New Year's Eve at the Outpost

The Ghurfa

When Bil’in learned Israel’s Wall would come, it determined to stand against it. It performed non-violent demonstrations every week, and construction continued.

It chained itself to the trees as chainsaws cut away the olive branches, and construction continued.

It brought Israelis and international activists to the village to stand by its side, and construction continued.

It welded itself into steel cages in the path of bulldozers, and construction continued.

It spoke to filmmakers and journalists, and construction continued.

It pleaded with the politicians of the world, and construction continued.

It filed an injunction with the Israeli Supreme Court, and like the unyielding tide, construction continued.

But it too was an unyielding tide, and the court ruled in its favor, agreeing that the construction of Israel’s Wall was illegal. Yet construction was finished, and Israel’s Wall snaked its way onward beyond the village. The judges could do nothing for Bil’in, Israel’s Wall was a fact, newly emerged, but a fact just the same.

So Bil’in built walls of its own. An “outpost” beyond Israel’s Wall, in the groves next to the awakening settlement. A room, four walls, simple and shaking in the wind, but a fact just the same. And it stands there still, alone amongst felled olive branches, against the rising of the tide.

It was here that we spent our New Year’s Eve, in the shadow of Modin Illit, a settlement that will outgrow Tel Aviv within three years. And in the smoke of the fire, bundled away from the wind and the rain, we were warm there; we were in Bil’in.