Elice in Palestine

'YOU ARE WELCOME' - Thoughts on Leaving the Holy Land

2009-11-07T08:17:00.000-08:00

Eappi Group 32, Jayyous Team, on the verandah of the Municipal Building in Jayyous, l-r: Patricia Carswell (Sweden), Mandla Mndebele (South Africa), Elice Higginbotham (U.S.), Cecilia Holtan (Norway). Above and left, the fields, orchards, greenhouses of Jayyous, mostly behind the Separation Barrier - the grey, curved stripe fading into the distance behind us. Photo: Jamie Drew

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I was sent by the Common Board of Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ (UCC) and the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, and Church SWorld Service, to participate in the World Council of Churches' (WCC) Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The views contained herein are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of Global Ministries. the UCC or Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, Church World Service, or the WCC. If you would like to publish the information contained here or disseminate it further, please first contact the EAPPI Coordination (eappi-co@jrol.com) for permission. Thank you.

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Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. - Romans 12:12-13

Our EAPPI group began its orientation last August with an "opening circle," and I recorded some of my own "opening thoughts" in one of my early blog posts at that time. We held a "closing circle," too, last Friday afternoon (a week ago today, as I write this) before our group members began dispersing over the ensuing weekend to return to our home countries.

My vivid memories and parting thoughts were two: the Women's Association of Jayyous, and vegetables.

To the right, Adla, the convener and key motivator of the Women's Association, which meets weekly on Tuesday mornings. Women of all ages gather for a couple hours of program, conversation, refreshments, "catching up" with each other. These are important occasions for these women. Most married women (and there are comparatively few single women) in traditional rural West Bank villages do not get out much. It is true that more women work outside the home, at least partly because jobs are less available for men who are unable to work their land; and more travel and seek higher educaction, if they can afford it. But many women's lives continue to be centered in the home; and family life here, from my observation, is rich, lively and demanding. These weekly meetings provide and opportunity for the women to socialize, and to share questions and concerns that might not so easily be brought up within the family circle, among their men and children.

When my female teammates and I began attending last August, a social workers wsas just complete a series with the women on the concerns of mothers with children (mostly, but not exclusively, sons) in prison. He talked about the needs of the prisoner and of the family, and about what kinds of "re-entry" resources are necessary and available to aid a released prisoner's return to the community. He patiently answered lengthy and impassioned questions from frustrated, worried mothers. I've encountered these questions in my social justice education and organizing work in the U.S. and in Latin America, so I know that they're not necessarily matters that have anything to do with the occupation.

But, of course, they have everything to do with the occupation, because prison is ubiquitous in Palestinian communities. "Children" in prison can mean just that: kids of 11 or 12 are frequently arrested for throwing stones at Israeli military jeeps, or just being nearby and not running fast enough. Young teenagers who participate in demonstrations may be incarcerated. In Jayyous, few young men are granted permits to cross through the agricultural gates to work their land enclosed by the Wall because so many young men have a "security history" -- they have been in prison, or their brothers, cousins, uncles or parents have been in prison.

The second series of Women's Association programs was on family dynamics and communication within the family. I remember the session when the social worker emphasized the importance of telling children what is going on when the family is undergoing a crsis. He pointed out that children soak up the tension in the family atmosphere, and trying to hide adult problems and worries from the kids will only add to their confusion and fright. At the same time, children need to be talked to in words they can understand, and in ways that reassure them that the family loves them and will continue to take care of them.

Nothing to do with the occupation, and everything to do with the occupation.... These are children who watch their parents routinely undermined in their efforts to support the family economically. They wait in the back of the family's tractor-tailer during harvest season as Israeli soldiers determine whether Dad or Granddad or Uncle will be permitted to cross over to work on their own land today; their questions or whines must be hused if Dad is treated abusively or his permit or ID checks take a long time. These children wake up terrified when Israeli military raid their homes in the middle of the night. They ask why their fathers and brothers are arrested, and why their mothers are crying. They cry themselves whne beloved relatives leave a tight and supportive family circle to try their luck abroad when it is too difficult to feed growing children where there are no jobs, and access to the land has been denied. How to reassure children of the family's constant support and care in the face of these daily challenges?

I sat in the back of the tractor-trailer on four occasions during the olive harvest in Jayyous this fall. I waited for up to 45 minutes in line. I gave my passport over to the soldiers, who entered my number in their cvomputer along with those of the Palestinian permit-holders, to determine whether we could pick olives that day or not. Twice I was granted permission to go to the orchard. Twice I was refused; no reason given.

Not me in that tractor-trailer -- but I've been there, waiting... Photo: Mandla Mndebele

Which leads me to vegetables....

There is a reason why the environs of the Holy Land have been characterized as "the Fertile Crescent." I defy anyone to offer me a tastier tomato, a crisper cucumber, a richer avocado, a sweeter Clementine, a more flavorful spoonful of fresh-pressed olive oil than can be found in the northern West Bank, the "bread basket" of Palestine. As we used to say in my youth, "I kid you not": even the occasional misshapen, off-color, unappealing-looking vegetable (and these don't get hidden or kept off the shelves in a rural village) -- take'm home, wash'm off, cut'm up, and they are to die for! Fresh-picked, organically-grown produce, every morning, the salad lover's dream....

Nothing to do with the occupation, and everything to do with the occupation.... In Jayyous, these tasty treats are mostly grown behind the Wall, which affects every aspect of thier cultivation and marketing. Even with a permit, an individual farmer whose relatives cannot cross through the gate and who cannot afford to hire help, can plant or harvest only so much crop. Water access is controlled, and irrigation is limited only to daylight hours, because one cannot remain in a fild behind the Wall overnight. Vehicles are controlled, so getting the crop to market may be chance-y. And everything is grown organically because fertilizer must be brought in from Israel, which permits only one kind -- because fertilizers contain nitrates, ingredients also used in the manufacture of explosives, and therefore present a "security risk."

Had I not lived for three months in a northern West Bank farming village, it would never have occured to me that the production of fresh, delicious produce has anything to do with the occupation.

English Club members enjoying conversation at Al Quds Open University in Qalqilya. Photo: Patricia Carswell

"You are welcome." This is how Palestinians routinely greet visitors, whether in their homes, their places of business, at meetings, in casual settings and on formal occasions. I have been told by countless cab drivers while being driven to my destination, by innumerable storekeepers while I've made a purchase or merely window-shopped, by more people thatn I can remember who've stopped me in the street to ask where I'm from: "You are welcome." "You are welcom in my home." "You are welcome in my country."

Three words, no contraction (as in "you're welcome"). It's not an expression, not a rote response, it's very personal. In this culture, it is important to welcome visitors, It is important to receive them with gratitude and generosity, because visitors are a gift. I say "Thank you" for the welcome, after I have, in essence, already been tahnks for my very presence.

And, just in case I still thought how easy it is to toss off words like a memorized ritual, once inside any home or office, those three words were followed by the tangible offering of refreshment, usually at least three kinds in quick succession: water or juice, coffee, sweet tea, often punctuated with cookies or candy. (Don't get me started on the amount and variety of food offered when one is invited for a full meal!)

I remember vividly (and with some embarassment) the afternoon a teammate and I spent at the home of a young man who was eager to show us how the occupation manifested itself in his family's and village's daily life. We were there, perhaps, two or three hours, during which time the above refreshments were supplied in plenty. Our schedule, however, requuired us to leave before the evening meal, and when we stood up at the time we needed to depart and began to bid the family a grateful farewell, our young host suddenly disappeared! A cab was waiting outside to take us to our next engagement; we wanted to say goodby to the young man, so we waited, just a bit impatiently, at the gate. After several minutes, our host reappeared, aplogizing because his mother had not begun to cook earlier in the day, and pressing into our hands an assortment of packaged sweets -- he'd run quickly to the local shop as we were thanking the rest of the family, so that my teammate and I would not leave his home unfed. "You are welcome," he reminded us as we departed.

At the last English conversation session I led for the English Club students on the Qalqilya campus of Al Quds Open University, I began by saying, "I'm sorry to say that this is myu last meeting with you. I'm going to miss you! So today, instead of starting with questions and things I'd like you to talk about, I'd like to ask you if you have any questions for me. Is there anything you'd like to ask me about America, or about the program I've been working wiht in Palestine, or about what I've done or what I've learned here? Or is there anything you want me to know -- anything you want to be able to say to me, or want me to say to others about Palestine when I go home?"

One of the first questions I was asked was, "What will you tell people in America about us? What's the first thing you'll tell them about what Palestinians are like?"

After just a few seconds' thought, I responded: "Hospitable. If I have to say the first thing that comes into my mind about Palestinians, I will say, 'They are hospitable people.'"

A few seconds of silence followed and then I suddenly couldn't resist saying, "And that's a political statement. Do you understand why I say that?"

For young people who come from a naturally hospitable culture, my insistence that I was making a political point involved a good amount of discussion (after all, I was there to encourage them to talk to each other in English) to tease out my meaning.

Palestinians are, first and foremost, a hospitable people. This is in complete contradiction to the image of Palestinians as terrorists. Terrorists, by definiation, have to be the opposite of hospitable. The Palestinians I met daily are people who treate others with more disinterested kindness, sensitivity, attention and generosity than I have ever experienced in 45-odd years of travel on four continents. I emphasize this so strongly because it is important to give the lie to the (sometimes unconscious) western stereotype of Palestinians as closed-minded, brutal, cunning and intransigent people with no regard for the pain of others. On the contrary, in my experinece, few Americans are aware at all of either the pain or the hospitality that characterize the life of Palestinians in occupied Palestine.

I have been home for a little less than a week as I finish writing this. My body is just beginning to function in the right time zone. My spirit is still struggling with how to integrate all I have experienced in Palestine into my daily life in the U.S., as an American and a Christina, into my personal, social and faith commitments.

