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July 1st, 2003
Yanoun, 1948
I spent the last two nights in
Yanoun, a tiny Palestinian village frozen in time. The village
sleeps beneath starry nights on a steep hillside that overlooks
a miniature valley with two fields, a line of trees, and a spring.
A rough dirt road runs through the only gap in the surrounding
hills. I wake to sheep and goats being herded into the fields
by children. Old men sit under olive trees and invite me for
tea as I pass. The year is 1948. 
1948 is, of course, the year
of Al Nakba, "The Catastrophe" or for Israel, the year
of Israel's "independence" Like many other villages
of this time, Yanoun is surrounded by Zionist colonial outposts
and settlements. But while other Palestinian villages are cleared,
their residents massacred and fleeing, Yanoun sits frozen in
a moment of half-existence, it's houses half-empty, its
villagers half-refugees. ( to view a map of Yanoun and of surrounding
Israeli colonies
click
here)
John and I, both from Boston, USA, arrived yesterday and were greeted by a villager named Yassir with tea and cigarettes. He is about forty-five, and has the taught build and leather skin of a person who works outdoors and eats little. He does not seem to mind sitting in the glaring sun, and does not glance at the settlement that stares down at us. His broad, squinting smile and shy laugh eases our attempt at conversation without a common language. He tells us that seven of his grandfathers were born in Yanoun.
The oldest man I have met here, Ahmad Mahmoud Subah, has lost one eye to age and the other lost to a settler. A few years ago, before the Nakba began, he was alone tending sheep on a field very nearby when he was attacked and badly beaten. Now he leans on a mat in the home of his son, his heavy head nodding downward occasionally. With his staff and arm outstretched, he insists on walking painfully up to the roof to join us for tea.
We
can see groups of settlers entering the observation tower on
the hill immediately facing us. We are told that they are always
watching. (photo 2)
At night, we hear the barks of dogs echoing through the valley.
Only the settlers keep dogs, and I fear an attack, not knowing
that wild dogs also roam. The valley is so still that I can hear
the dogs panting as they run.
Another outpost above and behind the village shines a spotlight
onto the hills in front of me as I peer out the window. I do
not sleep the first night. But Louis, a Canadian who has been
here two weeks, and John, both sleep soundly.
The next day, the mayor shows us a map he has drawn. Yanoun appears as a lonely teardrop in a sea of stolen land. At its heart its treasure: a natural spring. The settlers must bring their water in by truck. But sometimes on Saturdays they enter the village, heavily armed, and wash their dogs in the village's water trough.
I am only beginning to know the
story of Yanoun. But I know that eight months ago, the settler
aggression reached a climax. Settlers came with machine guns
and threats to kill, and the villagers fled down to a larger
nearby village. The village sat empty, its residents refugees.
Settlers immediately plowed the land, expecting to keep what
they had taken. Al Nakba, seemed to have reached Yanoun, and
Israel appeared to grow into one of the last remaining corners
of historic Palestine. But this time, the clock would be turned
back.
The second day after Yanoun's Nakba, Israelis from peace groups
and Internationals from around the world accompanied about half
the villagers back to Yanoun. In other words, the villagers exercised
their right of return, the right of every refugee under international
law to return to homes fled in times of war.
For eight months, nine families have survived here. There are twenty two children. No villager can walk more than a few meters up the hillsides for fear of being shot from the observation towers.
Armed
settlers still make regular incursions into the community, and
have attacked the Israelis and internationals staying here numerous
times.
My first morning in Yanoun, a settler known as Victor rode into town with an M-16 rifle, scowled at us, and left. Not long ago he machined gunned the village tractor. (view side photo) The settlers want Yanoun, its land and its water. They want to clear it of its people like they cleared Deir Yassin and the hundreds of other villages who's residents now sit in refugee camps in Nablus, Jenin and elswhere. How long before Al Nakba comes to Yanoun to stay?
To know more about Yanoun recent history of aggressions by settlers read:
"Armed settlers force out villagers" Conal Urquhart Yanoun
Sunday October 27, 2002 The Observer and more to come