Reuters has a good article today on what should have been obvious to Ethan Bronner – it is the Israeli occupation that is running Palestinian Christians out of the West Bank. From the article “Israeli barrier bites into Palestinian village“:
One third of Aboud’s open space has been turned into a buffer zone.
Hundreds of olive trees have been uprooted to make way for a dirt road
closed off with barbed wire and patrolled by the Israeli army. . .Aboud’s parish priest Father Firas Aridah blames the Israeli barrier
for decimating the income of Aboud’s Christian community and forcing 34
families since 2000 to leave in search of more stability and security.“The biggest problem is the loss of their land. Their olive trees
have been cut down, and this in turn has cut them off from their source
of livelihood,” said Aridah.The Fawadleh brothers, George, Francis and Khalil, watched 117 trees
owned by their family for generations being uprooted early last year.
They now have only 26 left and worry those will be destroyed as well.“It felt like having a stroke,” said George Fawadleh, a Catholic.
“It’s our land. When they uprooted the trees, it was a catastrophe for
us.”