Perhaps the best place to start is... You are welcome; and see where it takes me.

'Because THEY are here," or The Olive Press-ure: keeping the farmers off-balance in the busy season

2009-10-16T11:43:00.000-07:00

Olive cultivation is as old as history itself in this part of the world, well-known in biblical times and before. The agricultural lands of the West Bank, as they are in the late fall of every year, are consumed with olive-harvesting these days. Although it has been a dry year and this harvest is not expected to be good, it is nonetheless one of the more important income-producing times for the olive-growers of Jayyous and other agricultural towns and villages, and every family has kicked into full-bore harvest mode.

If a farmer with a permit to access lands behind the Separation Barrier can afford it, this is the time of year he will hire extra hands and seek permits for them many weeks in advance. Additional family members who are eligible make every effort to get a permit in this season; larger numbers of women are seen crossing through the gates. Carts, wagons, trucks carry extra water and food for the pickers. Schoolchildren spend their weekends in the fields with their parents, aunts, uncles and cousins. The number of people seeking to pass through the agricultural gates may double during these weeks.

It seems the worst possible season in which to make life unnecessarily difficult for a farmer. So our EA team was shocked and annoyed to discover that our South Agricultural Gate had been closed – “permanently,” according to the Humanitarian Hotline – about a week before the start of the harvest. Further, the times that our more-frequently-used North Gate is open for the farmers to come and go, after a long period of regularity, suddenly have become unpredictable. (Of course, the Jayyousis are annoyed as well, but perhaps less shocked – “It’s not the first time,” they keep reminding us when we seek to pin down the gate times and express our sympathetic distress.)

We became aware of the rapidly-changing opening and closing times for the North Gate when we received a call from Abu Azzam, our landlord and key contact here as well as the town’s largest landowner, one evening at about 6:30. He was waiting atop his tractor with a long line of exiting farmers who had been waiting for soldiers to show up at the usual time, 6:15 p.m., to open the gate, check permits, perform cursory searches of vehicles, and allow the farm workers and their families to go home. We place calls to the Humanitarian Hotline and to Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch, and hurry down to the gate. The soldiers finally arrive around 6:45 and begin to check people out. When we asked them, at the end of the shift, why they were so late, they informed us that the gate time has changed to a later hour in order to give the farmers a longer workday during this busy season. Nice… except it makes no sense. This time of year it is dark by 6:00 p.m., so the “extra time” is wasted while tired, dirty, hungry olive harvesters sit in line in the dark and get bitten by mosquitoes.

In fact, the village leadership has made a formal request that the gate both open and close earlier during the harvest season, so the farmers can take better advantage of the daylight, and a request also has been made that the South Gate be re-opened.

Over the next few days, we make several calls to try to confirm the correct opening and closing times for the North Gate. One day we are clearly told that it will open at 6:15 in the morning, and arrive to monitor at that hour to find the farmers lined up impatiently – the gate has not opened. When the soldiers arrive and open the gate at 6:45, they remind us that this is “the usual time” for this gate to open… except we and the farmers had been told that “the usual time” had been changed. So we come back the next morning at “the usual time,” to discover that the soldiers had begun checking people through at 6:15. We call the Humanitarian Hotline again. We call Machsom Watch, who calls the Humanitarian Hotline again. We call the International Committee for the Red Cross, who calls the local Civil Administration. We call again, and three times in a row get the same series of confirmed times for the morning, midday and evening openings and closings.

For the next three days in a row, the times differ for at least one of the three daily gate openings. The farmers fume; so do we. One afternoon, my Swedish teammate, Patricia, arrives for her monitoring stint at the time we’ve been told farmers will be allowed to exit, to find the gate standing wide open but with no farmers to be seen. Questioning the soldiers on duty, she is told that the gate opened a full half hour before the announced time, and that the soldiers intend to close it a half hour early – but no one has informed the farmers, who are still picking olives. Patricia whips out her cell phone to phone Abu Azzam (he’s in his own field, picking olives, his cell phone on his belt), as well as the usual lineup of authorities and hotlines. Then, as the soldiers approach the gate, Patricia stands in the opening with a calm, firm look on her face, keeping the gate from closing until she sees a line of tractors, donkeys, carts and wagons appearing over the hill. She waves. Farmers wave back. The gate remains open until every farmer is checked out. Patricia is offered a ride home on the back of the donkey belonging to the last farmer to exit.

Meanwhile, another farmer asks someone from our team to come with him one morning to the South Gate, the one we’ve been told repeatedly is now closed “permanently,” to see, if he and others will be allowed through. “They can’t close the gate during the olive harvest!” We are skeptical – there have been no soldiers (or farmers) arriving at the South Gate each time we have monitored there for the previous two or three weeks. But I go, and find about a dozen farmers and family members, along with donkeys and carts, harvesting buckets and bags, and a tractor waiting at the gate.

To my surprise, at just about “the usual time” the gate historically has opened, a jeep with a double contingent of soldiers arrives. (There normally are four soldiers at our agricultural gates; eight emerged from the jeep on this occasion.) They walk straight to the gate… and line up in front of it, without moving. I slowly approach the gate, ask if someone speaks English and, when a soldier answers that he does, asks him if they will be opening the gate. The answer is “No.”

“But why not? This is the regular time. Why are you here, if you’re not opening the gate?”

"This gate is closed permanently."

“Then why are you here?”

“Because they (gesturing at the waiting farmers on the other side of the gate) are here.”

“But they’re here to pick their olives. They’re here to get to their lands. Why did you come?”

“They can go pick olives somewhere else. This gate is closed permanently.”

“So why are you here?”

“Because they are here.”

That, it seems, is precisely the issue. The Palestinians are here.

'It's Our Life': Theological Reflection in a Low Time

2009-09-27T12:23:00.000-07:00

Our group of Ecumenical Accompaniers has been here now for one half of our three-month period of service. At this time, every group takes a week that is known variously as "Israeli Exposure Week," (because we do intentionally take a listen, as well as a look, at what Israelis and Israeli organizations are thinking and saying and doing about the occupation) and as "Mid-term Evaluation" (because we do -- evaluate, check in, update, etc.)

Part of that week's activity includes a brief presentation by each team (there are six teams, you may recall, each in a different site in the West Bank and Jerusalem) about its placement and the team's experience. It fell to me to conclude our Jayyous team's presentation with a brief theological reflection. I found that to be a harder assignment then I expected. It's not surprising for EAs, I think, to go through some real ups and downs of feeling during their time here, and I have been going through a "down" lately. The pain and the seeming intractability of the occupation have worn me down. I found it hard to bring our presentation to anything like a hopeful conclusion.

So I ended up preparing a "theological reflection for a low time." God knows (and yes, I mean that literally, God knows) that we humans have our low times. I believe God sits patiently with our complaints, not expecting that our faith is supposed to make us constantly cheerful and upbeat in the midst of misery. I believe in a God of low times. So, below, slightly edited for print, my reflection for my low time.

Walking one morning to the Jayyous South Agricultural Gate, whose traffic we monitor a couple times a week, my Norwegian teammate Cecilie and I discovered we’d both been simultaneously thinking about people’s sadness here in Jayyous and in the West Bank. People here live with horrible loss – of identity, of property, of livelihood, of loved ones to prison and to emigration -- compounded by endless uncertainty and constant constriction of movement, opportunity, possibility. I don’t want to stereotype Palestinians as gloomy, still less as self-pitying. We meet daily people who are incredibly resilient, good-natured, humorous, charming, undefeated even when the most mundane activities of daily live are fraught with abuse and humiliation. But there is a palpable sense of loss in the air, and people say almost routinely that “life here is very bad.” Occupation is a spiritual state as well as a military and political one.

I’m impressed by how frequently people tell us a story about themselves and their lives under occupation, and conclude by saying, “It’s our life,” sometimes with a little shrug.

Abed, our favorite taxi driver, father of four, owner of farmland he cannot access because he has no permit… has a history of resistance to occupation as a participant in demonstrations, student and community organizations and other protest activities, as did his father before him, and as Abed expects his adolescent son will soon follow in the family tradition of resistance. Abed has been in prison, has watched his parents and daughter beaten by Israeli soldiers, coaches a prizewinning boys’ volleyball team … “It’s our life….”

Mohammed, the proprietor of the tiny grocery market on our corner where we purchase most of our staples, has more than once told me about sitting alone in his bedroom and weeping because he is unable to give to his children the ordinary things a feels a father must provide: everything from clothing to education, neither of which Mohammed can afford. He used to have a permit to access and work his land, but he no longer can get one, so he supports his family by keeping himself in constant debt for the stock, the rent, the utility bills to keep the store open. “My son asks me for a shirt, and I can’t give it to him. If I can’t pay for a shirt, how can I pay for his university fees? How can a father not give his children the things they need? I don’t know… it’s our life…”

Abdullah, a friend in the next town, has a nine-year-old daughter named Mei, who is brain-damaged; she moves awkwardly, and cannot speak, although she seems to hear normally and understand much of what she is told. “She is damaged because of the occupation. She was exposed to tear gas in utero; my wife was pregnant with her when the Israeli army raided our home… It’s our life…”

"It's our life..."

“I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)

These are the words of Jesus, usually interpreted as a promise to Jesus’ followers. The life of Palestinians living in Jayyous under occupation is the opposite of abundant. Here in northern Palestine, in some of the country’s richest farmland, acres of fruit trees and crops have been destroyed to open the route of the Wall; productive lands are confiscated for the use of Israeli settlers, or simply to provide a buffer of “security” between the settlers and the Palestinians on the other side of the Wall. People’s future possibilities contract along with the income they are unable to earn because they cannot cultivate their lands and have no other job opportunities. The promise seems very far away.

“Lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

Cecilie and I seem to have what turn out to be theological conversations while we’re monitoring the South Gate. A few weeks after the one that began this reflection, we were talking with each other about the intractability of the Palestinian situation, and how there are those awful moments when it just “gets” to us. Of course, we always feel it – but there are those moments when the frustration, the pain, the seeming stupidity and pettiness, the utter obviousness of the abuse occupation brings, along with our own helplessness in the face of it, just, well… get to us.

“What can we do?” we asked each other. “What’s the point of our being here?”

When it comes to helping someone, I want to do something. I want to know what will make it better and do it, preferably immediately. And I want to see immediate effect. So I remind myself, sometimes with considerable effort, that pastoral care is, essentially, being there. Like every pastor, I have sat beside people on their deathbeds, or with family members waiting for the awful moment when they will be told that the loved one has passed away. What do I do? What’s the point? I am there, trying to be a loving, accepting, comforting presence. Just that.

Yes, occasionally our presence as international observers in the occupied West Bank actually helps someone get a modest amount of better treatment from, say, the army: sometimes a person who was about to be refused entry through the agricultural gate may get through, simply because we are watching, or we make a call to the Humanitarian Hotline or Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch. There are tiny moments of tangible improvement, even if that’s all it is: a tiny moment.

But mostly, we are here, because our presence says to these people, “You are not alone. You are not invisible. You are cared about. We will tell your story.”

I mulled over the following words before saying them to Cecilie, because I don’t want it to sound like I think of pastoral care only as a last resort, or as giving up. But, OK, let me say it: at the moment when it all gets to you, pastoral care may be just what you can do when you can’t do anything else.
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I was sent by the Common Board of Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ (UCC) and the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, and Church World Service, to participate in the World Council of Churches’ (WCC’s) Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The views contained herein are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the Common Board of Global Ministries, the UCC or the WCC. If you would like to publish the information contained here or disseminate it further, please first contact the EAPPI Coordination (eappi-co@jrol.com) for permission. Thank you.

Settlements

2009-09-25T05:34:00.000-07:00

Upper: The settlement of Efrat. Lower: 'Welcome' sign at south entrance

I was sent by the Common Board of Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ (UCC) and the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, and Church World Service, to participate in the World Council of Churches’ (WCC’s) Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The views contained herein are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the Common Board of Global Ministries, the UCC or the WCC. If you would like to publish the information contained here or disseminate it further, please first contact the EAPPI Coordination (eappi-co@jrol.com) for permission. Thank you.
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How to write about settlements? Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are among the most emotion-laden, difficult-to-discuss, intractable topics in Palestine and Israel.

As I write this, headlines here in Palestine and throughout the world record the back-and-forth of the Obama Administration’s effort to re-start talks that it is hoped may lead to peace in a long, sad history of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, war, destruction, human tragedy. Surely the topic with the greatest potential to bog this effort down to a stop is precisely that of the settlements.

* The settlements are people’s homes.
* The settlements are Israeli people’s homes built on Palestinian land, in violation of international law.
* The settlements transplant Israeli population to land that has been the source of livelihood, culture, history – indeed, the source of life – for Palestinians for thousands of years.
* For Israelis, the settlements are a redemption of the history of Diaspora: reclaiming biblical territory that is theirs by right – “divine right,” for religious Jewish Israelis – as well as a bold pioneering enterprise, creating modern, attractive, sustainable communities in the desert.
* For Palestinians, the settlements are theft, pure and simple. The Wall, publicly interpreted as a security measure that will protect Israel and the Israeli settlements from “terrorism,” actually surrounds and confiscates their land. In Jayyous, where I live, the neighboring settlements now claim the majority of the land, enclosed by the Wall, from which Jayyousi families historically have made their living.
* By extending Israel and Israelis into occupied Palestine, boundaries, water rights, construction rights, mobility and travel, all fall under the control of the Israeli government.
* Israeli settlers are governed by Israeli civil law. Palestinians under occupation are governed by the codes of the Israeli military.

Yesterday, our EAPPI group visited the settlement of Efrat, part of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc south of Jerusalem, a pleasant ten-minute-or-so drive (for Israelis; Palestinians are barred from part of the route) from Jerusalem. I enjoy the drive. As I have noted on many occasions, the landscape in the Holy Land resembles greatly resembles the desert in which I was brought up in Arizona. The soil, the rocks and hills, the flora, the colors, are all familiar to me. I feel at home.

Efrat is a modern, sun-washed suburban village of some 8,000 inhabitants. Services – shopping of all kinds, medical and dental, educational, cultural – are conveniently located and modern. Religious and community life are vibrant. We met with a spokesperson in one of the local synagogues, beautifully designed and welcoming. He was pleasant, full of information, a long-time community leader, clearly a settlement “booster.”

So… what’s the problem?

The problem, from his point of view, are those who question that this land belongs to the people of Israel. There is no question, no doubt. The land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean is Israel, and the problem is those who would take it away. Others may use it. Others who happen to be there should have their rights protected. But it is for the Israeli people, they control it, will fight to keep controlling it, and anyone who disagrees, or would compromises that claim, must be kept at bay.

If Palestinian leaders deny this claim, they cannot be negotiated with. If Palestinian leaders wishing some sort of compromise with Israel cannot, or will not, make sure that the Israeli claim is respected, are not partners for peace discussions.

The problem, as I have come to understand it from the Palestinians among whom I have been living, is that their land has been taken and they are now treated as outsiders in their own country. The will and priorities of another people have been imposed upon them, without their consent and to their disadvantage. In short, the land has been stolen from them, and no one seems to recognize their claim.

The problem, as per the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a pary, is that an occupying power cannot transfer its own population to an occupied territory. And the problem, as per the Hague Convention, to which Israel is a party, is that occupation is by definition a temporary state, and the occupying power cannot change the nature of the occupied territory.

The Israeli government’s response is that people move to the occupied territory of their own free will, not by government policy; yet there are settlements constructed on confiscated land which the Israeli government has declared to be “state land,” and housing subsidies and other economic incentives are offered to Israelis, or immigrants to Israel, who move to the settlements. The Israeli government states that it the land is being “improved” by occupation. The Palestinian populace, and international observers, note that the improvements benefit the Israeli settlers, not the local population.

A few quick facts and figures, gleaned from a variety of sources:[i] In the West bank at this time, the Palestinian population is approximately 2-3 million; there are about 300,000 Israeli settlers. Added to that settler number are an additional approximately 200,000 in the East Jerusalem area annexed by Israel following the 1967 war. The Wall extends deeply into the West bank in several areas; three “fingers” in particular, which reach some 20 kilometers each into the West Bank, are projected to surround about 10 percent of Palestinian land, effectively incorporating it into Israel, and, Palestinians fear, defining a future political border. A system of checkpoints, tunnels, Israeli-only roads and the location of the settlements themselves divides the West Bank into small enclaves, or “cantons,” thus decreasing the viability of a possible future Palestinian state.

My husband, Max,Surjadinata, posted a link on Facebook the other day, to the text of an interview on Bill Moyers’ Journal, as posted on September 21, 2009 on www.alternet.org. Moyers' guest was Sam Tanenhaus, described as “high powered New York Times editor, and author of a new book entitled “The Death of Conservatism.” Tanenhaus sees the conservative movement in America as increasingly in the hands of what he considers “conservative radicals.” Following is a brief excerpt from the interview:

SAM TANENHAUS: …. Conservatism has been divided for a long time -- this is what my book describes narratively -- between two strains. What I call realism and revanchism. We're seeing the revanchist side.
BILL MOYERS: What do you mean revanchism?
SAM TANENHAUS: I mean a politics that's based on the idea that America has been taken away from its true owners, and they have to restore and reclaim it. They have to conquer the territory that's been taken from them. Revanchism really comes from the French word for 'revenge.' It's a politics of vengeance.

That phrase, “politics of vengeance,” rang a bell with me when I read it this morning, the day after our visit to Efrat settlement. There are settlers – I can’t say all of them, I don’t know that – who feel they are recovering something that was taken from them: the Land of Israel. They will do anything, even become violent and abusive, to get back, and hang onto, what they believe to be rightfully theirs.

I have EA colleagues who live and work in the northern West Bank village of Yanoun, where nearby settlers destroy the orchards and kill the sheep of the Yanoun farmers, thus undermining their livelihood. Settlers periodically come into the village, carrying firearms, walking around, speaking to no one, and then walk away. Sometimes they swim in the village well. Sometimes they don't just walk away, but attack the villagers.

In Jayyous, where I live, 4,000 olive trees were uprooted and disposed up to make way for the Separation Barrier, ostensibly built for the “security” of the Zufin Settlement dwellers; the village of Jayyous was thus further impoverished as a part of its historic economic base was estroyed.
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[i] B’Tselem, Yesh Din, The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), all have websites in English.

Curfews and Closures: The Town of Azzun

2009-09-19T06:49:00.000-07:00

The slope where she slid -- underpass at the entrance to Azzun - Photo by Patricia Carswell

I was sent by the Common Board of Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ (UCC) and the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, and Church World Service, to participate in the World Council of Churches’ (WCC’s) Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The views contained herein are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the Common Board of Global Ministries, the UCC or the WCC. If you would like to publish the information contained here or disseminate it further, please first contact the EAPPI Coordination (eappi-co@jrol.com) for permission. Thank you.
******
Azzun, population about 10,000, is the neareast town to Jayyous, and it is in Azzun where we frequently connect with busses or a “service” (ser-VEES, a group taxi with a fixed route) to major West Bank cities. Like Jayyous, it is a farming town, but critically situated at a crossroads that connects three governorates in this agricultural area. Economic traffic -- truckloads of produce and goods – must pass through Azzun to get to and from markets. Interference with passage through Azzun means that produce and goods do not move. Sales are not made. Money is not spent. Businesses close. The economy contracts.

