Shortly after the start of the Gaza war

the villagers sought sanctuary

for themselves and their flocks of goats and sheep

with family and friends elsewhere in the West Bank,

while their immediate neighbours – messianic

tyrants, gangsters, bullies – trashed the place,

destroying most of the olive trees

and the buildings, including a school

constructed earlier this century.

 

After due process the Israeli High Court

has granted the villagers permission

to return. Designating the village

an archaeological site, the West Bank

Israeli Civil Administration

has forbidden any re-building,

including plastic sheets covering ruins.

Some of the men have returned with a small flock.

They shelter from the sun under what is left

of the olive groves – and from the cold night

in the rubble, with one of them on guard.

 

This is Zanuta, a Palestinian

Bedouin village on the high ridge of hills

twelve and half miles south of Hebron,

a continuous settlement since the iron age,

an Ottoman trading post on an ancient

caravan route, an ancestral place.

 

On the remaining section of one of the school’s

concrete walls are splayed handprints: near the top

are the teacher’s in white, and below, mostly

also in white but some sky blue, are

the children’s in neat rows.