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Circular Letter No 89
12th May 2002
Monday 6th May As I think I have said before, the daily paper arrives
on the doorstep about 0430 hours. So, if I am awake early, it is a good
time to read the paper, and have time for a bit of reflection. Such has
been the case today – and I must say it is extremely dispiriting. Mr
Sharon has left on a trip to Washington, and so it is not unnatural that
the paper has a lot of coverage of what Americans are thinking and
saying. We get it in both the Ha’aretz and the Herald Tribune which
comes with it.
Condolezza Rice- on US TV – is reported as saying that “A new
focus of our efforts in the Middle East is a more democratic,
transparent and noncorrupt Palestinian leadership. .Settlements will
eventually become an issue. We’re not going to get ahead of
ourselves.” There is an emphasis on a change of leadership in
Palestine – with which many whom I speak will concur – but a
willingness to sideline UN Resolutions about Settlements as if they are
not all that important. It puts the US government in a strange position
of trying to enforce one set of UN resolutions against Iraq, while
allowing its ally to ignore other UN resolutions about withdrawal to
1967 boundaries.
When you put this alongside a report in Ha’aretz about Israeli
presence on the West Bank, and the fact that “outside Area A there is
an absolute prohibition on the movement of Palestinian vehicles with the
exception of ‘humanitarian cases’ with the approval of the IDF”
you do not get the impression that the US is going to do much to
alleviate the plight of the Palestinians.
One’s confidence in the approach of the IDF to ‘humanitarian
cases’ was somewhat shaken by a report on Sunday by Gideon Levy –
“A bridge too far.” Dr Hassan Barghouti was a lecturer in the Al-Quds
University in Jerusalem. A year ago he was diagnosed as having lung
cancer. Recently his condition worsened and a drug was prescribed by his
doctor at the hospital in Ramallah which might help to improve the
quality of his life in its final stages. The drug was not available in
Ramallah – it probably is available in Israel, but getting in to
Israel is difficult from Ramallah – and so the drug was ordered from
Amman, Jordan. It arrived at the Allenby Bridge, (the southern bridge
over the Jordan River) last Tuesday. The drug was confiscated by the
soldiers who started in to ask a whole series of questions about the
necessity for the drug etc. To cut a long story short, on Thursday the
IDF was still asking for clarification – by which time Dr Barghouti
had died. “Every Israeli should ask himself what he would feel if a
dying loved one were treated in the same way as Barghouti was. What
feelings would be kindled toward whoever was responsible? And what kind
of life and what kind of death have we been imposing on the Palestinians
for the past 35 years?”
On our two journeys recently to Nablus, one of the most striking
features of the countryside was the almost total absence of people. Very
few ventured out from their villages to tend their fields. So, the
normal cycle of agricultural work was being interrupted. Those who did
come out seemed exceedingly vulnerable, should an Army patrol stop and
ask them why they had broken the almost universal curfew. The reality of
their vulnerability is evidenced in the news at the weekend and reported
in the paper today of the shooting of a mother and two of her children
in the fields near Jenin. It was reported that there had been a roadside
explosion of a mine close to a tank, and in the aftermath the soldiers
had seen people running away. They opened fire and killed the woman and
her children. An IDF spokesman stated that the soldiers had opened fire
“in accordance with the rules of engagement” and that the army
regretted any harm to innocent persons. It later transpired that there
had not been such an explosion; ‘ that the brigade commander had
put out incorrect information about a non-existent bomb. The soldiers
who killed the woman and two toddlers will not be placed on trial or
even interrogated. It follows then that from the point of view of the
IDF and its justice system there was nothing irregular about the
incident. If the soldiers had stolen a few shekels from the Zakarna’s
home ( the woman whom they killed ) they would have faced trial. The
criteria now in effect in the IDF send the message that looting is an
incalculably more serious offense than killing. Every suspicion of
looting is dealt with speedily, and at least 10 soldiers have already
been arrested on such suspicions. In contrast, the deaths of more than
1,400 Palestinians – 250 of them below the age of 18 – have
generated 26 investigations, only three of which have resulted in
indictments being filed.’ (Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz Sunday 12th May)
Back to business as usual. Back, that is, from a short break, with a
night spent at a holiday facility on the cliffs overlooking the valley
that runs from the Dead Sea down to Eilat, and two nights spent in Petra
in Jordan.
Wednesday 8th. SHAHARUT, in Israel, was set up some years ago to
offer to people a sort of Bedouin-type experience. It is a small set of
“buildings” – in fact mostly tents. The central guest area is a
very large tented structure, perhaps 40 metres square. Then there are a
couple of smaller tents. Guests sleep on foam mattresses on the ground,
with sleeping bags. We were the only guests for the night we were there,
so the three of us – Joan, Peter and myself – had a tent that was 8
metres by 20 metres all to ourselves. There was quite a wind, and so the
lullaby was the sound of the flapping material in the wind. The door of
the tent was rolled up, and we had an opening 4 metres wide out on to
the night sky – and we were able to lie in our beds in the morning
watching the sun come up over the Jordan hills. We had the fun of a
camel ride for an hour on Wednesday afternoon – a very soothing
experience the way we did it, and very eco-friendly. The whole terrain
is dry and barren, except where water has been added, and then there is
lush growth. The light was quite harsh during daytime, with the sun
shining from a cloudless sky. In such light the presence of other human
beings was masked, and only at night did the ring of lights on the tops
of hills show how many establishments there were in this area – quite
a few of them to do with the defence forces.
Thursday 9th. We drove down into Eilat, a modern city established in
the desert at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba. It is a tourist centre, and
there are many hotels – not doing a huge business, but still doing
their best to keep going. After a short drive around, we went to the
border post to cross over into Jordan. We parked the car in a park, and
walked across. The formalities, both going and coming, were not arduous
– only time consuming, taking an hour each way, to pay the necessary
exit taxes, go through passport control, security check etc. Then we met
our driver on the Jordanian side, and off we set for Petra.