Azzun is known as a town with a history of opposing the Wall and of conflicts with the Israeli settlements in the area. Azzun regularly suffers from curfews (when the entire population is obliged to remain off the street for an indefinite period of time, schools and businesses close, people are confined to their homes), road closures (when neither vehicles nor pedestrian traffic can come into or out of town), raids by the Israeli army and other forms of “collective punishment” (when a community is punished for an alleged offense by one or more perpetrators, identified or unidentified).

The major highway entrance/exit for Azzun has been covered by a gradually-increasing mound of earth and rocks that our group first noticed about a week after we began working here. About ten days ago, when I returned from a weekend in Jerusalem, the service left me off at the earth mound, outside of town (since the car couldn’t get over the mound to get into town from the highway.) I climbed up the mound, balancing my handbag and backpack, and jumped down the other side to reach the taxi stand where I could catch a ride to Jayyous. Just one week later, one of my teammates phoned from Azzun to say that a coil of barbed wire had been placed on top of the mound and manned army vehicles were obstructing the crossing. She turned around, crossed the road, slid down the slope to the underpass beneath the highway, and walked through the underpass, into town and to the taxi stand.

Abdullah is a long-time friend of, and local contact for, EAs in this area. In addition to being a friend and source of vital background on the local scene, he keeps us regularly updated on what happens in and around Azzun. Abdullah sends me a text message on my cell phone two, three, four times a week:

27 Aug.09, 11:09 p.m.:
Hi. Now its curfew at Azzun and still now the entrance of Azzun is closed.

6 Sept.09, 8:17 p.m.:
Hi. Israeli army imposed curfew at Azzun at 5:00 p.m. and they shooting live bullets. Now they put many checkpoints and they didn’t allow the cars to go anywhere.

9 Sept.09, 2:28 p.m.:
Now Israeli army imposed curfew at Azzun.

9 Sept.09, 4:43 p.m.:
Hi. Situation is very bad. The people can’t enter Azzun because the army close all roads.
Our taxi driver reported next morning that he’d been stuck in Azzun the previous afternoon and was unable to get home to break the Ramadan fast with his family.
Per phone call to Abdullah the following day: curfew was lifted at about 7:00 p.m.

11 Sept.09, 2:04 a.m.:
NOW THE ARMY ARRESTING BOYS AND SHOOTING LIVE BULLETS. HAVE ARRESTED 4 BOYS. AMBULANCE ENTERING NOW.

A phone call to Abdullah later that morning yielded the information that the curfew was in effect. At least one of the boys arrested had tried to escape, he told us, and was shot at and badly beaten.

“What can we do?”

“Maybe you can come and see the army in the town, and take pictures.”

The two of us who were home at the time (my Norwegian teammate and I) quickly consulted with taxidriver/contact/friend Abed, who knows Abdullah and the Azzun situation well, and who agreed to drive us. We cancelled our scheduled Arabic lessons for that afternoon, and set out.
To our surprise, the road into Azzun was open and the town was completely silent and empty as we drove in; there were no soldiers in evidence -- nor anyone else! However, a little further into town, we began to see kids in the street. Abed spoke with some people as we drove along, and it seems there was a break in the curfew to allow people to go to the mosque for midday prayers (it was the middle of Ramadan, the fasting month for Muslims, and one of the most observant and prayerful seasons of the religious year) or do whatever brief errands they could. Abed dropped us at Abdullah's for an update and went off to the mosque, as our sudden trip had prevented him for attending prayers in Jayyous.

Abdullah reported that one of his sons had gone to the football and volleyball practices at the local playing field the previous afternoon, and, around 7:00 p.m., soldiers had come, ordered the players and spectators home, and arrested one of the son's classmates (around 13 years old) and another boy.

By about 2:00 in the morning, at least another four boys had been arrested. Abdullah heard two shots and automatic fire some time after midnight; a neighbor, he said, witnessed a boy trying to run away from soldiers, but could not tell if he was wounded by the gunfire; they did hear him shouting and crying as the soldiers beat him. He was about 18-19 years old, Abdullah said. The soldiers left, going in the direction of the Israeli settlement, between 3:00-4:00 a.m., and he'd slept from about 4:00-7:00 a.m.; when he awoke, his children told him that curfew was in force.

One of Abdullah's brothers dropped by while we were there and he said a total of eight actually had been arrested. He reported that the army had broken into one home, and all the sons were beaten with rifle butts.

As of that time, no one had been released, nor could we get any names. Abed came back quickly from midday prayers, which he said had been intentionally foreshortened to allow people to get home again before curfew was re-imposed. He drove us past the house that was broken into, but it was closed up; a few shops were open. Abed was anxious to get out of town, lest we be unable to leave once the curfew was again in effect.

A postscript as of this writing: Abdul Kareem, from B’Tselem, whom we accompanied a few weeks earlier on interviews with families who had property demolition orders, had been able to enter Azzun that weekend, where he visited the bruised and injured boy following his release from detention; apparently no charges were filed.

11 Sept. 7, 7:48 p.m.:
No curfew but the army in town and on the field.

12 Sept.09, 10:32 a.m.:
Hi. Now Israeli army imposed curfew at Azzun.

15 Sept.09, 1:47 p.m.:
Hi. Now it’s curfew at Azzun and the army now imposing it.

15 Sept.09, 2:00 p.m.:
Israeli army now close entrance to Qalqilya

(our nearest city, which has a checkpoint where Palestinians with permits to work in Israel cross the Green Line to access their jobs).

In Jayyous: rural life under occupation

2009-09-18T03:22:00.000-07:00

I was sent by the Common Board of Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ (UCC) and the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, and Church World Service, to participate in the World Council of Churches’ (WCC’s) Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The views contained herein are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the Common Board of Global Ministries, the UCC or the WCC. If you would like to publish the information contained here or disseminate it further, please first contact the EAPPI Coordination (eappi-co@jrol.com) for permission. Thank you.
******
Photo: Jayyous North Agricultural Gate, open 6:45-7:30 a.m. Left shadow: my teammate Patricia taking the photo. Right shadow: me, seated on a rock, watching the soldier watching me.
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I’m from New York City, an urbean person if ever there was one. So I had no real idea about what living in a rural setting, in Palestine or anywhere else, could possibly be like. It never occurred to me to think about the relationship between agriculture and the occupation of Palestine.

As a solidarity activist in the U.S., I was aware of dramatic things like house demolitions in Jerusalem and other urban neighborhoods; the appearance of Israeli settler communities on Palestinian lands (in defiance of international law), and even settler violence toward Palestinian property and people. I never thought about agriculture in terms of its place in the whole economy, and the relationship between the Wall and agriculture, and how that leads to strangling and limiting the Palestinian economy.

Until I came to Jayyous….

I live in a village where the unemployment rate is about 80 percent. Virtually the entire village of a little less than 3,000 inhabitants are farmers. And, because of the Wall/Separation Barrier presumably constructed to protect the inhabitants of the settler community of Zufin – constructed on appropriated, confiscated, uncompensated Jayyousi land – the farmers are not able to farm that land, the basic source of livelihood for the entire village.

The Barrier cut off 8600 dunums (one acre equals approximately four dunums) of Jayyousi land when it originally was constructed here. Early in 2009, approximately 750 dunums were “returned” when the Wall was rerouted slightly; and we heard just at the beginning of last week that the Israeli High Court of Justice handed down a decision, under consideration since 2006, that will “return” another 2,489 dunums to the people of Jayyous. This will live about 5,400 dunums still isolated behind the Wall – still the vast majority of these peoples’ land – along with their six wells. This is good news and bad news. Of course, some families in the community will have more access to some more of their land. On the other hand, to passively accept the decision also carries the implication that Israeli authorities have the right to make it: that is to accept the assumption that the owners of the land are not the owners, and that outsiders determine who has the right to it, including the right to give it away to another party. But that’s a longer story….

In order to be allowed to travel to their lands and farm them, the village residents must apply for permits to cross through the Barrier – in this area, actually a series of gates, electrified fences with sensors, trenches and razor wire coils. A permit may be granted for a few months at a time. One cannot apply for the permit to be renewed before the time is up, but only after the current permit has expired. If your permit expires at a critical time for planting or harvesting, if you’re lucky, you’ll get your new one before that season is over.

A permit is given to an individual, not a family. If one family member has a permit, he cannot ask others to help him when they have the time – they must each have their own permits. A farmer may apply for permits for family members or hired help during a critical planting or harvesting season, and may or may not get them, or may or may not get them for the requested period of time. Their vehicles must have permits. Their animals must have permits. Three trucks in Jayyous have permits to cross the Barrier at this time, as I heard in August in a presentation in Jerusalem by Ray Dolfin of the United Nations Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

One is routinely denied a permit for:
(1) any “security history” in the family – if anyone in the family is, or has been, in prison, been arrested, been investigated, been questioned, been observed at a demonstration, etc. In practice, this means that permits are granted largely to the elderly.
(2) if one cannot prove ownership, even though the land has been in the family for many generations or many hundreds of years. In rural territory in which land is handed down automatically from father to son, and which has had at least three different occupiers in the past 100 years -- Ottoman, British, Israeli -- each with its own system of land registration, producing an updated clear title to a designated piece of land can be a challenge.
3) if one cannot prove ownership of at least a minimum required amount of land. In this culture, extended families work the land together as a unit. The specific parcel to which an individual may be able to claim title can be quite small, perhaps not sufficient to merit a permit allowing him access to it.

