While I was in the West Bank visiting friends this past January, I had the     opportunity to spend time with a Palestinian farmer named Abed. He welcomed us onto his land, located in a valley just outside Bethlehem, to tell us about his life. This is his story.

It may be hard for those of us who have never had to question our right to space, a house and a home to identify with Abed’s conviction to remain living in a cave on his family’s land. He explains:

“I spent much of my life in a refugee camp in Palestine just kilometers away from my childhood home and familial land. When I  finally came back here and remembered my great grandparents, my grandparents and my parents working this land, I knew I could never again leave. Losing this land means becoming a refugee once again and losing the last and most real connection to my family that I have. My grandmother’s soul is in this land — how could any amount of money mean more than this?”

We sit cross-legged while Abed carefully begins to tell us about his life. After having to flee his family’s land when it was annexed by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War, Abed spent much of his life living in the Deheishe refugee camp in the West Bank where approximately 10,000 people reside today. In 1999, with both parents dead and a brother in an Israeli prison for more than 20 years, he moved back to his inherited land where he continues to live, love and farm. When asked what else he grows besides a healthy grove of olive trees, he answers with pride, “You name it, and it grows on this land!” He was not exaggerating.

Unfortunately, his choice to remain there has meant constant struggle. Outside, Abed gestures for us to lift our gazes. Nestled in a valley among three large Israeli settlements just outside Bethlehem, his land is in high demand. With settlement expansion plans for the land upon which Abed lives and farms, Israeli authorities have offered him numerous resettlement deals and exorbitant amounts of money to leave. Abed refuses, considering their offers irrelevant. All he wants is his land.

His perseverance and resistance have made him the victim of frequent arrests, imprisonment and harassment that continues to this day. Furthermore, like many Palestinians living in occupied Palestine, Abed’s house has been demolished by the Israeli Defense Forces twice under the premise that his building permits are inadequate. Determined to remain with his land, but living with the stinging awareness that any building he constructs will be destroyed, Abed now lives in a cave. Since it is a natural structure, Israeli authorities have more difficulty finding legal grounds for its demolition. The slab upon which we are currently seated was the foundation for his last house.

Abed’s struggles, determination and love for his land can be seen in part as a form of resistance against state-sponsored Israeli oppression against the Palestinian people and the continued colonization of their lands. His strength can also be appreciated for its ability to inspire us to persevere, to act and to love.

However, we must be careful not to attribute significance to Abed only as a symbol of resistance or for his capacity to inspire us. More than anything, his story must be understood as personal, and his struggle as one ultimately seeking meaningful survival. Abed is not remaining on his land in order to resist. He is resisting in order to live. And he deserves the final word: “Without our land, I am nothing. It is my breath.”

Brooke Reynolds ’09  graduated with a major in Complicity and Power as part of the planned studies program. E-mail her at breynol3@gmail.com.