Pilgrimage to Bethlehem

Today I travelled with ICAHD to just outside the village of Wallaje to visit the vegetable market of a man named Abed. The journey was an interesting one: We took one of the Damascus busses to Beit Jala and had to walk the rest of the way to Wallaje; it turned out to be a lot farther than we thought. Forty five minutes and innumerable hilltops later, we arrived at the vegetable market. It was a fairly basic structure surrounded by improvised irrigation systems (I’ve put up pictures on Facebook and Flickr and labeled them appropriately).

The story of Abed is an inspiring one and atypical in many ways of the Palestinian experience. After the 1967 war, he was pushed off his ancestral land and due to his circumstances, forced to live in a refugee camp. However, he decided that he was tired of living as a refugee later made the journey back to his small plot of land against the wishes of the Israeli government. Improving upon a small cave to be his dwelling, he set about reworking the land and with the help of neighbors and an Israeli woman he has been successful.

Unfortunately, Abed and his property stand in the way of future settlement construction and as such demolition orders have been placed on his house. In an effort to encourage him to leave voluntarily, the IDF moved boulders onto the main road, cutting him off from the rest of the town and limiting his freedom of movement. Yet he perseveres and continues to open up his area as a market for the rest of the townspeople’s vegetables.

After visiting the market, I travelled with two others to Bethlehem by foot (with a short cab ride that allowed us to navigate the city) in order to catch a glimpse of the Church of the Nativity and snap some shots of how the wall has affected life in Bethlehem. Having not eaten breakfast or lunch, I proceeded to eat all the vegetables that I had bought earlier. Getting to the church was pretty easy and its beauty did not disappoint but sadly no pictures were allowed. After that, it was getting dark so I decided that it was best to try and find my way back to Jerusalem instead of explore since my travel buddies had different final travel destinations. Luckily an Austrian on the bus was there for that same reason and offered to send them to me, making the whole day a success.

Don’t forget to check out the pictures!