As a consequence of the permit system, about 120 persons, or about 10 percent of the approximately 1200 recognized landowners in the village, have access to their land (this according to the Mayor of Jayyous, Abu Taher.) Children under 16 years of age, the age at which a person must acquire and carry an official identity card, may join their parents to work the family’s fields as long as they have birth certificates to show at the gate, proving that they are under 16. Young teenagers are frequently denied passage through the gates on the grounds that they might be pretending to be younger than they are. And these people can enter and exit through three specified agricultural gates, which are open only at certain hours.

People enter and exit only through three specified agricultural ages, which are open only at certain hours of the day. The gates are “staffed” by Israeli soldiers, firearms slung over their shoulders, who open and close the gates, examine id’s and permits, check the contents of trucks, donkey carts, containers, and determine whether or not to allow Palestinians to pass.

And this is where we come in. We monitor the traffic through the gates. We note the hours the gates opened and closed, and whether or not they correspond to the published hours; we observe who comes through, we observe the behavior of the soldiers, we see who is, and is not, allowed through the gates and sometimes try to help, if it’s possible. We call the District Humanitarian Hotline if the gate is not opened for waiting farmers who have arrived on time. We call Machsom Watch[i] if we observe abuse, or if someone seems unfairly to have been denied entry. We’re told that our presence, the soldiers’ knowledge that internationals are watching them, sometimes helps. We document. We talk to the people. We tell the stories of what we see and hear.

Each time it’s my turn to monitor one of “our” gates, I’m struck again: these people are going through this process, lined up here, being checked through a gate by armed soldiers, sometimes harassed, physically assaulted or simply forced back – in order to have access to their own land, to do their daily work for their daily bread.

Jayyous’ experience is one example of the strangulation of the agricultural sector of the Palestinian economy, and is a vivid illustration of the effect of the Wall on the fertile region of the northern part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. If people cannot work their land, they cannot make a living. Jayyous, like other villages in this area, is becoming impoverished and the population is declining. Young people who cannot grow up to work their parents’ land (the young are frequently automatically classified as potential “security risks,” thus denied permits) may go to study if they can afford it – and then return to Jayyous, where there are no jobs for them. The pressure is very great to leave, to emigrate. This is an enormous and touchy issue for people here in this extremely traditional, family-centered rural culture. Young families are caught between the desire and the social pressure to remain, and the need to feed themselves and their children.

The agricultural sector is further affected by total Israeli control of the water supply, and by the requirement that vehicles with produce also require permission to enter Israel – the only place to which Palestinians can export their crops. If they cannot harvest at the right time, if they cannot get across the border to market at the right time, they don’t sell their products. Without profit from sales, they cannot buy seeds for new planting, feed for animals… the cycle goes on. The agricultural sector contracts further.

I’ve written previously about our twice-weekly task of early-morning monitoring at the Qalqilya North Terminal, a Green Line crossing point where Palestinians with permits to work in Israel must be checked through each day in order to get to their jobs.

A different side of our work is what I would call the pastoral task. This is being with the people: accompaniment, what we’re really here for. We visit people in the village, and listen to their stories. Particularly if there is an arrest or army activity in the village, we try to be there both to document and to try, in a very small way, to say to people that they are not alone, that someone sees what they are going through and cares about them.

And then we write, and speak, and do whatever we can to tell the stories we hear and share the experiences we witness.

The ubiquity of families with people in prison has hit me hard. Palestinians boys and young men are frequently arrested for any form of “resistance” – from the obvious, like throwing stones at the Israeli Defense Forces, to participating in demonstrations, or often just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nearly every family has, or has had, someone in prison.

Where I come from, there is at least some stigma or shame associated with prison – even though I know, and many are fully aware, that being in prison may have a great deal to do with social status, race, poverty, etc. But here, it’s a part of life. People who are arrested are grieved; people who return from prison are celebrated – by the whole village.

Just being present, and then telling the story, is probably the most important part of our job.
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[i] “Machsom” is a Hebrew word meaning “Checkpoint.” Machsom Watch is an Israeli human rights organization, comprised largely of women, whose volunteers observe and document the experiences of Palestinians at checkpoints, whether internally in the Occupied Palestinian Territories or between Palestine and Israel.

In Jayyous, West Bank, Palestine: Soldiers in the Village

2009-09-17T10:29:00.000-07:00

I was sent by the Common Board of Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ (UCC) and the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, and Church World Service, to participate in the World Council of Churches’ (WCC’s) Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The views contained herein are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the Common Board of Global Ministries, the UCC or the WCC. If you would like to publish the information contained here or disseminate it further, please first contact the EAPPI Coordination at eappi-co@jrol.com for permission. Thank you.
******

My Swedish teammate Patricia phoned us from the taxi stand at the center of our village, where she was waiting for a ride to Jerusalem. “There are soldiers in the village.”

This is not unusual in any Palestinian village. The Israeli army is a frequent visitor, sometimes with an obvious purpose in mind, sometimes seemingly walking through – helmeted, firearms on display -- for the sole purpose of reminding the villagers that they are here. (Perhaps to intimidate? Perhaps to provoke?) This is, after all, occupied territory.

But it was unusual for me to be wide awake and present when they’re around. We’ve had several nighttime visits from the army, along with several arrests of villagers. I’ve either been away at the time or actually slept through them and had my more readily-awakened teammates tell me what they saw as they observed from our roof during the night. I’ve been better at going to visit the affected families in daylight.

But this time it is around 1:00 in the afternoon. Part of our job as EAs is to observe, to document… to accompany the people among whom we’re working in the activities of their daily lives under occupation. My South African teammate, Mandla, and I grab our hats, notebooks and cell phones and hurry out. Yes, dealing with the presence of armed soldiers is a common activity of daily life here.

There is palpable tension in the streets. Groups of boys gather on corners, occasionally shouting to each other, or sending runners back and forth. (Of course there are always boys in the street. But it’s different… they are in identifiable groups, they are looking and pointing in the same direction… you sense that something’s up.)

Mandla and I stride through the village, eyes peeled. Mandla, who is not only extremely gregarious but also conducts English conversation sessions with village boys two afternoons a week, greets a lot of the people in the street, asking them if they’ve seen soldiers. We keep getting pointed to the western end of the village. We walk all the way through from east to west, to where we can climb up on high ground just outside the main population center and look down on the road alongside the Separation Barrier. Nothing. Quiet. (Eerie quiet? Do I just feel that way because I’ve been told soldiers are present?)

Mandla takes pictures – it’s a great view from here, both of the village, the nearby settlement and the Separation Barrier. Suddenly we hear what seems to me like a popping sound, and Mandla jerks around and says, “They’re in the village. That’s live fire.” (I’m momentarily struck by what a naïf I am. I can’t even recognize the sound of gunfire.) We hurry back the way we came.

Once back in the village streets, people respond to our inquiries by pointing toward the center of town. They’re surprisingly calm, going about their business. While the soldiers being in town is an affront, it’s also a predictable, unsurprising occurrence. I’m wondering if the soldiers have simply come and gone.

Until suddenly they appear out of a side street: three, with firearms at the ready. We scoot across the street to keep out of their way, and then try to follow at a distance, Mandla snapping photos as unostentatiously as possible. The soldiers turn around occasionally to warn us off. (Elice, whispering loudly, “Put your camera away, Mandla. Put it away! They’ll arrest you if they see it!”) Indeed, the soldiers already have pointed at the camera. A soldier suddenly turns around and shoots behind me. (I probably jump a foot in the air and rush behind a wall at the next corner. A few of the watching boys snicker.) We hear more shots as we allow distance to increase between the soldiers and ourselves. Mandla picks up some spent shells off the ground.

At the center of town we slip in and out of the assembled groups of onlookers. The soldiers and a few men and boys are arguing. The soldiers suddenly grab a boy in a blue shirt – he can’t be more than 12 or 13 – and start to march away with him. The boy tries to reach back toward an older man who’s been arguing with the soldiers. They all head off down the street, the soldiers holding onto the boy, two other village men at their heels, arguing. Mandla, more confident than I, goes boldly up to a soldier and says, “Why are you taking such a young boy?” The soldiers brush him off and tell him to stay out of the way.

By this time I’ve got our Jerusalem office on the phone so I can report what is happening. I follow the scene down the street, trying to describe as I go, struggling with how little I can say with certainty because I do not know Arabic or Hebrew. I realize I must hang up when a soldier looks at me threateningly, and I again scoot across the street. We see the group turn off on the road that leads toward the North Agricultural Gate where our villagers – those few who have permits -- cross the Barrier to get to their land. A ways down the hill, the young man is bundled into a military jeep. The other village men continue to argue with the soldiers.

My Jerusalem office coordinator calls back, asks me to let her listen to what’s being shouted in the street. When I reconnect with her, she asks me, “Do you understand what they’re saying?” “No,” I admit. “They’re saying ‘don’t throw stones.’” I can see older village men looking fiercely at the groups of boys, scolding. One boy throws a stone toward the soldiers and is practically knocked over by an elderly man who sounds as if he could be shouting curses at the miscreant. I’m so absorbed by the scene that it takes me a while to hear Mandla, and several older boys around him, shouting to me to get out of the way. If stones are thrown, the soldiers are likely to shoot back. One doesn’t want to be in between them.

An English-speaking Jayyousi tells me that the soldiers may come into the village just to see if they can provoke reaction. A common reaction is for the boys to throw stones at the soldiers and their jeeps. The soldiers, in turn, react by trying to chase down boys, seemingly any boys who might have been seen in the direction from which the stones came. (I speculate that the people here have a mixed reaction to the stone-throwers. On the one hand, everyone thoroughly resents and fears the soldiers, who can enter the village and disrupt their lives at any time, for any reason or for no reason. But no one wants additional trouble, no one wants to get hurt, no one wants more arrests, more deaths, more friends or family members in prison.)

