A nasty walk to school

Culvert to start the commute to school

Boy in culvert

Although authorities blocked this road six years ago, the sign above still says
"Welcome to Jaba." Students have to climb rocks and squeeze through a tunnel.

Imagine if you had to get to school by crawling through a culvert under a busy highway, then climb over
a rock pile and squeeze through a narrow tunnel that might have snakes or a dead sheep. In rainy weather, you will get muddy and the teacher will send you home. That's the daily trip of 30 children in the Kaabneh Bedouin community of Jaba, northeast of Jerusalem, which is hemmed in by Israeli settlements and highways. The Palestinian Authority says it has no money to get them a bus, but my EA partner Olli from Finland is going to see if his government can help.

Mohamed Kaabneh

We learned from Mohamed Kaabneh that their community, which now has about 250 persons, has been here for 43 years and has title to the land (unlike the Bedouins threatened with forced relocation from Khan al-Ahmar, reported in earlier blogs).

He says two of the houses were built with permits, but the other houses and tents do not have them and it is practically impossible to get them from Israeli authorities. He showed us two houses that authorities have demolished.

Destroyed home

Mahmoud says soldiers have destroyed the community's tents four times in the past two years, and on March 19 they gave him a verbal order to take the current tents down or they would be destroyed in one week. The week has passed...maybe they will get a reprieve.

Some of the tents threatened with destruction

Israeli settlement of Adam

The Kaabneh live very near the Israeli settlement of Adam, started in 1986, but Mohamed says there have been virtually no difficulties with those settlers. They have had problems with more militant settlers from near Ramallah, who have broken windows in his house and stolen sheep.

A dozen years ago settlers approached the Kaabneh and offered them a blank check to purchase their property. They could have named any price. But Mohamed says they refused to sell. "I was born here; I want to die here," he says.

A determined boy

Community's goats stop highway traffic

We are used to seeing roads for Israelis only, but on the way back to Jerusalem today we found a novel traffic pattern. The road was designated for Palestinians only, and police made Israelis detour to avoid creating traffic jams around the old city for Passover.