by Pastor Mike Hart, Mineral County United Methodist Churches
The walls were everywhere, carving through the landscape like impersonal juggernauts. Guard towers overlooked every town and valley. The people to whom the walls were very personal endured this violation of their freedom as best they could.
This is a firsthand look at the issues deriving from recent fact-finding mission to Israel and the West Bank by the Yellowstone Conference of the United Methodist Church, a trip sponsored by the General Board of Global Ministries. The perspective is unapologetically Palestinian, because theirs is the one not being heard in America.
Yet, we were told often, “Do not hate the Israelis. Do not take our side against them. What we need is reconciliation.”
There were 85 of us, 80 from the U.S. and one each from Estonia, Germany, Norway, Kenya and the Philippines. We spent the first three days in Israel, our base of operations in Nazareth. We traveled to Haifa, Kafr Cana, Jish, Bir’am, and Ibillin.
Bir’am is the village where Archbishop Elias Chacour lived before he and his family were driven out by the Jewish Irgun
militia prior to 1948. There were hundreds of villages evacuated by such measures prior to and after 1948.
The last nine days, we spent in the West Bank with Bethlehem as our base. We traveled to Hebron, Ram’allah, Beit Sahour, and each spent one night in the home of a Palestinian family. A small group of us went to the village of Aboud northwest of Ram’allah. Every place we went, we felt the friendliness of the people. Walking down the street, we often heard “Welcome!”
Few tourists were on these streets, being restricted to the Holy Sites. We were often told, “Come see the living
stones, not the dead ones.”
Even at night, few of us had qualms walking alone or in small groups among the people of Palestine. Our only tense moments were in encountering Israeli security. I plan to write more about specific issues; our government’s support of the Israeli government at the expense of the Palestinians, how the Christian Church is declining under the Occupation, demolition of homes, how the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have both failed the people, how Jewish extremists harm both Palestinians and Israelis, the use of Jewish settlements and outposts in the West Bank, as well as about a number of Israelis and Palestinians who are working for justice and peace. A helpful website is http://www.ifamericansknew.org.
Also, I have made myself available to make presentations to groups, but anything less than four hours is insufficient to
cover the issue. Even that is just the highlights. I am working to develop a power-point from the 400+ digital pictures I took and will have pictures for future articles. I also want to develop a task force, conference wide, like other annual conferences. If you are interested in this issue and desire to work with it in any way, e-mail me at either umc (at) blackfoot dot com or buscar (at) cybernet1 (dot) com.
A sense of urgency
This sign is on the fence (wall) just outside the village of Aboud, where some of us spent the night. Beyond the fence, one can see the base for the 26’ high concrete wall to be built. Aboud is several miles within the West Bank. The wall is to
separate Aboud from illegal Israeli settlements, with whom the villagers have good relations. This is but one example of how the West Bank has been cut up into piecemeal like Swiss cheese. Aboud is cut off from much of their historic agricultural ground.
A map by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs shows what appears to be an intentional
plan to segment Palestinian society of governance such as to make life unbearable. These maps are free. The Web
site www.ochaopt.org has the maps. Go to Map Centre and click on Relief Maps. At the current time, the Israeli government cannot annex the West Bank for at least two reason: international outcry and that annexation would mean
Palestinians would be a larger population than Jews in the State of Israel. What appears to be happening is an effort to make life so difficult for Palestinians that enough will emigrate so as to ensure a Jewish majority. Already, the Palestinian Christian population has diminished from 20 percent to 2 percent of the population as they have left an impossible situation. Several Christian leaders asked us to “imagine the land of Jesus without any followers of Jesus.”
These Christians have been a part of the life of Palestine since the first century. They lived, for the most part, in harmony with their Jewish and Muslim neighbors for centuries. Now, they are being driven from their historic homeland by an ideology that all of Palestine is for Jews only. Theodore Herzel, considered the father of Zionism in the late 1800’s, and David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of the State of Israel, both made the comment, “We will take what we can get incrementally, but eventually, we will have all of Palestine.”