Mandla and I move toward a house where we can see a young woman looking toward the scene from the half-constructed second floor. She tells us we can come up to observe from a safer distance. She motions to us to keep as quiet as possible, then points to one of the villagers arguing with the soldiers: “My uncle.” Several others join us over the next few minutes, adults and children, all warning each other to speak softly, all occasionally crouching down or slipping into corners to be out of sight from the street. We see a woman join the group around the soldiers.

In order to get a little closer, Mandla suggests we try the house of our favorite taxi driver, who picks us up twice a week at 3:30 a.m. so that we can monitor a major checkpoint at a crossing into Israel, and who has become a good friend and advisor. He lives near the center of town, and has a balcony overlooking the road to the North Gate.

By the time we reach his home, most of the action has subsided, but our friend has seen it all, and knows the family involved. Apparently, the blue-shirted boy was eventually released after much arguing and negotiation with the family.

When boys throw stones, he says, the soldiers will look for perpetrators. Sometimes they catch the actual stone-thrower, but more often they grab anyone they see. Even young boys can be treated harshly by the Israeli army, and can even end up in prison. He explains that the two brothers of this boy are already in prison. The woman we saw is his mother, who was arguing desperately to keep her youngest boy from being arrested.

This all leaves me with a wild confusion of feelings. I sense that most people I know in the U.S. would look at the stone-throwing boys as little hellions – and possible terrorists-in-the-making. I was brought up as a pacifist, taught “not to confront evil with evil, but overcome evil with good.” I would be horrified if, for example, my grandson were caught throwing stones at soldiers or at anyone else.

After a month and a half in Jayyous, in the occupied West Bank, my commitment to non-violent solutions has not changed. But I do live among people who have lost their livelihood because of the presence of Israelis on lands these villagers have worked for generations; because a Separation Barrier, manned by Israeli soldiers, and supposedly intended to “protect” the Israeli settlers, actually keeps the villagers from the land that is their living. I do look at, say, a 12-year-old boy, who may simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, under the control of three heavily-armed soldiers, and wonder how much of a “security” threat he, or his possible stone-throwing buddies, may truly represent. Security for whom, for what reason? I wonder what image of authority is taught to these boys? What is the lesson of this day for them? Who is terrorizing whom?

Property demolition

2009-08-30T10:50:00.000-07:00

On our first weekend in Jayyous, our EA team house was visited by Abdul Kareem Saadi, who is Coordinator for B’tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, in our area. At his invitation, my fellow EA, Patricia, and I joined him in visiting and interviewing the heads of two families who have received orders for the demolition of structures on their property.

Demolition orders are not unusual here, but the effect they have on the Palestinian population is may not be widely known among Americans. A very brief bit of history…

The 1967 War between Israel, Jordan, Syria and Egypt, also commonly referred to as “the Six-Day War,” left Israel the occupying power in the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the territory known as the West Bank (of the Jordan River) – the latter territory that had been annexed to Jordan following the declaration of the independent State of Israel in 1948. The northern West Bank town of Jayyous, where our EA team is placed, exists in territory that has been occupied for over 40 years. Its residents are not citizens of Israel, and they are subject to Israeli military control. The 1993 Oslo Accords provided for a Palestinian Authority (PA) to govern the internal affairs of the West Bank and Gaza for a presumed transitional period, and divided the West Bank into three areas:
· In Area A (which includes the major West Bank towns), the Palestinian Authority has control over both civil and security affairs
· Iin Area B (which includes the smaller towns and villages), the PA has civil control, security is in the hands of the Israelis
· In Area C (which includes 60% of the land of the West Bank), the Israelis retain full civil and security control.

In none of these areas do the Palestinians control their own borders. Area C includes all Israeli settlements (more about that to come), and lands declared by the Israeli government to be “security zones” or “closed military zones.” Area C territory frequently runs around and between places designated A or B, meaning that people traveling from one place to another are subject to military control, checkpoints, permits, designated roads and other travel restrictions even to get to work, go shopping, go to school, or (and a lot more about this to come) even to reach and work their own farmland. And, we have discovered, the Area C boundaries are not always clear to those who live or work in and around them.

Patricia and I joined Abdul Khareem on visits to Abdul Rohman Mohammed Saleem and his son, and Naeef Abdul Khaladi Chalan along with some family members and a friend. They both live in the town of Azzun, a farming area not far from Jayyous, where we live. Both had built structures on their property within the past three years; the Israelis now claim that the property is located in Area C, thus no new Palestinian structures may be built and these must be demolished. Both received summonses on July 13, ordering them to the civil administration headquarters on August 6, when they received demolition orders for their buildings. They were given August 20 as a date for appeals, involving a lawyer’s services and documentation that includes proof that they own the land, a certification by the Azzun municipality, a survey report by an Israeli engineer, among other papers. (Mr. Saleem, at Mr. Abdul Kareem’s request, brought out his file of paperwork, dating from the July 13 summons – it was fatter than my Master’s thesis.)

Abdul Rohman Mohammed Saleem, right, and his son demonstrate use of new feeding and watering equipment in their chicken barn, now slated for demolition. Photo by Patricia Carswell

Abdul Rohman Mohammed Saleem, married and the father of eight children, was formerly a nurse, now is a schoolteacher in Azzun. In 2000, he bought a piece of property from another Palestinian, and two or three years ago completed a storage shed on the land. Over two years, he saved from his teaching salary approximately NIS100,000 (New Israeli Shekels), the equivalent of about $25,000 US-- a substantial sum here, but an investment in his family’s future security -- to construct a 400-square meter housing-feeding-watering-sales facility with the capacity for raising 3,000 chicks. He finished construction last June. He purchased, raised and sold his first crop of chicks.

Then came the summons, with the order to demolish both the storage shed and the new chicken barn. Reasons for such orders are not always given here, but, in this case, according to Abdul Kareem, Mr. Saleem has been told that his land is now designated Area C, thus both security and civil administration are Israel’s, meaning that no new Palestinian construction is permitted. As we sat in a circle in Mr. Saleem’s empty barn, he pointed toward the storage shed and said, “I built that two or three years ago, and nobody said anything to me. And now….” He looked around his barn, his new enterprise, his investment, shrugged his shoulders and sighed.

Top, Naeef Abdul Khaladi Chalan stands in front of his carob tree. Bottom, the shed in question. Photos by Patricia Carswell

Naeef Abdul Khaladi Chalan, 55-year-old father of four, owns and operates a stone quarry in Azzun. Five years ago, he bought two dunums of land (1 dunum = slightly more than ¼ acre) across the road from his quarry. He and his family planted a small vegetable garden and built a tiny shed that is used for storage and also furnished with bunk beds and a few supplies for open air cooking. As we sat under his carob tree (from which he picked and invited us to taste the pods of fresh carob) he spoke about his children and grandchildren playing on the property, and how he and his wife sat there to enjoy the cool of the evening. The tiny shed is the object of the demolition order.

Both men went to the civil administration, accompanied by Abdul Kareem, on August 20. Their appeals were postponed.

Perhaps these two brief stories do not sound shocking as isolated incidents. After all, construction requires construction permits, doesn’t it? – which can be a laborious process, as anyone who’s ever built an addition to a home well knows.

But there is a reason why a human rights worker is interviewing these families and recording this information. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories, construction by Palestinians is a matter for Israeli control, and the Israeli military have the authority to determine how property here, including private property, is used. These two stories are examples of thousands of cases where people have been forced to give up structures on their own property, in many cases actual homes in which they and their families may have lived for years. Acquiring permits in the first place is a lengthy, complex and costly process, and there is no guarantee that going through it will result in either permission to build or protection from future demolition. The process has less to do with things like building codes or zoning, and everything to do with control of the population.
******
I was sent by the Common Board of Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ (UCC) and the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, and Church World Service, to participate in the World Council of Churches’ (WCC’s) Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The views contained herein are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the Common Board of Global Ministries, the UCC or the WCC. If you would like to publish the information contained here or disseminate it further, please first contact the EAPPI Coordination (eappi-co@jrol.com) for permission. Thank you.

Theological Reflection

2009-08-22T06:02:00.000-07:00

During our days of Ecumenical Accompaniment orientation in Jerusalem, each of our six teams were asked to make brief reflections on our experiences at the beginning of each day. Pasted below is my contribution.

The previous day, we had had a challenging presentation from a member of "Breaking the Silence," a project of a group of ex-soldiers with the Israeli Defense Force who discovered, in conversation with each other, that they shared troubling memories of their experiences in enforcing the occupation of the Palestinian Territories. They began by setting up a photo exhibition, and now have published printed recollections and concerns from former soldiers throughout Israel. And on that same day, we also had met with the Rt. Rev. Munib Younan, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, at his offices in Jerusalem. These two presentations sparked the following reflections on my part:

I Kings 19:3-15a
3 Elijah was afraid [a] and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, 4 while he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. "I have had enough, LORD," he said. "Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors." 5 Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep.
All at once an angel touched him and said, "Get up and eat." 6 He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.
7 The angel of the LORD came back a second time and touched him and said, "Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you." 8 So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. 9 There he went into a cave and spent the night.
The LORD Appears to Elijah
And the word of the LORD came to him: "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
10 He replied, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."
11 The LORD said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by."
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper [and the newest English translation says, “a sound like pure silence.] 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" 14 He replied, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."
15 The LORD said to him, "Go back the way you came,….

Matthew 19:35-40
35Then [the disciples] led the donkey to Jesus. They put some of their clothes on its back and helped Jesus get on. 36And as he rode along, the people spread clothes on the road in front of him. 37When Jesus was starting down the Mount of Olives, his large crowd of disciples were happy and praised God because of all the miracles they had seen. 38They shouted,
"Blessed is the king who comes
in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven
and glory to God."
39Some Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, make your disciples stop shouting!"
40But Jesus answered, "If they keep quiet, these stones will start shouting."

