People of Peace: "Rebuilding to Remain"

- Village of 300 beautiful people remaining -

- sandwiched in close range of Israeli military training camps -

(which includes a mock village [pictured below] that the IDF uses for training)

- Demolition orders on almost all of the buildings...

...97% of village with military demolition orders which include:

a newly built spice/tea factory,

textile factory,

the mosque,

the kindergarten,

clinic,

homes,

farms,

etc. -

- falling asleep to the sound of gun shots,

with the fear of the "training" soldiers pushing through their doors -

Insisting on strong, hopeful, peaceful resistance,

Al Aqaba village rebuilds to remain.
http://rebuildingalliance.org/

Mayor Haj Sami lost the use of his legs at age 16 when he was shot 40 years ago by training IDF soldiers. Haj Sami's heart still beats strong, despite the bullet lodged beside it: he dedicates his life to making peace for his village and Palestine. We are ever grateful for the hospitality and generosity not only from the Mayor, but the villagers we met - just oozing with hospitality!
Haj Sami's "Rebuild to Remain" efforts aim to keep the village, which is being squeezed out by the State of Israel, through non-violently continuing to construct community buildings, despite the majority of demolitions and demolition orders on the entire village.

The aforementioned mock village lies right next to Al
Aqaba and is used for military training purposes.
Out of the whole Jordan Valley, (which is also stolen
land declared Area C [military controlled]), the IDF
chose to train right around Al
Aqaba, and often uses the real village to train as a
step up from this mock village in the valley.

View from where we slept that night,
watching from our roof the dance of flash-
lights and show of flares that moved in time
with the artillery firing into the wee hours
of the morning.

A different sort of picture than what we
often see...

Al Aqaba is determined to hold onto their roots:
their population is squeezed out with every
demolition order, and denied building permit requests
(on their own land). One such way is a 9 month women's
non-violent resistance camp, which busses girls of
varying ages who used to live there,
but had to move to other villages.

Wonderful friend Walah's
beautiful sons!!

Still humbled and honoured by their hospitality <3
thank-you Walah and Abmat!!!

...

The Peace Road, heading into the Jordan Valley (mostly used by workers and farmers), that was destroyed two weeks ago by the IDF.

More of the destroyed Peace Road, and Jordan in the distance.

These two gentlemen stopped us for tea when I gracefully asked for the "Hammam" (toilet). One (a psychologist) ended up answering our questions about his experiences working in a settlement, where he felt that himself and his fellow Palestinian workers were treated not like people, but machines.

Newly opened women's spice/tea coop factory! Hopefully this factory will demonstrate not only efforts to show peaceful resistance by refusing to be forced from their land, but by developing businesses, jobs are kept in the ever decreasing population of Al-Aqaba.