city of flowers" and they maintain a web site at www.angelfire.com/pa/aboudyouth

The village is about one hour Northwest from Jerusalem on what might be thought of as a borderline before entering Tel Aviv. The two thousand residents of Aboud are half mixed Christians and Muslims and surrounded by Israeli settlers. Besides the Latin Church, there are two other church communities in this lovely village, the Orthodox, and the Protostant school and parish.

Every road to every single Palestinian village on the way to Aboud had a large cement blocks about three feet high at the entrance of the village. About four large blocks prevent the netrance and exit on these small roads. One cement block sometimes is pushed out of the way and allows people to temporarily get in and out the village. However, anytime the Israelis want to make us prisoners in our own homes, they certainly have the power and control to cage us in like animals.

These cements blocks have prevented about seventy children according to the headmaster Mr. Ibrahim Hemad from reaching the Aboud school since sept 28^th. By now these children have simply stopped being students at the Aboud School. These students were a great loss for such a small school community.

My intention in visiting the Aboud School was to follow up two of our English programs, the writing contest among all the schools and spelling competition in the 6^th and 7^th grade. Also, to set up the Holy Land Correspondence program where Palestinian girls in Aboud can exchange letters with American girls to share ideas about culture, school and traditions. Now, I have a list of boys that would like to participate in the pen-pal activity but no American boys to match up.

Although its frightening to see the bad road conditions in the Holy Land, I continued my journey to Aboud. What usually is very busy road hardly had a soul travailing. And the cars that I did see frightened me even more. An army jeep in the front and an army jeep in the back of the bus now accompany most Israeli buses. It’s a very strange site. I saw them pass and throught how safe they are being accompanied by a jeep full of soldiers with heavy -duty guns. The Holy Spirit usually accompanies me so I managed to calm down the adrenaline that began to quickly flow at the sight of these soldiers. The problem with the settlement roads is you never know who might attack you at random. Israeli settlers on the mountaintops attack Arabs woth white plated cars while Palestinians throw stones on yellow plated cars.

Having reached aboud safe and following a succesful school visit, I head for home. To my surprise there was a new checkpoint set up at the point that was not there when I had passsed in the morning. The soldiers stopped me. "Shalom Shalom" To make a long story short, I was not able to pass from the same road I had traveled in the morning to return to my home. Although I tried to be logical and explain my home was just ten minutes away and my children were waiting for me after school to let then in the house and feed them. I need to go home badly. I’m very good at begging and I have gotten use to waiting but the soldier got sick of my pleading and weaning and said: "if you don’t go back, I will shoot."

"I have done nothing wrong, I just want to go home, please let me get by."

"If you don’t go now, I will shoot your car"

well, I know the grace of God was still with me but I was not going to pass this checkpoint. By now, my children are locked out of the house, they will not eat lunch on time, and I better not show up with bullet holes in my car because my husband will kill me if this soldier misses. Besides, Mercedes parts are too expensive to buy on this side of the world. All of sudden, I knew what Mr. Barak meant when he said that the Palestinians would have limited access to roads. I guss it means in my case, I can go to work in the morning, but I can’t go back home. This is the democracy of Israel and insanity of the Israeli occupation.

Thus, frustrated, angry and mad some people have dealt with these conmditions since 1948. I truly believe the world dose not know the daily suffering and lifetime struggle of the Palestinian people. we are not asking for luxuries here like swimming parties, hockey games, disneyland and field trips. We are asking for the basic right to go to school and work. If you are an American voter, please contact your senators and representatives today. Organize a petition in your youth group or in your church community and present it to congress to plead for basic human rights in Palestine. Please know that you can make a difference because it is the American government that is giving blind support to Israel and igmoring war-criminal behaviors and the atrocities we have seen in the last five months. The land where our lord and Savior established our Christian roots deserves a better environment than this current tragedy and bloodshed.