11. A place of wild beauty - and armed settlers.



11). Armed settlers patrolling the countryside.





On the next day we went out into the countryside, with a group of young men from the orphanage in Abu Dis who acted as assistants, though apparently for some of them it was their first opportunity to visit the beautiful valley we walked down, even though it was only a few miles from their home, because of their lack of resources and because of the dangers of attacks by Israeli settlers or the army.  They needed our presence to provide safety from such attacks.  We saw this soon after we arrived at the valley where it was crossed by a road near to the Israeli settlement of Kvar Ademim.  After a week of rain the week before, the river in the valley was a fast-flowing stream, unusually at this time of year, and many families had come down to enjoy it, and some youths were shouting and laughing as they swam in a man-made pool.  Suddenly a police car appeared and a group of armed police got out of it and started shouting in a threatening manner, so that the atmosphere of enjoyment was suddenly ruined and replaced by threat and fear.  It turned out that they were only objecting to the arrangement of the parked cars along the road, but the atmosphere of fun evaporated and the people fell silent; we tried to get away from the armed intruders and started our walk.



It was likewise at the end of the walk, when we came to a place where we could take a track up out of the valley towards the road to Jericho road.  Here as well as Palestinians enjoying a walk near the waterfall or a swim in the pool above it, there were several settlers walking about or driving cars with large automatic weapons, apparently happy with what this portable symbol of negative power communicated to people around them, destroying their joy and their illusions of freedom in the miraculously-flowering near desert landscape and in the beauty of the flowing water.   

                                                        


                                                           Za'atar growing on the hillside


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