In our first introductions last week, when we each told a little about ourselves and our goals for our experience as an EA, I said that I think my most personal goal is to “find my voice.” … to be able to speak to others with very different experiences and opinions, particularly, American Jews, without being defensive, and in ways that build relationships, rather than undermining them.

To move from silence, to speech….

Breaking the silence….

For Elijah, life was terrifying; he was so sure that he was the last and only faithful member of God’s community, the rest had been killed, and he would be killed too. He had given up and run away. And God pushed him, and pushed him. God gave him food, and a place to sleep, and kept saying, “Elijah, what are you doing here?” Elijah was a slow learner. God had to keep after him for a long time, and finally, when nothing else would work, God manifested God’s holy being directly to him. In a newer translation than the one I read, the “gentle whisper” is more accurately translated as: “something like the sound of pure silence.” And after that silence, God spoke again, very softly, and said, “Elijah, what are you doing here?” And when Elijah protested again that he was running for his life, God said, “Go back….” Go back to your own people and do the work. Go back to your own people, and tell the truth.

Yesterday Bishop Younan reminded us what this struggle we’re engaged in, in our way, as EA’s, is about. It is about justice, and that’s all it’s about. It’s not about religion. It’s not about ancient histories of oppression. It’s not about the Holocaust. It’s not about guilt. It’s about justice and injustice, and nothing more.

He said to us that when he comes to meetings and conferences in Europe and the US, and they sit down together to try to talk about resolving “the problem in the Holy Land,” he says, “Are we speaking the same language?” Are we telling the same story? Are we talking about the injustice? Because that’s all he is interested in talking about. That’s all there is.

In our Christian story, when Jesus was paraded into Jerusalem on a donkey, his disciples and supporters shouted that a new life is possible. Here it is! Don’t get distracted, just take hold of it. And when the powers that be asked Jesus if the shouters could be shut up, he said, “If they keep silent, the very stones of the street will shout.” The truth cannot be suppressed. Sooner or later, it will be unavoidable.

Part of my own American Christian experience is this spiritual from the African-American tradition that we sing:

I’m so busy praising my Jesus,
I’m so busy praising my Jesus,
I’m so busy praising my Jesus --
If I don’t praise him
Rocks are gonna cry out,
Rocks are gonna cry out --
Ain’t got time to die.

Not only will the truth not be suppressed. It will strengthen us. It will keep us going. 'Ain’t got time to die….'

******
I was sent by the Common Board of Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ (UCC) and the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, and Church World Service, to participate in the World Council of Churches’ (WCC’s) Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The views contained herein are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the Common Board of Global Ministries, the UCC or the WCC. If you would like to publish the information contained here or disseminate it further, please first contact the EAPPI Coordination (eappi-co@jrol.com) for permission. Thank you.
******

Follow up

2009-08-20T06:43:00.000-07:00

******
I am a minister of the United Church of Christ (UCC), sent by the Common Board of Global Ministries of the UCC and the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, and by Church World Service, as an Ecumenical Accompanier serving on the World Council of Churches’ (WCC’s) Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The views contained herein are personal to me and do not necessarily reflect those of the UCC, the Common Board of Global Ministries, Church World Service, or the WCC. If you would like to publish the information contained here (including posting on a website), or distribute it further, please first contact info@eappi-us.org or the EAPPI Communications Officer, for permission. Thank you.
******

Those of you who read my earlier post of a news article in The Jerusalem Post, about the candlelight vigil our EA group attended in Jerusalem last week, may be interested in the following letter from Arik Ascherman , director of Rabbis for Human Rights, who was arrested at the vigil:

On Tuesday evening we helped organize a candlelight solidarity vigil opposite the Sheikh Jarakh homes where Palestians were evicted and settlers were allowed in. As many of you know, I was arrested there, the 36th person to be arrested since the evictions of the Hanoun and Ghawi families (Including 2 women from the RHR staff.) The situation leaves me angry and worried, because we are talking about a serious threat to Israeli democracy. Some of the arrests were “justified,” even though we don’t think that the police should have been there evicting families to begin with. However, the only crime of many of those arrested was their inability to accept the injustice done to the El-Kurd, Ghawi and Hanoun families.

When I decide to engage in civil disobedience I know that I am likely to get arrested. In certain tense situations, I know that things are likely to get out of control, even if nobody on either side was necessarily planning arrests. However, here the police, instead of fulfilling their duty to protect the rights at the heart of democracy, have in a very calculated way been attempting to cut short and stifle peaceful protest. Under the cover of preserving public order, their goal has been to prevent expressions of solidarity or advocacy for these Palestinian families. The courts are also complicit in this when they reward the police with restraining orders as a condition for release, making it all the more difficult to organize.

What happened? The vigil was quiet and there was a heavy police presence. I was helping the police and consulting with them, in order that participants would honor the police request not to block streets. We didn’t want to give the police an excuse for stopping the vigil. After an hour at the Hanoun family’s house, we wanted to go to the Ghawi home. A police officer told us that we could not walk down the alley taking us to the Ghawi home, and directed us to take another longer route. Neither he nor anybody else said in any fashion that we could not walk along the longer route. At that moment a few officers called me from the other side of the road. I figured that they wanted to talk to me about some detail or other, and began to cross the street. A number of officers quickly surrounded me, some pulling me by the arms and others pushing me from behind. There were regular police, border guards and at least one plains clothes officer. When I asked what was going on and what my status was, I was told that I was detained and that I would be arrested if I didn’t come with them to the police car. When I asked, “Why,” it was clear from their words and their tone that they had been waiting for the opportunity to arrest me. They said that the moment that we had begun to move we were holding an unauthorized march and that I was inciting people to participate in an illegal activity. I laid down on the sidewalk, and told them that I would not resist arrest but would not cooperate. Many tactics were used to draw out my arrest and incarceration for 22.5 hours, and I was given a 7 day restraining order keeping me out of Sheikh Jarakh (The police wanted 30 days, and we would have appealed even the 7 days if we could have received a court date in time.) I won’t go into details regarding the curses and kicks I received from officers(I have lodged a complaint with the Unit for the Investigation of Police), the fact that somehow the rumor was spread among right wing prisoners that I had attacked police officers, etc., because the real story is not about me personally. It should be superfluous to say that the connection between the police account of events and what actually happened was tenuous at best.

It is important to point out that in my 14 years directing RHR I have seen the security forces at their worst and at their best. It is human nature and almost unavoidable that they identify more with their fellow Israelis than Palestinians. However, in all these 14 years I have never seen collusion between police and settlers like we have seen from the “Shalem” police station in Silwan over the last two years (Where Palestinians know that if they complain about being attacked by Israelis, they will be the ones arrested), and now in Sheikh Jarakh.

In Rabbi Nava Hefetz’s dvar Torah below, she quotes from this week’s Torah portion, ‘You shall not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy brother.” (Deut. 15:7). As always, THE question is, “Who do we see as our brothers and sisters?” Unfortunately, some of us are willing to harden our hearts towards non-Jews and to ignore the command of next week’s portion,
“You shall appoint judges and officers (In Hebrew, “shotrim,” which is “police officers in modern Hebrew) for all your tribes, in all the settlements that the Lord your God is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice. You shall not judge unfairly. You shall show no partiality.; you shall not take bribes, for bribes blind the eyes of the wise and distort the plea of the just. Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive on and inherit the Land that the Lord your God is giving you.” (Deut. 17: 18-20)

I can’t say that the police are taking bribes, but I can say that they are showing partiality. This is not the way for us to thrive here – It is not the Judaism and not the democracy that we desire. There is another way, one that will allow us to merit Isaiah’s prophecy in this week’s Haftarah, the third Haftarah of consolation after Tisha B’Av, “Great shall be the peace of your children. You shall be established through righteousness. You shall be safe from oppression (Could also be read, “You shall be distance yourself from oppression” and shall have no fear. (Isaiah 54: 14)

Shabbat Shalom
Arik

What is EAPPI, and What am I Doing Here?

2009-08-20T05:26:00.000-07:00

Backing up a bit… for those who may be unfamiliar with it, the group I’m in Palestine with, the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, is an initiative of the World Council of Churches, which sends Accompaniers (EAs) to the region for three month terms, during which time they live with local communities in the West Bank and Jerusalem. I quote freely from the EAPPI’s own brochure [italics mine]:
The mission of the EAPPI is to accompany Palestinians and Israelis in their non-violent actions and concerted advocacy efforts to end the occupation [of the West Bank and Gaza by the State of Israel]…. Objectives are to:
• Reduce and prevent incidents of violence, humiliation and violations
of human rights against civilians
• Ensure the respect of human rights and international humanitarian law
• Express solidarity with Palestinians and Israeli peace activists and empower local churches and Palestinian communities
• Construct a stronger global advocacy network
• Influence public opinion and policy makers
• Be an active witness for peace and alternative non-violent struggles against injustice

I’ve been here now for two and a half weeks. Here’s a stab at trying briefly to describe what I’ve been doing, from arrival in Jerusalem on August 3, until the team of which I’m a member began to work in earnest in our placement last Sunday:

This a very demanding program. We spent the first day in Jerusalem having a "once over lightly" of the whole program and a walking tour of the Old City of Jerusalem --since it's several thousand years old, with an amazing variety of cultural, ethnic and religious traditions, it's a very colorful eyeful, and very easy to get lost in! Lots of stuff you've seen on TV, and lots more you never imagined.

