WE have just come back from a couple of weeks in Palestine/Israel where we attended the Sabeel conference called “The Forgotten Faithful – a window into the Life and Witness of Christians in the Holy Land”.
Sabeel is an ecumenical movement among Palestinian Christians.
Most of the speakers at the conference were local Palestinian scholars.
The Orthodox Patriarch gave the initial greeting at the opening celebration and the Latin (Catholic) Patriarch delivered a presentation on Palestinian Christianity: “The Challenges and the Vision for the Future”.
Archbishops and bishops from the Orthodox, Armenian, Coptic, Syrian, Latin, Maronite, Anglican and Lutheran Churches addressed the conference.
During our visit we travelled from Jerusalem to Ramallah, Jericho, Bethlehem, Nazareth and various small villages.
When you hear the words “Palestine” or “Palestinian”, what is the image you see in your mind?
Probably (maybe as it was with us) youths wearing black and white headscarves, shemaghs, sprouting guns and flags at a funeral procession, shouting abuse and throwing stones at Israeli soldiers or at bulldozers. Or perhaps suicide bombers.
The reality is very different. Most Palestinians (certainly the people we saw) are struggling to live a normal life in an abnormal situation – under Israeli occupation, oppression and harassment.
They try to maintain universities, hospitals and cultural establishments.
One of the people at the conference was Eddie Makue, a black South African who is General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches and who had been imprisoned during apartheid.
He said the situation in Palestine is worse than apartheid in South Africa.
Among Palestinians are Christians, now a small minority, who are the descendants of the very first Christians – the people who received their faith from the apostles or at the Pentecost event … You will remember from the scriptural description of that event – “there were many tribes or peoples present and they heard the apostles speaking in their own tongues”.
In Jesus’ time, Palestine was not peopled exclusively by Jews. Some historians estimate that about 50 per cent of the people were not Jews.
The geographic location made it a corridor for traders and armies who moved from north to south and vice versa.
Today Palestinian Muslims and Christians live co-operatively together under Israeli domination.
In speaking with us, they called themselves Palestinian Christians or Palestinian Muslims.
In a very real sense, Palestinian Christians are the “mother Church”. They are the community where it all began. They remain faithful after 2000 years.
Yet under Israeli oppression and occupation the number of Christians is dwindling alarmingly.
In the Holy Land today they number only 2 per cent of the population. Many have fled to Jordan or elsewhere.
Bethlehem today is at catastrophic status. The wall built in and around the city takes most of its agricultural land, denying its original communities access to Jerusalem and the possibility of expansion.
Soon the most renowned little town on earth will be a walled-in ghetto with few exit gates controlled by a strict system of permits.
When we were in Bethlehem we had been scheduled to visit the Church of the Nativity.
However, a couple of days before, the Israelis had located someone they wanted in a house in Manger Square – so they knocked down the houses on either side, then shelled the house, and under fire a young man ran out, was shot – a mistake as they said – then the man they wanted ran out and was killed.
The day the conference moved to Bethlehem, the funerals were held and it was considered too dangerous for us to go there.
Who can blame the people for leaving Bethlehem to live a life free from violence, poverty and humiliation?
If the trend continues, “the little town of Bethlehem” will have no Christians.
And once people leave, be it for work, education or freedom, most are denied re-entry even for family reunion. Even married people remain separated.
Palestinians who leave the country, to work in America as many do (as it is near impossible to get a job in Palestine), are mostly refused a permit to return.
So young people who earn money in another country, then want to return to set up a business, to look after their parents – or for married people who wish to return to support their family – entry is denied. Or their applications just don’t get processed.
An Israeli policy we had not heard mentioned before denies entry or re-entry to foreign nationals who want to visit, live or work in the occupied Palestinian territories, that is – Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The Christian world – indeed seemingly most of the world – is ignorant of these members of “the mother Church”.
Here in Australia, it seems to us that the media, with perhaps sometimes the exception of SBS, and sometimes Compass on the ABC, promote the Israeli cause.
The Israeli Government still seems to feel threatened and never fails to exploit this to justify their treatment of the Palestinian people.
