The plight of Aqaba

The village of Aqaba in the West Bank has had its share of trouble with the occupying Israeli State.
For years, the Israeli army carried out army "exercises" within the village, often injuring villagers with live bullets.
The present Mayor was himself so injured as a young boy and has since been confined  to a wheelchair.  An Israeli court eventually stopped this practice within the village but the army exercises continue in the environs.
With international help and financial support (including US support) a kindergarten school was built within the troubled village.

However, demolitions of homes by the Army and the rebuilding of them by villagers became an unwanted pattern of life for the people of Aqaba.

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"A month ago they were here last time," Mayor Haj Sami Sadeq told  Gush Shalom, te Israeli Peace and Human Rights group. "They destroyed our access road, which we call 'The Peace Road' and demolished several houses. When the children who had been thrown out of their homes were crying, the soldiers posed for souvenir photos on the bulldozer, smiling and laughing".

An American Human Rights group invited the disabled mayor to a lecture of the US to raise awareness.  Following this, the Civil Administration head,  Brigadier General Motti Almaz, made an unprecedented personal visit to the village.

 "He sat with me at the local council offices. I told him: 'You're destroying our homes and we build them again. What else can we do? This is our village, we have nowhere else to go. I told him that in our village there had never been clashes with the army, neither in the First Intifada nor in the Second one. For years the army carried out training with live ammunition among the village houses, villagers were killed and wounded. I personally, the mayor, was hit at a young age and remain in a wheelchair for life, and yet I feel no bitterness or hatred. I support peace. I just ask that they live us alone. I asked Almaz to approve a zoning plan for our village so that we can build legally. I asked him to allow us to rebuild the access road to the village - with our own money and labor, just that they don't destroy it. I asked him to let us build a school on 42 dunums of state land which are in the middle of the village and which we can't use. To allow us to be linked to the water pipe, so that we will no longer need  to fetch water by tankers, at twenty Shekels per cubic meter. I told him that ten years ago, the electricity pylons at the entrance to the village were pulled down, and in 1999 Knesset Members wrote to Defence Minster Ehud Barak and he gave instructions not to touch our electricity - but still, two months ago they came and again pulled down twenty pylons. I put all problems and issues to Brigadier General Almaz, and for everything I said he answered 'We will look into it', 'We will take care of it'. And he went off.", the Mayor told Gush Shalom

"What happened next? A few days later there arrived in our village the local representative of the Civil Administration, a man named Yigal (he does not tell his family name) and started handing out demolition orders. 

Demolition orders for houses, for cattle sheds, even for the tabun bread ovens. Seventeen demolition orders in total. And he told us, this whole village is illegal, everything must be destroyed. Is this the 'looking into it' which the Civil Administration Head promised us? 

Then the Head of the Jenin Area Civil Administration, located at the Salem Chekpoint, came to our village. I asked him 'Why did you send us Yigal with the demolition orders?' And he said: 'No, I did not sent him, this did not come from me'. And then. after another few days Yigal came back with another eight demolition orders. Demolition orders also for our kindergarten and clinic. A total of 25 demolition orders for a village which consists of 45 houses in all. So what am I to do now? What can I tell villagers who ask me 'You are talking about peace. Where is your peace?' "