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On assignment with ONE Magazine, I visited Taybeh, the last entirely Palestinian Christian village in the West Bank.
It’s a small, quiet village composed of about 1,200 people, sitting in the hills northeast of Ramallah. The village itself is quiet, and especially right now in springtime, surrounded by beautiful rolling green hills.
I spoke with families about what it means to stay in Taybeh and in Palestine in general, and why there are so many Palestinian Christians leaving. And what they all said is it’s not about them being Christian that’s making them leave, but the fact that all Palestinians are being suffocated by Israel’s military occupation. On top of Israeli settler attacks, Israel’s military occupation is increasing restrictions on Palestinian movement.
Taybeh is less than 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) away from Ramallah, the de facto capital of Palestinian life in the West Bank. It used to be about a half an hour drive away. But after October 7 (2023), when Israel tightened movement restrictions across the West Bank, the road that people had been using for years was closed by a military gate. And now it can take them up to an hour to get there.
I experienced this firsthand trying to get in and out of the village while on assignment. As opposed to using the main road, we had to drive through other neighboring villages to get to Taybeh, stopping every few meters to ask someone for directions on how to get there — what road is open, what road is closed, is there a military checkpoint — so that we could figure out how we’ll be able to access the village. Because of course, Google Maps doesn’t know what roads have been opened, what roads have been closed, where there are military checkpoints, and by the default, will oftentimes take you through Israeli settlements, which Palestinians are not allowed to pass through.
And on top of that, what I really noticed on the drive from Bethlehem to Ramallah is more and more Israeli flags that are being posted up all across the road, one after the other. Hundreds of flags being put there to remind Palestinians: “You are under occupation. You have no right to self-determination. And soon, you probably won’t be able to drive on this road, either.”
It felt like the same claustrophobia that everyone in Taybeh was describing, because everything adds up. It’s not just the big headlines. It’s also watching military jeeps casually weave through traffic or noticing a new settlement on the hill every time you drive to another city. It’s having to travel to Jordan through a land crossing every time you want to leave the country so that you can access an airport. It’s double-checking the news before you go home to make sure that you’re not walking into an Israeli military raid.
All of it adds up, and it’s not accidental. This is what the strategy looks like from the ground: Make movement difficult, make the landscape feel hostile, and make people feel like leaving is the only way to live a normal life.
Read Ms. Warah’s story — “Trying Times in Taybeh” — about faith, work and survival in the West Bank’s last Christian village, in the June issue of ONE magazine.