The Palestinian village of Al-Walaja lives under siege and under constant threats of displacement. The village was divided into two parts during the Nakba of 1948 when a large area of its territory fell under occupation which annexed the village to Occupied Western Jerusalem leaving only three thousand acres of the village’s lands which have become part of the territory of the West Bank out of 17000 acres.
Demolition and settlements
According to the statistics published by the village’s council the Israeli occupation army demolished eight houses which was home for 60 people since the beginning of 2017. Furthermore the Israeli occupation authorities notified the owners of 14 houses in the area of Ein Juweza north of the village of demolishing their houses in July 2017 thus annexing the rest of the area to that confiscated in 1948.
The occupation authorities continue to target the village which is surrounded by the separation wall and barbed wires thus making the village look like a large prison.
Now only one road leads to the village of Al-Walaja and passes by the settlement of Har Gilo which was originally built on the lands of Al-Walaja. The settlers reach out to the Jewish-only settlement by a bypass road which was built on the village’s lands and which Palestinians don’t have an access to.
Village of Resistance
Three thousand people live in the village of Al-Walaja which is located in the western countryside of Bethlehem. It is bordered from the north by the lands of the ethnically cleansed village of Al-Malha and from the south by the villages of Hossan and Battir from the east by the village of Beit Jala and from the west by the 1948 occupied part of Al-Walaja.
The people of Al-Walaja as well as the rest of the Palestinian villages resisted the Israeli occupation and offered martyrs in the process. One recent martyr was Basil Al-A’araj the revolutionary intellectual who was known for his revolutionary and pro-resistance writings.
Al-A’araj exchanged fire with the Israeli occupation army in Ramallah on March 6 2017 before he was killed. The village since then attracted intellectuals and dreamers of freedom who want to pursue the path of this young pharmacist who graduated from an Egyptian university.
Hatem Al-A’araj another struggler from the village is serving the longest prison term in Israeli jails among his peers in the village. He has been held in Israeli jail since 2003.
Stunning nature
Any person who passes through the village would see the beauty of nature there. The village has 17 water wells thus boosting agriculture in it.
Al-Walaja is famous for its apricot trees olives figs and grapes and other eye-catchy crops throughout the year.
Al-Walaja is a Palestinian village rooted in history. Anyone can’t visit the village without greeting ‘the Bedouin Tree’ the oldest olive tree in Palestine which experts estimate its age at three thousand and five hundred years.