The first part of the trip was through real desert – barren rocks
and no vegetation. After about an hour, we turned off the main road into
an area known as Wadi Rum – and had a drive in a pick-up for an hour
across the sand and round rocks with the most amazing shapes and
patterns, which were all the result of erosion. If they had been made to
be the backdrop for a movie set, people would have complained that they
were too fanciful, but nature is a marvellous artist. It was then up the
road for another hour or more to Petra. I was surprised at the country
through which we were passing – a lot of cultivation of grain crops
and much greener than I had expected, after the ruggedness and dryness
of the first part of the journey. I was also quite surprised that the
ancient ruins of Petra were approached through the modern village of
Petra, with a population of 15,000. I do not know what I had expected,
but I certainly did not expect such a modern community.
{ Digression. The West coast of Scotland is peppered with the ruins
of churches and castles right out on the coast – approached now after
long drives on narrow roads. The question is often asked as to why they
were built there – an answer has something to do with the mode of
transport at the time they were built, when the sea provided the highway
for the West Coast. So, the castles and the churches were on the main
road then. }
You will all be familiar with the story of the Nabataeans, the
builders of Petra. However, just for the record, let me remind myself
that they were desert people who had settled in Petra, after moving from
the south. Petra straddled a major caravan route which passed through
what is now Jordan, or its way from the East to the markets of Egypt or
the seaports on the Mediterranean coast. From their base of Petra, the
Nabataeans gained control over this section of the route, and of course
exacted taxes. The tax revenues meant that they had money, and money
meant that they could afford to build. The most startling remains of
their buildings are associated with tombs, and some of the structures
are colossal. If a 2-floor house at home is about 10 metres high ( a
possible exaggeration) imagine 4 of them on top of each other, and you
get the height of some of the facades that have been carved from the
solid rock – the so-called Treasury, carved in the first century BC as
a tomb for a Nabataean king – is 30 metres wide and 43 metres high.
It, and all the rest of the Tombs, was carved in the solid sandstone
rock, with very pronounced Greek architectural influences. There are
dozens of such tombs of differing sizes and complexity, and the largest
( 45m x 50m) is at the top of a mountain! To get there, Peter and I
walked, the guide and Joan rode donkeys!
Wandering through this area, with its mixture of Nabataean and Roman
ruins, I was struck by two things – the wealth and power which the
rulers must have possessed in order to be able to afford buildings of
such scale, and the fact that what must have seemed “eternal” to the
people there at the height of their powers, within a few hundred years
became ghost towns, as trade routes altered and political realities
changed.
In addition to any changes in human activities, there were also
earthquakes, and the massive power of nature is well illustrated in the
collapsed buildings and the devastation of what had been a major centre
of human activity.
Part of the interesting features of the entrance to ancient Petra,
through a very narrow channel in the rocks stretching for over 1 km,
with walls rising anything up to 50 and 60 metres, are the two systems
for supplying water to the city. On one side was an open channel for
ordinary water, to be used for general purposes. On the other side was a
channel which had been lined with pipes, to bring in a separate supply
of drinking water. I was reminded of this when, on our way home, we
stopped at a Kibbutz north of Eilat to meet a friend of Joan’s who was
looking after grandchildren there for a few days. In the dining room
were two water supplies – one for kitchen use, washing dishes etc, and
the other the drinking water. The wisdom of the Nabataeans still applies
today!
Somewhere, in all of this, there are those grand ideas about the
transient nature of human societies, regardless of their power and
seeming permanence. As with the Romans, so with the British, so with the
Americans, and so on – empires rise only to fall. Visiting a place
such as Petra recalls the words of the hymn about a thousand ages in the
sight of God are just like the passing of an evening. It may not help
the pain of the present, but it certainly gives some hope that what
seems to all-powerful today will in the end atrophy, and there will be
the possibility of a new order. Present day power – a short piece in a
newsheet at a hotel in Petra – US admits that it had tried to
assassinate an Afghan leader who was thought to be against their
policies in Afghanistan, by firing a rocket from an unmanned aircraft.
The rocket missed and hit someone else. What is the difference between
that and the targeted assassination policy of the Israeli government?
Use, or abuse, of power?
Today is Ascension Sunday. I find that looking out from the steps at
the front of St Andrew’s Church here, and seeing the Tower of the
Church of the Ascension at the Mount of Olives, makes it much easier to
visualise that something extraordinary happened. Exactly how and what, I
am prepared at the moment to leave till some time when I am given more
insight and understanding – but again, the events celebrated today
bring into sharp focus the myth of power as it is generally thought of
– coming from the mouth of a gun, or from a wealthy pocket-book, or
from the ability to manipulate people for one’s own ends. Certainly
for us today in our worship was the certainty that there is only one
Kingdom, and it does not bear much resemblance to “kingdoms” staking
their claim for allegiance today.
What have you been doing for the past 35 or 36 days? Helen Shehadeh
has had little opportunity to move outside her school, and certainly not
to move outside Beit Jala for the past month. Today she was back in her
seat in the congregation. John and Cang-Lim Gang and their 2 sons have
been refugees since the invasion of Bethlehem, not wanting to have to be
subjected to the rigours of the curfew. So they have been away from home
for 5 weeks. Today they too were back in the congregation.
Understandably, there was quite some emotion in welcoming them back.
Freedom for Helen, and for John and his family, to be able to move. Yet
others seem to feel unsafe as they move about. A little vignette comes
to mind, which really startled me. A few days ago, while walking in the
Old City, I was surprised to see a young man with a flak jacket. Then I
saw a second young man, also wearing a flak jacket. Both were armed. I
wondered who or what they could be. Later that same day, I saw yet
another two young men with their flak jackets, and then realised that
they were walking ahead of and behind a young Jewish woman and her
children, making their way through the narrow streets of the Old City.
