Israel's land grab in Bethelehem

As I began reading an article about the 1,000 acres of land that Israel has now declared state land in the area of Bethlehem, a wave of nostalgia hit me. I pictured the craggy hills, I heard the donkey braying outside my window and I smelled the apricots ripening in the orchard. In 1996, during the year that I spent in the West Bank, some of my fondest memories were when my wife and I visited my friend Samia's home in Battir, a village just north of the most recent land grab. Battir is a beautiful village that is just across the green line from Israel. What looks like a creek flows between my friend's orchards and a forest planted on the Israeli side(the creek is actual sewage from nearby settlements). Battir has a natural source of water, a spring [pictured above] that has been tapped for hundreds of years that keeps the orchards well fed and has been more than enough to sustain the residents of the village. Battir is home to doctors, lawyers and professors as the first UN schools in the region were very well regarded, going back to the 1940s and 1950s. Those UN teachers raised children who then went on to be professors. Many of Battir's residents traveled abroad for education, going to the UK and America. When I last saw Samia, who was then living in the West Bank, she said she hadn't been to her home in Battir in over a year. In fact, her mother and father, sisters and brothers had all relocated to Ramallah. The simple reason is that life that close to the Israeli border is nearly unlivable. Battir, you see, exists in the state of non-existence which is the seam zone. Battir, like dozens of villages across the West Bank is so close to Israel that the Israelis built the separation barrier on the other side of the village. The separation barrier separates Battir from Bethlehem. The residents have to pass through the barrier to leave their village to be able to get anywhere is a huge hassle and the village is dying. While we can all bemoan the loss of another 1,000 acres to the latest Israeli land grab, let's not forget that they have been planning on taking all of this land for years. Battir will die as will Husan and Wadi Fukin, the closest village to the land grab. Those from this area have been expecting this for years. Soon, Israel will bulldoze these villages to make way for new settlements as they have already become ghost towns in the seam zone.