Today was quite a day and included a very genuine
“Palestinian experience” on our way back from Ramallah. We went to Ramallah, the capital of the West
Bank, which is only about 5 miles from Jerusalem but feels and looks like
another world entirely. After we crossed
the Qalandria checkpoint, the look and feel of the city and streets took on a
considerably more gritty, impoverished and neglected feel. We visited with a parish in Ramallah and a
school run by the diocese also in Ramallah.
St. Andrew’s parish is a small Anglican parish in Ramallah
that has been there since 1888. It grew
significantly after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 as many
Palestinian refugees poured into the West Bank.
The challenges for the parish are many, with unemployment in the West
Bank being at about 40% and many people suffering from poverty, difficulty in
getting an education, lack of basic social services and infrastructure and the
general oppression of the Israeli occupation.
The diocese and this church run a medical clinic on the grounds where
the church is, offering cardiac and diabetes care to anyone who needs it,
Christians and Muslims alike. The
ministry of the parish is about radical hospitality, being a welcoming presence
to the community. They live out of a
theology of suffering, seeing in the story of Jesus’ suffering a model for how
they approach their suffering while remaining confident that “resurrection”
will come. Fr. Fadi, the young priest at the parish explained their theology of
hope in the midst of despair, of forgiveness in the midst of their pain. He
also said that true forgiveness is not possible while the occupation is still
happening because those who are hurting from it cannot let go in the way they
would need to to truly forgive so long as they are suffering at the hands of
the Israelis. Fr. Fadi was very articulate about his
theology of suffering and how the Christian story of Jesus’ suffering offers
hope to those Palestinians trapped in a seemingly hopeless situation. He was also clear that he and the church
always preach non-violence and the importance of non-violent resistance. On the subject of BDS (Boycott, Divestment
and Sanctions) he takes an entirely different approach from the Bishop of the
diocese. He clearly believes that the
Anglican church should be supporting BDS and he said to us, “I can’t tell
Americans what to do but we do believe that God is about justice and that
justice is what we need to be working towards.”
After we left St. Andrew’s we went to visit the Arab
Evangelical Episcopal School , a pre-K -12 day school run by the diocese. It was started in 1954 to house some homeless
girls, who had been orphaned during the “nakba”
(catastrophe aka Israeli War of Independence).
Over the years it has grown and expanded to cover pre-K through 12th
grade. It is a private school, with
Christianity as the religion of the school, but many of the students are Muslim
and get along with their Christian cousins quite well. While we were talking to
a nun and one of the teachers/administrators of the school a science class let
out for the day and we had the pleasure of meeting some of the high school
students. They were lovely young people
and we enjoyed talking with them. One of
them is a performer in a Palestinian circus.
He is also a survivor of a violent encounter with the Israeli police at
a border checkpoint where he was shot in the shoulder and two of his friends
were killed. This young man is only 16
years old and has already lost friends to the conflict.
After we left the school we were driving back to
Jerusalem. We had to go back through the
Qalandria checkpoint, which looks like a prison. The IDF were stopping every car as it went
through the checkpoint. They are much
more careful and strict when you are going into Israel as opposed to going out
from Israel to the West Bank. As our bus
pulled up to the checkpoint, our escort and guide, Besharra, who is an Israeli
Arab and who works for St. George’s College told us all to get out our
passports and visas. The soldiers took all our passports but one member of our
group did not have his visa with him.
When you enter Israel now, they do not stamp the visa into your
passport, they give you a small slip of blue paper that has your visa on it.
You have to carry that paper with your passport. Our colleague had inadvertently left the slip
of paper back at the college. Besharra
tried valiantly to talk the IDF soldier into letting us go through, explaining
who we are, what we’re doing, all clergy from America studying at St. George’s
etc. etc. The soldier wasn’t having any
and refused to let us pass through the checkpoint. He said to Besharra, “He
could be a Palestinian.” (Mind you this
is a senior white American guy with blue eyes who looks nothing like a
Palestinian!!) Besharra had to call St.
George’s, got in touch with the Dean and had to send him to our colleague’s
room to find the slip of paper and scan it and send it to his cell phone. Meanwhile, we turned back into the West Bank
and headed for another checkpoint, hoping we’d have more luck there. That checkpoint was backed up for miles and
the going was slow. Fortunately they
waved us through without stopping to inspect passports and then we drove a bit
further and had to go through another checkpoint, which they also let us pass
without checking the passports. This was
a sample of the kind of treatment Palestinians put up with every single day as
they try to navigate their way around between the West Bank and Israel. They have to have military permits or the
right kind of identity card in order to enter Israel, and when they do they are
not permitted to drive here. But the IDF
soldiers can and often do, simply refuse to honor the permit and don’t allow
the person to cross. They have all the
power and they love to wield it over Palestinians and Arabs. When we got through the second checkpoint we
cheered Alleluia! We finally got back to
St. George’s 90 minutes after we should have arrived, having gone only 5 miles
in the almost two hours after we left the school.
Fortunately, the school had kept our lunch warm for us so we
had a very late lunch and then had the rest of the afternoon free. One of the other students and I decided to
go back to the Old City to visit the Western Wall. It was Shabbat today and we were surprised at
how uncrowded it was. In fact, the men’s section was almost empty. The women’s
section was more full but not a mobscene by any means. It was peaceful and prayerful and we stayed
almost an hour, meditating and praying and people watching. It is amazing how many people go to pray at
the Wall who are not Jewish. There were lots of Christian tourists like us
going there to pray, but I also saw several Hindus praying there too.
The pics today include shots of St. Andrew’s and Fr. Fadi
with us, pics of the students at the school and some shots of the Qalandria
checkpoint where we were turned back and not permitted through. They give you some idea of the atmosphere in
which the Palestinians have to live every day of their lives under the Israeli
occupation.
No comments:
Post a Comment