How sad that they considered this to be necessary, and what an appalling
image they were presenting both to themselves and their children, and to
the Palestinian people through whom they were passing.
We have frequently been told of the right of Israel to exist within
secure borders. Not so often are we told of the rights of the
Palestinians to exist within secure borders. Tonight, there is to be a
meeting of the Likud party, with ‘a vote on a resolution against
the establishment of a Palestinian state topping the agenda.’ (Ha’aretz
12th May) One wonders what will happen to the political agenda if this
proposal is adopted as the policy of the ruling party. Back to where we
started this letter – and the cavalier attitude of some to UN
resolutions that they do not like.
A closing thought : Mr Sharon has had to make a lot of uncomfortable
decisions recently, not attacking Gaza, not getting into his custody the
people from the Church of the Nativity, not keeping Mr Arafat cooped up
in Ramallah. He certainly has much to answer for, but one just wonders
what would be the response if Mr Arafat phoned Mr Sharon for a chat.
Stay Well. Bye for now. God bless and love from us all.
Joan, Peter and Clarence.
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Circular Letter No 88
4th May 2002
It is a crazy week workwise, with meetings for Tabeetha School –
Church of Scotland, - for the International YMCA, for Sunbula, and on
top of that some of the more normal things like trying to keep in touch
with people etc. A Delegation from Glasgow arrives early Thursday
morning, and we hope to be able to get them in to Bethlehem to meet the
Mayor. They are bringing news of a major donation from Glasgow to
Bethlehem – twinned cities. However, Tuesday Joan came with me to
Jaffa and when I have finished the first part of my work at the school
at 0930 hours, we then had a few hours to look around, before starting
the next round of meetings at 1300 hours.
We visited the Diamond Museum. We were quite staggered to learn some
of the details of the pivotal role of the Tel Aviv in the world diamond
trade – while looking for the Museum we had gone into an office
building to ask the way – we had to go through metal detector, deal
with several security guards, Joan had her camera taken to be collected
as we left – which we did in about 30 seconds, when someone took pity
on us and showed us the correct building. Security for the diamonds was
interesting. When we had seen the museum, we stepped into a shop next
door. The elegantly dressed woman obviously sized us up correctly, and
showed us the sale items, and the small pieces. Even at that, it would
take a month’s salary to look at any of them!
It was a world away from Saturday 27th. We joined a smaller convoy
organized by World Vision, returning to Nablus. The previous week it had
been cold, wet and windy. This time it was warmer, dry and sunny. Being
smaller helped at the check points, and all told we only spent about an
hour at the various check points, as compared with 5½ hours the
previous week. Nablus was “open” – the Israeli army having
withdrawn. Or at least, that was what we had been told. However, at one
intersection, on the way in there was one tank, and in 2 hours it
produced another tank to shepherd us on our way out – it is fairly
obvious that a tank is not going to blow a car such as the one we were
in out of the road by shooting at it, and so one wonders why the crew
tracked us with their gun. Intimidation? Fun for the soldiers? Or
perhaps there was a small gun linked to the big one, and it might have
been fired? One the way out, we were stopped by one group of people,
frantic to get past the tanks, as they had children that needed some
sort of attention. Unfortunately, there was nothing we could do to help
at that time.
There were two different aspects to this convoy, when compared to the
one the previous week.
Difference the first. On the way to Nablus we made a short detour
into a village. At that time we had 3 trucks in the convoy, with 3 cars.
In the village we had a rendezvous with 4 other trucks, laden with food
– all donated by the local villagers, for the folk in Nablus who were
so much worse off then they were. It is worth remembering that this
village also has been under closure, and that this has meant many of the
people have not been able to work, and so to earn. Yet, olive oil,
olives, - whatever they had, plus a truck load of flour – all were
donated by them. Not bad.
One of the images of our short time that remains most vividly in my
memory is of this Palestinian village on the floor of the valley, close
to its water source, completely dominated by an Israeli settlement all
along the top of the hill above it. This is part of the Israeli town
Ariel – thousands of homes, all built in Palestine, in direct
contravention of international law and UN resolutions. Where the rain
run off from the settlement goes, what effect its presence has had on
the environment, what effect it has had on water supplies for the
village – all are pressing questions. What is more difficult to
measure is what effect it must be having on the two populations. The one
will wake up each morning and see the settlement less than 500metres
away on the hills above, dominating it. What will they feel? The other
will wake up each morning, and see the Palestinian village below, its
very existence threatening it, and reminding it of its own
vulnerability. What will they feel? It surely cannot be healthy for the
long term development of either group of people.
I cannot think of an exact replica of the situation in Scotland.
However, imagine that the centre of the town of Peebles belongs to
Scots. Imagine that on all the hills round the centre, there were
housing estates occupied by Martian Settlers – imagine that freedom of
movement was more or less guaranteed for the Settlers, but that the folk
in Peebles had to pass through a check point to get out of the town in
any direction – imagine that no permission had been sought from the
local people before their land had been taken, and no compensation had
been paid – imagine that there were restrictions on the amount of
water available to the people in the town, while they could see the
settlers watering their lawns – you may begin to get some idea of the
oppressive nature of the presence of settlements, and the devastating
effect they are having on the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians.