Some Palestinians believe that if this process is not changed drastically within two years, it will be Game Over. Israeli settlements have flooded the West Bank, stretching all the way to the Jordanian border. Bypass roads are built to serve
these settlements, which by international law are illegal. These roads are barriers to Palestinians. They cannot use them. In most cases, they cannot even cross them. To get from one place to the other, they usually have to drive five, 10 or 20 times the actual distance. Sometimes, they cannot even get from here to there. Extended families are cut off from one another. Workers cannot get to jobs that used to pay them a living wage. The walls/fences are not just around the border of the West Bank. They go every which way slicing up the West Bank to serve Israeli interests only. Eventually, the plan appears
to be that there will be only Israeli interests in the West Bank. Already, any maps of Palestine bought in Israel have absolutely no indication that the West Bank or Gaza is not a part of the State of Israel.
One major obstacle to peace and justice is U.S. aid to Israel, both in funding and in protection at the U.N. The U.S. has vetoed almost every resolution which might have forced Israel to take a different path. We were told that, over the last 20 years, the U.S. has given Israel $154 billion in aid and none to the Palestinian Authority except to arm the police, which is also in the Israeli interests. There is great urgency that we educate ourselves on the situation, including our government’s role in exacerbating rather than alleviating the conflict. The Palestinian people believe in the American people. I hope we don’t disappoint them.
A power differential
Two pictures from our trip illustrate the power differential between the Israeli and Palestinian populations. The first is in the Palestinian village of Amata just across the wall from Jerusalem. The other is just outside Hebron where we had stopped to visit with Ata Jabr, a Palestinian activist against home demolitions. Two Israeli army vehicles parked by the road we used to enter and leave the home where we met Ata. Perhaps they were to only observe, but it seemed they were more for intimidation.
Although the economic situation in the West Bank has improved a little over the past five years, their economy is far inferior to Israel’s. Even more importantly, their political power, necessary for any meaningful change, is nearly nonexistent
compared to Israel’s. Israel receives billions in aid from the U.S., and Palestine practically none. The real differential lies in the political and military alliance shared by the U.S. and Israel.
While some U.S. leaders, e.g. Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, and James Baker, have really tried to push the Israeli government toward a meaningful accommodation with Palestine, most have not. Aaron David Miller, who was a negotiator in the U.S. State Department on the Palestine/Israel front outlines the difficulties in his book, “The Much Too Promised Land.” At one point he writes, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol reportedly said, “I made a promise; I didn’t say I’d keep it.”
A major problem facing us is of a very different culture and expectations different than our own. While we have some influence on the process, it is not enough to provide the final push for a real and lasting solution for justice and peace. Often, there is no vision of such a solution. What are perceived to be our own interests by our leaders get in the way of effective diplomacy. Many of us who have become involved in the issue wish to see a solution which will provide for a secure Israel and a secure and viable Palestine where both understand their interdependence and that their futures lay together. We understand Israel’s need, in reality and psychologically, to feel secure. We understand that Palestine’s security is, at the moment, at the whim of Israel. I was disappointed that the petition dealing with divestment from Israel was defeated at our recent General Conference. Those of us who support such action are not looking to punish Israel. We understand that such actions are the only thing which will bring their government to the table in a meaningful way, as it did in South Africa. We also seek for our government to use a balanced approach, to treat both Palestine and Israel equally.
We believe that is most in our national interest, thereby building better relationships throughout the Middle East. We need to support both parties economically and politically in equal fashion while expecting they will negotiate in a serious manner. I would hope others would be brought into the process beyond governmental agents, e.g. religious and secular leaders across the spectrum in both societies. We saw how these people had already begun to build bridges and find ways to work together while their governments were still fighting and bickering.
The process, up to this point, has not worked. In fact, it has been all about process and none about substance. It’s time to seek different ways to help shape the future for two peoples in “The Much Too Promised Land.” It has to begin by balancing the power differential and, thus empowering the people for a real solution.
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