Whatever they do to the Palestinians is justified as necessary for security. When the innocent are killed, it is always called “a mistake”.
Successive American governments (and be sure that it’s America that counts in this situation), have supported Israel.
A recent tragic example was in Lebanon and the ongoing attacks in the Gaza.
While we were there, and were watching TV, one of the local channels showed a scene that shocked us – a helicopter flying over, dropping what looked like spirals of smoke – incendiary bombs as we were later told.
Young boys in this street scene could have been our grandchildren, just kids in jeans and T-shirts – running, cycling as fast as they could, and women, Muslim mothers, running, carrying babies and small children, pulling along other small children – and the look of terror on their faces.
Remember the young naked girl from the Vietnam war after napalm burnt her – this was just as haunting.
We were told there were 60 people killed in Gaza in the nine days we were in Palestine/Israel.
Later, in Jordan, where we could watch the BBC, there was a media awards night.
The prize-winning newsreel showed a scene of a young girl, aged 11 or 12, on a beach picnic with her family in Gaza when the beach was shelled and most of her family killed. She was absolutely distraught as she fell over her father’s body.
Of course, again that was “a mistake”! These images will haunt us forever.
Everywhere you travel in Palestine/Israel there are Israeli settlements built or being built – probably with American money as a huge proportion of American aid goes to Israel. The Israeli Government is building these, subsidising Jewish – or more likely Zionist – families to move in to them, and so enjoy a much better lifestyle – an offer hard to refuse.
Once a settler begins to occupy the land – Palestinian land, part of the land that has been Palestinian since the war in 1967 – the army is there to protect him.
Maybe it begins with a caravan, but then houses are built, often by the Government and often without knowing who will occupy them.
People in very ordinary homes in Tel Aviv, or even we believe in Russia – are offered the homes at incredibly low cost.
Then the Government builds impressive roads just for the Israelis – no Arabs allowed.
Then the ever present wall is built – six-metre-high slabs of concrete – built to “protect” the settlers.
If the route is through a Palestinian farm, then it is built through the farm.
We saw many cases where the farmhouse has been completely cut off from the olive trees, and then the olive trees are cut down leaving just the stumps.
The often heard talk about a two-state solution seems more and more unlikely.
The Palestinian land is already dotted all over with these settlements – or “neighbourhoods” as the Israelis prefer to call them.
There has been much publicity of the Israelis having withdrawn from some of these settlements.
This is true, but there are about 150 other settlements on Palestinian land, and more happening all the time.
Palestinians must have permits to go anywhere. These permits require renewal every three months, and, if given, are for a specific route.
When the conference was moving to Nazareth one bus was turned back at a checkpoint because though the Palestinian women on it had permits, one woman’s permit was written for a different checkpoint and the soldiers wouldn’t allow her through any other – so the bus had to go back and via a different checkpoint.
These soldiers are very young, and seem to be able to do what they feel like.
And there is harassment by settlers. This is so bad the World Council of Churches formed the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program.
Here international people spend three months just accompanying Palestinians at checkpoints, accompanying Palestinian ambulances and health services, being there as new settlers attempt to take over Palestinian homes or farms, and at least in Hebron, accompanying children to school to stop Israel settlers spitting on them, throwing stones – accompanying them just to keep them safe.
We were in Palestine/Israel for just a fortnight and we have come back home with more questions than answers, more questions than we had when we left Australia.
But we do know that what we saw and what we heard.
We spent a lot of the time being angry, some of the time crying, and it’s a time we will never forget.
The Sabeel Centre in Jerusalem seeks to make the Gospel relevant today, ecumenically and spiritually to Christians in the land where Jesus first preached a message of love, and freedom for all people.
Following in Jesus’ footsteps, Sabeel stands for the oppressed, works for justice and seeks peace building opportunities.
To quote Pope John Paul II, the Holy Land needs bridges, not walls.
Kevin and Marie Walsh of Stafford Parish in Brisbane were among eight Australians who attended the 6th international Sabeel conference in Jerusalem