Difference the second. On the way back from Nablus, we still have one
stop to make at a village called Huwara. It has a population of about
5,000. It sits astride the main road to Nablus, rather in the manner
that Laurencekirk sits astride what used to be the main road from
Aberdeen from Dundee. [ A bit of background information : You will
recall that after the Oslo Accords, there were three areas in Palestine
: Area A of Palestinian civil and security control – places like the
cities of Nablus and Ramallah etc . They were surrounded by Area B ;
Palestinian civil administration and Israeli security administration ;
they were surrounded by Area C – Israeli civil and security
administration. ] Huwara is in Area C. It is in Area C, not because it
represented a threat, but just because it sits across a main road, and
the Israeli government controls the roads. We were stopping there
because there had been a request for food, as many families were
suffering. Being in Area C has meant frequent closures, thus making it
difficult for people to work, and so to earn any money. An illustration
of the insidious nature of Israeli military involvement in the life of
the village occurred when we were unloading the truck load of 180 boxes
of food. An Israeli army jeep stopped, and there was some questioning of
the organisers of the food donation ; polite, but one wondered what was
the point. Who was donating food? Why this village? Who were the “internationals”
in the group? It did not last long, and the jeep soon left – but it
made us realise the sort of pressure under which the villagers live
every day.
We had coffee with the Mayor and a few men. Their picture of arrests
and detentions was not as sombre as in places like Bethlehem or Nablus.
However, during the invasion, there had been a road accident involving a
private car and an army jeep. We were told that three children had been
injured, no ambulance was allowed, and the three children had died. We
were told of local settlers attacking and burning one of the two
mosques, but when they attacked the second they were forced away. We
were told of the difficulty that people had in getting to hospital –
Nablus was a few miles down the road, but with the closures etc it might
as well have been on the moon.
Once again, it had not taken long before the issue of settlers and
settlements came up in the conversation.
“Arafat is irrelevant” is one of the more memorable lines of Mr
Sharon in the past year. As I write on Wednesday morning, it must
therefore be galling for many, many people to see that in all
probability he will be free to move around again. All the press coverage
that I read here seems to be saying that far from harming him, the
decision to confine him to Ramallah has in fact increased his popularity
and status. Although he has not yet had a meeting with President Bush,
it is clear the President Bush realises he cannot bypass him altogether.
We watch with interest to see what happens when he begins to move
around, and hope that he has the insight to try to ensure that the
killing does not start again, but rather that the pressure is kept up on
the Israeli government.
Wednesday’s paper has another interesting article “Not an
existential threat.” Like so many articles it is wrestling with what
it sees as a great upsurge in anti-Israel feeling in many parts of the
world, and asking the question as to why this is happening. For many, it
is easily covered by describing it as “anti-Semitism”. However, this
article does not accept such a definition – it might be anti-Israel,
or anti-Zionist – but it disputes that it is anti-Semitic.
{Definitions of Semitic please, on a post card. Are Palestinians also
Semitic? If so, is anything against Palestinians also anti-Semitic? }
There is a great deal of discussion here in the Press about the roots of
the anti-Israeli demonstrations etc in Western Europe and elsewhere. Is
it a return to the days which led up to the Holocaust? Are Jews all over
the world at risk? If so, why? Is it because they are Jews? What, if
anything, has it to do with the failure to reach a political settlement
with Palestine? “The pictures and reports of the destruction of Jenin
provided a match to light the anti-Israel outbursts that spread like
wildfire through wide segments of the media and public opinion in
Western Europe. Israel must examine the fuel of that fire to see what
can be done to prevent a second wave that could be ever more extreme.
‘Arab incitement’ or ‘an outbreak of hidden anti-Semitism’
provide comfortable, but only partial and simplistic explanation for
what is happening.” ….”No less important are the changes that have
taken place lately in Europe. The electoral weight of the Jews has been
depleted with their numbers, while the numbers and importance of the
immigrant Muslim vote has increased. In France, one in ten Frenchmen is
a Muslim, one in a hundred is a Jew. In Britain, Italy and Germany no
politician can ignore Muslim and Arab voters. Talk about physical
threats to the Jewish communities is exaggerated, as is talk of an ‘existential
threat’ to the State of Israel – indeed such exaggeration aids the
Muslims. But into a third generation after the Holocaust, many are tired
of Jewish – and Israeli – demands for more and more reparations.”
Author – Eliahu Salpeter.
Again, on the front page of Wednesday’s paper, there is an article
about Jewish youths being held without being given opportunities to see
their lawyers. “Jerusalem police have arrested two youths on suspicion
of planning attacks against Arabs, and a Jerusalem District Court
yesterday upheld a decision by the Shin Bet to ban the two from meeting
with their lawyer. (Attorney for the two) Wurtzberger said his clients
were being unjustly deprived of their basic legal rights and contended
that details reasons to prevent such a meeting had not been presented.
The two are being held in solitary confinement and have contact only
with their interrogators.” It was not long ago that there was a report
about allowing Palestinians to be held for up to 18 days without being
charged. Once the State seems to deny civil rights to one part of the
population, it seems as if it is not too long before the same rights are
denied to other parts of the community.
Wednesday evening saw another meeting of the congregation’s
discussion group. The speaker was Z – a young Jewish man who has been
coming to worship with us for some months. I had asked him to speak
about the situation from his point of view. It was an enthralling
experience. He spoke of his upbringing in an Orthodox Jewish family and
school system; he spoke of his gradual alienation from the main thrust
of the policy of the Israeli state; of his struggle to get out of the
army, which took him 18 months; of his rejection by his family, which he
said chose their religion before their son, and having to make his own
way in the world, going to work on a kibbutz for a time, and now having
a bit of a struggle to find employment; of his time of “atheism” and
of coming to St Andrew’s Church last Christmas for the Watchnight
service, and feeling he wanted to come back again; and in a telling
phrase of being a refugee in his own country and among his own people.
Earlier that day I had had two young girls come to my office and say
that they wanted to become Christians – they were daughters of Russian
families, and also had come to the Christmas Eve Service. I hope that we
can get the three of them together and start some sort of learning group
for them, to help them on their way.
