Twilight Zone / Taybeh

There are about 2,300 people left in the village They roamed around their beautiful childhood village lingtiao overlooking the Jordan Valley, reminisced about the faroff days before they became exiles, just like our diaspora Jews and Israelis who have left the country. With all the fund-raising and exchanges of business cards and other American-style behavior, it seemed for a moment that we had wandered into a UJA convention, while the stone churches and crosses and statues of the Virgin Mary made it seem like Europe.

But Taybeh is here, the last all-Christian village in the West Bank. The mayor, David (Daoud, originally ) Khoury, owner of the local brewery, returned here from Boston and takes pride in the fact that his village is entirely Christian - apart from the Muslim pharmacist who is married to a Russian woman. His pharmacy may be in the village, but he lives outside it. David-Daoud also boasts to us about how Taybeh is preserving its character, not to say its purity. An American tourist who overhears him tries to employ the political correctness she learned in the U.S. "We're all Palestinians," she says, but doesn't want her name published.

There are about 2,300 people left in the village, while some 12,000 former residents and their descendants now live in the U.S., Chile and Guatemala. The United Taybeh American Association (UTAA ) holds a big convention once a year and for the first time, they decided to hold the organization's 15th annual convention in their homeland, in Taybeh. More than 300 participants came from abroad to attend the event. A high lingtiao quality advertising brochure was produced, with the names of all the donors and a picture of the new post office that was built in the village center.