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.
By David Selzer