Thursday saw the arrival of a small group from Glasgow, the Caring
City International Relief Aid Committee. They had been sent by the Lord
Provost, to go to meet the Mayor of Bethlehem with which Glasgow is
twinned. In response to an appeal he had received from Bethlehem, the
Lord Provost had launched an appeal, and this group was out to start the
process of using the money that had been donated to purchase food for
families in need in the Bethlehem area. We had arranged permission for
them from the Israeli army to enter Bethlehem to meet the Mayor. This we
did on Thursday afternoon, and got the first parts of the jigsaw in
place. While with the Mayor he told them of an appeal for 100 boxes of
food from one part of the town. It was the sort of appeal to which an
immediate response could be given, and after a few phone calls had been
placed, the boxes were ordered for delivery on Saturday morning. Later
on Thursday, a second appeal for 50 boxes was passed to the group.
Friday saw some meetings with people involved in relief work, starting
with the Latin Patriarch himself. Saturday saw us going into Bethlehem,
again having got permission from the army, and delivering 150 boxes. The
Glasgow group was inter-faith, and it was moving to be with of a group
of 3 people, - a Christian minister, a member of a Jewish congregation
in Glasgow, and a member of the community of a Glasgow mosque.
Understandably they did not all agree on everything, but they were all
agreed to try to help. On Friday morning, while the Muslim man attended
prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque on Temple Mount, the Jewish man was at the
Western Wall, saying his prayers. The group leave on Sunday morning,
having left a cheque for £20,000 with the Relief Agency of the
Patriarch to be used for relief for the whole community, and having
donated 150 boxes as a sort of initial token donation, worth about
£2,500. I like helping to spend other people’s money.
You will all have read plenty about the Church of the Nativity, and
the lifting of the siege of Mr Arafat – “the irrelevant one” I
will not comment on them this week.
On a personal note, Friday morning saw the arrival of our son Peter
for a couple of weeks. All being well, we will have a few days away in
the coming week. God bless you all.
TTFN
Joan and Clarence
I should not write things and send them off late at night, and so in
the letter omitted details of the group from Glasgow. It was led by the
Moderator of the Glasgow Presybytery of the Church of Scotland, John
Spiers. He had been invited to lead the delegation by the Lord Provost
of Glasgow, and officially to convey the greetings of the folk of
Glasgow to the the Mayor and people of Glasgow, to the Latin Patriarch,
and to others with whom the group would meet. The Christian community of
Glasgow was represented by the Rev Neil Galbraith of the Church of
Scotland; the Jewish community of Glasgow was represented by the
President of the Queen's Park Synagogue, Mr David Jackson, and the
Muslim community was represented by Mr Muhammed Shaheen, President of
the Islamic Cultural Centre in Glasgow. (I apologise if I have got the
designations wrong.) Neil, David and Muhammed are members of the Board
of the Charity, with Neil being its Chief Executive. Travelling with the
group, though not connected with the Charity, were two members of staff
of the Daily Record, Anna Smith and Tony Nicoletti. I hope I have got
this correct - and apologies for having omitted it in the original
letter.
Clarence
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Circular Letter No 87
30th April 2002
Monday 22nd April. The morning paper says it all – headline : “PM
won’t discuss removing settlements.” Presumably this means he won’t
discuss the Tenet Plan put forward by the USA, nor the Mitchell Plan put
forward by the USA, to say nothing of UN Resolutions, dating back to
1967. Perhaps this is violence towards international bodies, and
Resolutions, and plans etc.
This afternoon, a phone call to Helen Shehadeh elicited that there
was some need for food. Joan and I had visited, for the first time, a
supermarket not far from the church. A great advantage is that you can
get a trolley of food and take it straight to the car. So, a quick call
there, and a swift shopping expedition :30 litres of milk: 10 chickens,
12 small tins of tuna fish, 5 or 6 kilos of apples, cold meat, eggs –
a quick way to spend NIS 600 – and into the car. The road through the
tunnels was busy, such is the ease with which Israeli people can travel
on the West Bank. Not a Palestinian car in sight. I reached the check
point, and found there a TV car trying to get in to Bethlehem. I, as is
my wont, was wearing my clerical shirt, and identified myself as the
minister of the Scottish Church in Jerusalem. There is a great ring to
that phrase, and a certain pride in being able to say it. Within about 2
minutes, I was on my way through the checkpoint to the School – and
this is the checkpoint where I had been persona non grata 10 days ago,
having been kept waiting for 2 hours. Anyway, down through the upper
part of the town, with not a person in sight. Past an APC, and then
along the road to Helen’s. I did not spend a lot of time there, as I
did not want to run the risk of the soldiers changing shifts, and find
myself having to persuade a new soldier that I should be allowed out!
Back at the checkpoint, it was almost a straight drive through, and
within much less than half an hour, food had been delivered. It is
strange being an ordained grocery boy!! Still thanks to the gifts that I
have received, I have been able to purchase about £300 worth of food
for the school. Now there is a slight problem that the gas supply at the
school is running out – we will have to see what we can do about that,
as it would be kind of hard if the kids had to eat cold food.
Wednesday April 24th Following up the quotation from Monday’s
paper, is the Leader article in today’s paper. “Removing discussion
about dismantling settlements form the political agenda essentially
removes the political horizon from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The
only message the Palestinians can find in Sharon’s statements is that
if they put down their weapons, the government has no plans to end the
occupation in the foreseeable future.” If this is, in fact, the policy
that the government intends to follow, what will be the response of the
Palestinians who see that there is no political agenda for them at all,
and what will be the response of the world to the continued evasion of
UN resolutions. It is a worrying prospect.