Then we spent three days in the various towns where each team is placed, getting oriented by a member of the outgoing team. We're 24 EAs, four each in six towns and villages. My team, which includes Patricia, a Canadian-born women who lives in Sweden, Cecilie from Norway, Mandla, a South African man, and myself, is placed in the village of Jayyous in the northern West Bank. The people here are virtually all farmers who are now, as a result of the occupation and the Separation Barrier (often referred to as “the Wall,” although in this location it’s a series of fences, electrified wire, razor wire, trenches, and gates) which the Israeli government is constructing , are now surrounded by obstacles that make it increasingly difficult just to get to their land so they can work it each day.

A regular part of our job involves monitoring three agricultural gates through the Barrier between the village itself, where the people reside, and the surrounding lands, where they work: observing how many people can go and come, who and what is denied entry, what problems people may have with the soldiers staffing the gates (Barrier crossings, whether into agricultural lands, on the highway, or in and out of cities, are all controlled by the Israeli military), whether the gates are open throughout the posted times, etc.

We do the same at a large terminal in our neighboring city, Qalqilya, which is at the Green Line, the internationally-recognized (but not by Israel) boundary between the West Bank and Israel.

Palestinians entering Israel here are going to work, for which they require a permit to enter and leave Israel each day (they may not stay overnight), which is usually granted for a few months at a time and then must be reapplied for. Each person’s permit must be checked before one is admitted. On our first Sunday here (Sunday being the beginning of the work week in this part of the world) we arrived at a little before 4:00 a.m. to find several hundred people, some of whom said they’d been there since 2:00 a.m., already lined up waiting for the gate to open at 4:00. After passing one at a time, through a turnstile, they must go through a rigorous screening process and get out on the other side in order to get to work at 7:00 -- every day. We counted (on a clicker) over 3,000 people getting through the gate between 4:00 and about 7:30. That's just getting through the first gate -- there at least two more turnstiles, two more potential screenings (either being x-rayed or patted down for explosives residue), plus presenting a permit to an officer who may or may not honor the permit. To get to work. Every day. Sometimes, depending on the crowd and whether or not one is subjected to extra screening or questioning, the process can take as little as 15 minutes; or two hours or more. Since they cannot spend the night in Israel so they can keep regular hours, these workers are likely to do casual or contract labor,and many need to meet a boss or middle-man on the other side of the Green Line. If they are late... the job may go to another. Without a job, they cannot apply for another permit....

A few others entering here, mostly women, are going for medical appointments or may be visiting a family member in prison. For this, they also must have a specific one-day permit, which must be applied for in advance. Emergencies...???

After this intense introduction to what the next three months hold for us, all teams then spent five more days back in Jerusalem, continuing training, hearing from lots of different local peace and justice organizations and NGOs, touring the area of Israeli settlements around Jerusalem, getting oriented to the practicalities of our work and daily life as EAs. The statistics we gather are shared with UN agencies, International Red Cross and other human rights organizations and NGOs, who use them, along with research from other sources, in their own reporting. So we have to keep good records!

The Jayyous team returned to the village on Saturday, August 15, to begin the real work. Along with our agricultural gate and checkpoint monitoring, we will visit the residents of Jayyous and the villages and towns around the area, try to develop relationships with the two women's organizations in town, be at the ready in case there are any incidents to report (Israeli army coming in the middle of the night, or at other times, to arrest someone and/or order a curfew, for example) and do our best to do pastoral follow-up with the affected families, and to accompany or monitor any non-violent political action the people of the village choose to take.
******I am a minister of the United Church of Christ (UCC), sent by the Common Board of Global Ministries of the UCC and the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, and by Church World Service, as an Ecumenical Accompanier serving on the World Council of Churches’ (WCC’s) Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The views contained herein are personal to me and do not necessarily reflect those of the UCC, the Common Board of Global Ministries, Church World Service, or the WCC. If you would like to publish the information contained here (including posting on a website), or distribute it further, please first contact info@eappi-us.org or the EAPPI Communications Officer, eappi-co@jrol.com for permission. Thank you.

We made the papers

2009-08-11T08:26:00.000-07:00

Pasted below, coverage in this morning's The Jerusalem Post of a vigil/demonstration our group -- which is in Jerusalem for the rest of this week for the remainder of our orientation -- attended last night. A few comments, for the less-initiated.
> Sheikh Jarrah is a Jerusalem neighborhood in which Palestinian families have been fighting evictions for the past several months; the evictions will make way for new Israeli settlers to move in. The Palestinian familes are people who were made homeless by the proclamation of the State of Israel following the 1948 war. The war resulted in annexation by [then known as] TransJordan of what is now the West Bank, and the king of TransJordan granted the refugees the land, the UN provided the houses. These families have been living in this neighborhood since the 1950's, and their recent eviction resulted in more than 50 people losing their homes. Members of the evicted families sat on the sidewalk in plastic chairs while we vigiled; some of the men sleep outside overnight in protest.
> Yes, indeed, the "global church delegation" singing "We Shall Overcome" in an beautiful variety of accents, is us.
> I witnessed the arrest of Arik Aschermann, whose workshop I attended in June at the annual gathering of Churches for Middle East Peace in Washington, a few weeks before I left for Palestine. I wasn't at the front of the line, but I could not see him doing anything that look provocative or, to my mind, would justify his arrest.
> I can't vouch for the description of what happened in front of the second home. I did not see anything like that, but our group left before the crowd dispersed.

The Jerusalem Post

Aug 11, 2009 0:31 Updated Aug 11, 2009 9:27
Hundreds protest Sheikh Jarrah evictions
By Abe Selig

Hundreds of left-wing activists from Israel and abroad joined dozens of residents of east Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood Monday evening to protest last week's eviction of the Hanoun and al-Gawhi families from their homes.
The protest began peacefully at 8 p.m. with a candlelight vigil in front of the Hanoun family home. A global church delegation sang "We Shall Overcome," and demonstrators waved signs reading "No to ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah" and "Why do you steal our homes?" and containing quotes from a letter Hanoun sent Monday to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The evicted families were among the protesters.
Police were present at the scene, but didn't take any action until the protesters began to move toward the al-Gawhi home, led by Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights.
Police then moved in and arrested Ascherman, restraining both his arms and legs, and began to disperse the crowd.
The protesters regrouped about a block away from the al-Gawhi home, their mood markedly more tense. Spotting a group of Orthodox Jews returning from prayers at the tomb of Shimon Hazaddik, the protesters hurled abuse at them, shouting, "Get out, Jew!" in Arabic. This, together with the size of the crowd - which included many people taking pictures or filming - left them visibly shaken.
The crowd also jeered when a bus full of IDF officers passing through the area stalled nearby, with the protesters making rude gestures and name-calling.
By press time, protesters were still in the area, but many had left, and the demonstration seemed to be on the wane. There was no response from police on whether or not Ascherman would be charged.

Why I'm here

2009-08-07T01:34:00.000-07:00

In my first post, I mentioned reflecting on my hopes and expectations for my time in Palestine, what I want to learn and do with this experience. I’ve now been here for four days – and I can hardly remember when I wasn’t! For an old-fashioned Sunday School kid who grew up with powerful images of the Holy Land, the place where my faith was born, being here is almost magical, a “natural high.” It's also filled with the contradictions of being in occupied territory.

Two days in East Jerusalem, second day now in Jayyous, the small agricultural town north of Jerusalem (looks on the map to be about 40 miles as the crow flies, but the journey is longer and more complicated) where my team of four Accompaniers is placed. We will have another two and a half days being generally oriented to this placement by one of the departing Accompaniers; and then will return to Jerusalem for another week of preparation before finally settling in here and beginning our work – more about that to come.

Back to my hopes, expectations, motivation for participating in this program…. As our entire group of 24 Accompaniers met for the first time in Jerusalem on Wednesday morning, August 5, we each were invited to introduce ourselves individually and talk about our backgrounds, our education and professional lives, our interest in Palestine and motivation for participating in the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine/Israel. When my turn came, I talked about some of the usual: my understanding of faith communities as places of welcome, peacemaking, reconciliation – alongside the reality that our faith often is used for opposite purposes: to exclude and judge, to harden our differences, to justify our conflicts – along with my background in peace and justice ministries, my education in theatre and theology, my other international solidarity experiences. But I found myself saying for the first time that I think my real personal objective is “to find my voice: to be able to speak about Palestine with Jewish friends and colleagues in ways that build bridges rather than undermine relationships.”

I have had strong feelings about the Israeli occupation of Palestine for a long time. I don’t expect that my experiences here will change those opinions, although I trust that I may find much more subtlety and complexity than I’ve been able to absorb from a distance. But while I’m known as a person who’s rarely at a loss for words, I find it painfully difficult to speak my mind on Palestine with those whose attitudes and experiences may lead them to conclusions vastly different from mine. I consider the occupation of Palestine to be the key geopolitical issue of our time – and I don’t know how to talk about it (dare I say, “I’m afraid to talk about it”) forthrightly. As a person of faith and as a political person, my silence and self-consciousness are a big problem.

So I need to see for myself. That’s why I’m in Palestine: to see for myself. And to act on what I see. And to be able to tell the human stories that emerge from seeing and acting. That’s what I’m hoping for, and that’s what I want to learn. Or that’s a start….

First Post

2009-07-24T10:14:00.000-07:00

This is my new blog -- I'm a first-timer, and I think using the technology is almost more challenging to me than going to Palestine!

I will leave on Monday, August 3, for three months as an Ecumenical Accompanier with the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine/Israel. I'm now into my crazy last-minute preparations -- preparing the apartment for family members who will 'apartment-sit,' taking the dog to my daughter in Virginia, learning to do a blog, etc., etc. Now's my time to stop and reflect a bit on what I'm really doing and why I'm doing it, what are my hopes and expectations for this time, and what I want to learn and to do with this experience. I hope my next post will be an opportunity to share some of that with you.