If there is no political future in sight for the Palestinians, what
of their own administration on the West Bank? A feature by Amira Hass, a
Jewish woman journalist who lives in Ramallah, is headed “Operation
Destroy Data.” “It’s a scene that is repeating itself in hundreds
of Palestinian offices taken over by IDF troops for a few hours or days
in the West Bank: smashed, burned and broken computer terminals heaped
in piles and thrown into yards, server cabling cut, hard disks missing,
disks and diskettes scattered and broken, printers and scanners broken
or missing, laptops gone, telephone exchanges that disappeared or were
vandalised, and paper files burned, torn, scattered or defaced – if
not taken. …. It’s not merely the expense of the hardware that has
to be replaced. The loss is immeasurable in shekels or dollars. Years of
information built into knowledge, time spent thinking by thousands of
people working to build their civil society and their future or trying
to build a private sector that would bring a sense of economic stability
to their country. … This was not a whim, or crazed vengeance, by this
or that unit, nor a personal vandalistic urge of a soldier whose buddies
didn’t dare stop him. This was a decision made to vandalise the civic,
administrative and cultural infrastructure developed by Palestinian
society. …Did it come from the general in command of the Central
Command or from General Headquarters? … Either way, the scenes of
systematic destruction show how the IDF translated into the field the
instructions inherent in the political echelon’s policies : Israel
must destroy Palestinian civil institution, sabotaging for years to come
the Palestinian goal for independence, sending all of Palestinian
society backwards.”
While all this is going on, there is a report in another part of the
paper of the eviction of several dozen Arabs from a neighbourhood in
East Jerusalem as part of a plan for the construction of 17 Jewish
outposts encircling the Old City. “The goal is to make it impossible
to divide the Old City as part of any future diplomatic agreement,”
said Mr Elon, of the National Union party. The neighbourhood in
question, Shimon Hatzaddik was a Jewish neighbourhood before the
Jordanians captured East Jerusalem during the War of Independence in
1948. Elon said his association will pay generous compensation to Arab
families who leave the area voluntarily. Yesterday the association
distributed a letter to Arab residents in the neighbourhood, warning
then either to negotiate over compensation for leaving or face eviction.
Yesterday I was in the office of the family firm which prints
material for the Church and Hospice. They are occupying their third
location in the past 50 years. In 1948, they lost their homes and
printing presses in West Jerusalem. In 1967, they lost them again in
another part of the city, and they now work in East Jerusalem. It was
with some feeling that the brother and sister spoke of the fact that
they could take you to the house in which they grew up and they could
show you the land that their family owned, which was taken from them in
1948, and for which they got not a single penny of compensation. It
would be interesting to know what would be their chances of success if
they too formed an Association to reclaim land taken from Palestinians
in 1948, and went to get court orders to evict the present occupants.
The economy of Israel was under strain even before the current
Operation, or War. All sorts of horse-trading went on at the beginning
of the year, to try to reduce the deficit. Finally a Budget was
approved. Within a couple of months, there now has to be a major
revision, and ways found to reduce expenditure. One of the Allowances
which was under attack earlier in the year was the Large Family
Allowance. Roughly speaking, under its terms, the more children you had
the more allowances you got, and the allowances increased for the later
children. Thus a child allowance for the fifth child, or sixth child,
was considerably more than for the first or second child. In the
political infighting that went on to pass the Budget, this was one piece
of legislation that was stoutly defended by the Ultra-Orthodox parties,
whose supporters tend to have large families. Yesterday’s paper
carried an article about this, under the heading “Dispute looms over
tying child allowance to IDF Service.” The Finance Ministry proposal
is to link service in the Army to the payment of child allowances. “Shas
(a party of Ultra-Orthodox Jews) and United Torah Judaism Party
meanwhile appeared ready to agree to cuts in child allowances for people
who did not serve in the IDF. Their assumption is that most of their
voters will not be affected and that the cuts will mainly affect the
Arab sector. (Arabs do not serve in the IDF, not through choice, but by
government decision). … MK (Member of Knesset) Avraham Ravitz (UTJ)
said yesterday that a check would have to be made to see how many
ultra-Orthodox families would be affected by the proposed cuts and
whether it would be possible to compensate those affected, through the
Religious Affairs ministry. He said this was not discrimination against
the Arab populations ‘because the Arabs can earn money in the three
years they do not serve in the army, but a yeshiva student (someone who
in enrolled as a student of Jewish religion, and who is paid an
allowance by the Government) is forbidden by law to work.’
It’s a bleak outlook : no retreat from the Settlements: civil
administration vandalised; eviction notices in Jerusalem based on the
fact that the land was Jewish prior to 1948, but no compensation for
Arab families who lost their lands in 1948; projected manipulation of
state benefits, to which citizens are entitled as they pay taxes, which
people say will be circumvented by the Jewish sector of the population,
and will thus largely hurt the Arab population.
While this is happening to the Budget at present, a short article
sets out increasing US military aid for Israel. The outgoing Israeli
Ambassador in Washington is quoted as saying the US military aid to
Israel is likely to grow by some $200 million a year beyond the $2.4
billion ceiling it has been slated to hit in 2007. According to an
agreement with Washington, US civilian aid to Israel is being gradually
phased out over a 10-year period, while military aid is being increased
by half the amount of the civilian aid cut each year. When this process
ends in 2007, annual military aid will be $2.4 billion. But on top of
that there are joint ventures with the US – an anti-missile missile
and an anti-aircraft laser gun, to name but two.
One of the quirks of the present situation is that countries are
coming to Palestine to offer assistance to rebuild that which has been
shattered in the past few weeks. So, all sorts of building programmes
will start, funded by, among others, the US government. And where will
the building materials come from? Through whose ports will they be
imported, and who will collect the charges? You have guessed it. The
country that knocked it all down, will benefit from it all having to be
built up again – and the taxpayers in the US will have the pleasure of
paying for both.
On April 24th, the leaflet says, 8 million Armenians all around the
world commemorate the murder of 1.5 million Armenians by the orders of
the Ottoman authorities. The leaflet was given to us as we entered the
Church of St James, the Armenian Cathedral here in Jerusalem. The
occasion was the annual Service to remember what has been called the
first genocide of the 20th Century. The spoken word of the Service was
closed to me, but the singing word was magnificent, with the different
officials of the congregation answering one another in rich, resonant
tones as they sang their way through the Liturgy. Although the community
here in Jerusalem has shrunk over the years, there is still a Seminary
attached to the Church, with some 40-odd young men studying, some of
whom will go to and undertake training for the priesthood. It was
striking yesterday to see how many young priests there are –
considering the news from the Church of Scotland of a great dearth of
candidates for ordination. It was a different place and a different
atmosphere – but the same theme – the suffering of a whole people at
the hands of those who held power.
Wednesday afternoon saw me take a quick run across town to Sabeel.
Naim Ateek, the Director of Sabeel, is hoping to visit some of the
ministers of Christian congregations in the Ramallah area on Friday, and
to give them some money that they can then pass on to the people in
their congregations who are in greatest need. It is necessary to give
food, but it is also necessary to help people with cash – to enable
them to buy the things they need for everyday life. So, fortunately I
had some shekels from the donations that have been sent to St Andrew’s,
and I was able to give him about £400 – as drop in the ocean, but
still a drop. At Sabeel, I met an American Episcopal priest who is here
for a couple of weeks, as part of his Sabbatical leave. We had a brief
conversation, but the remark that he made which sticks in my mind is
that he has never before seen such despair and depression. And he has
only been here a few days! On both sides of the community, there is
depression – as the full realisation of the destruction wrought by the
Israeli army sinks in among the Palestinians, and as the reality that
such actions will not bring security or peace sinks in among the
Israelis.
Wednesday evening brought a phone call from Glasgow – about a
delegation coming from Glasgow to visit one of the cities with which it
is twinned, bringing a gift to the people of Bethlehem. The delegation
will comprise 2 Church of Scotland ministers, a Jewish man and a Muslim
man, all residents of Glasgow. They will be bringing a gift of £100,000
for the people of Bethlehem, and my job in the next few days will be to
try to make the arrangements for the gift to be handed over to the Mayor
of Bethlehem. Just after that call, we went out to the meeting of our
Discussion Group, where the speaker was the Director of the Pontifical
Mission work here in Israel and Palestine. Fr Guido told us something of
the history of its work, going back to 1949 when there was huge need
after the displacement of thousands of Palestinians following the
establishment of the State of Israel, to its present involvement in
trying to provide some emergency help, and also in trying to help with
the development of leaders within the Palestinian community. Two of the
folk there were young Jewish people, and they are going to tell us next
week how they see the current events. Last night was informative, next
week should be even more so.
A rather abrupt ending – I have had technical problems with
computer, and only got it repaired Monday evening. So, un-proof-read,
and un approved by the boss, here it is!
We hope you are all well.
God bless, Love,
Joan and Clarence
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Circular Letter No 86 N (for
Nablus)
Sunday 21st April 2002
If you don’t want to read this, all about a trip to Nablus on Saturday 20th April, stop now
click here for No 86
As you approach Jerusalem from the north, via what is called the Settler Road, the first major intersection that you come to at the “Toilet Roll” Junction (an irreverent description widely used when speaking of a large piece of landscape sculpture) has 4 lanes leaving Jerusalem, 5 lanes going to Jerusalem, and a separate bus road with 2 lanes. As we came in last night, traffic was heavy, and all the car lanes were full. It was light years away from where we had just been about 2 hours earlier – the check point leaving
Nablus. There, our convoy was virtually all the traffic, apart from an occasional TV car, - that is all the civilian traffic, as there was a regular flow of Armoured Personnel Carriers
(APCs), tanks, jeeps and the like, going in and out of Nablus, or coming from the Jerusalem direction and heading to the army camps just off the main road.
The reason for being anywhere near the Nablus checkpoint, in what was a closed military area of the West Bank, was that we were part of a Relief Convoy taking food into
Nablus. The convoy comprised 20 vehicles, - 4 trucks with food and medicines, and one additional truck joined us at the checkpoint carrying 20 pallets of bottled water. The food and medicines had been arranged by a group of Christian NGOs – World Vision, Caritas International, Catholic Relief Services, Mennonite Central Committee, Pontifical Mission for Palestine, under the Joint Emergency Relief of the Christian Organisations. This was the second or third convoy that they had taken, and this coming week there are scheduled to be 3 more to different towns on the West Bank.
Food was packaged in cardboard boxes – each box was sufficient for 1 family of 6 people for a week. The total value of the food, medicines and water was probably in the vicinity of US$50,000. We offloaded 800 packages at UNRWA Depot, where there was already a supply of emergency food that had arrived and had not been able to be distributed; 200 packages at a Convent associated with the Latin (Roman Catholic) Patriarchate; some additional packages and the medicines at a hospital.
But I have got ahead of myself. We gathered at a meeting place at 0730 hours, where we were assigned our numbers, given our instructions, and after a prayer, we set off. We were car no. 18 – we being Joan and myself, together with Alice Abusharr and Joyce Wilson. (Joyce is the Deacon of the Methodist Church of the USA who is a member of St Andrew’s and helps with its ministry.) Alice has been a member since Noah landed with the Ark, or perhaps 1948! The rest of the cars were occupied by some ministers – 2 Lutherans, an Anglican, and a Syrian Orthodox priest - and representatives of the different charities. We also had a couple of Diplomatic Cars. Our instructions were to drive in convoy with our hazard warning lights switched on, not to get out of the cars unless told we could, not to lose contact with the car in front or behind, and generally be good boys and girls. Leaving Jerusalem about 0830 hours, up to Ramallah and then on to the bypass road, we reached Nablus Checkpoint at 1000 hours. The whole convoy had been arranged in conjunction with liaison people from the Israeli Army and Military Administration on the West Bank, and so we expected no difficulties. When we arrived at the checkpoint, our leaders began the process of working with the soldiers to get us all through. Some problems arose with the Diplomats, and they were taken aside from the queue. After 2 hours, we were all through apart from the Diplomats, An hour later, it was decided to go on, and they turned back. All this time, there was a constant movement of tanks and APCs past us – something every few minutes. There was also the arrival of the soldier with the video camera who photographed everything and everyone. So we set off for the city at 1300 hours.
Nablus is set in a sort of amphitheatre in the hills. It is, I think, the largest city on the West Bank. As we sat at the checkpoint, we were able to have time to look around, and see that on the tops of many of the hills there were Settlements. As we drove north from Jerusalem, this was one of the most striking features of the landscape – the presence all over the place of Israeli settlements. They are easily recognizable. Arab villages are a bit haphazard in their layout, the houses for the most part have flat roofs, and they are largely painted white. The Jewish Settlements are laid out according to well organised street plans, the houses have red tiled roofs, and they are painted cream! ( By night the difference is the that in the Arab villages, the street lights – such as they are – are blue-white, while the street lights in the Jewish Settlements are orange. To anyone looking down on the scene from above, there would be no mistaking who lived where!) These Settlements are, of course, all illegal, being built on land captured in 1967. In terms of UN Resolutions and Geneva Conventions, they should not be there. Yet, all round
Nablus, there they are. They dominate, they intimidate, they shout loudly that the people who built them have no regard for international law, - they are colonial outposts of what many hope will become a larger Israel.
When we got through the checkpoint, we eventually set off the 3 or 4 kms to drive into the city. The road was covered with soil, dropped by the tracks of the tanks and
APCs, which they had picked up in their off-road excursions. It was difficult to tell if there was in fact a tarred, paved road underneath the layer of soil. At one stage it looked as if one of the trucks might be hi-jacked by youngsters in a village before the main town, who were protesting that they too needed food. However, nothing materialised of the protest and we reached the UNRWA Centre without any difficulty.
Remember that this convoy had been arranged in liaison with the Israeli army. It was therefore a wee bit disconcerting to see a couple of tanks take up position behind us, as we were parked at
UNRWA. However, they gave us the once-over and then moved off. It was also a bit disconcerting that there was some shooting in the vicinity – by the Israeli army, and we did not know the targets. We did know that it was not at us! Later, as we moved from our first offloading point to the second, we got stuck in a traffic jam. The vehicles in our convoy were the only civilian vehicles in the jam, the other two being Israeli army tanks – perhaps the two that had looked us over earlier. However, after about 10 minutes, one of the tanks backed off, and we passed under their gaze on our way to the Fire Station. It was there that the 20 pallets of bottled water were unloaded. When we reached the third offloading point, about 0.5 km up the road we could see
APCs. However, we were not troubling them. We started to offload to the Convent, but by the time we had got partially unloaded, 3 APCs had taken up position about 100 metres away, and some soldiers deployed. There was no animosity, no threatening, but one wondered why, if it had all been cleared before, this intrusion of force and guns was necessary. Leaving there under the watchful eyes of the soldiers, we went to the Hospital. We had hoped to be able to see some of the folk there, but as we arrived in the vicinity, we heard a couple of tank shells being fired and a certain amount of rifle and machine gun fire. Again, it was not at us, nor we think very close to us, but we were asked to stay in our cars while the unloading took place. Having been in the city for days, we wondered what there was left for the Israeli army to shoot at, and again the ungentlemanly thought went through some minds that this was a bit of intimidation to folk like us.
Back at the checkpoint so that we could leave leaving Nablus, I thought it would be relatively easy, as we had all been checked going in. It took the same 2 hours to get 19 vehicles out. It took another 30 minutes to get the 20th car out. It was in fact No 19 – and all the passengers were Palestinian. It was detained for 30 minutes, on a variety of pretexts, until finally being allowed to pass. What was interesting was to see the different ways in which the “internationals” (all non-Palestinians and non-Israelis) were treated and the way the Palestinians were treated. By and large the “internationals” got through the checkpoint fairly quickly. My honest face and perhaps more importantly the honest face of Joan beside me, together with the white plates on the car, meant that we got through in a matter of a minute or two. Palestinians were made to get out of their vehicles, some were made to put their hand baggage on one side, so that the soldiers could be sure there were no bombs – this was a Christian convoy!! – the driver of one truck was made to lift his coat and shirt to show that he did not have a bomb belt strapped on!
Just before we reached Jerusalem, we did a little bit of shifting of passengers, to ensure that no vehicle had only Palestinian passengers. None of the 5 cars in our little group was stopped, and the car that had been such a security threat at Nablus that it had taken over 30 minutes to clear it, was passed without even a question.
Memories, feelings, experiences.
The first was the physical approach to the city – it was like driving through a field – with the muck and mud left on the road by the tanks and the
APCs.
The second was the eerie sense of driving through a deserted city. It was as if some bomb had been dropped – the neutron bomb? - which had killed off all the people, leaving the buildings standing intact – that is the buildings that had not been shattered by tank and machine gun fire. Street after street was deserted, and when we did see people they were very obviously watching for the soldiers. With one exception. Walking down the broad dual carriageway beside the UNRWA depot was a woman, with a youngster at her side who was pushing a sort of wheelbarrow. She was waving a white sheet. Wherever she was going, she was obviously very brave or very fool hardy. Amazingly, as we were leaving Nablus a couple of hours later, there she was, walking the other way, and the wheelbarrow was full of some sort of grass that she had obviously harvested in her fields near the town. She smiled and waved – and knew that she had, at least for that day – beaten the curfew.
The third was the wanton destruction – in other circumstances you would call it vandalism. There was the by now familiar sight of cars which had been run over by the tanks. There were wrought iron railings up the middle of a two-lane road, needlessly uprooted and mangled by tank tracts. There were trees uprooted, trees with gashes on their trunks which may well result in them dying, and not one of them in the road of any conceivable vehicle. There were pavements broken, lighting and electricity poles pulled down, road signs uprooted. When we had seen the precision with which tanks had been able to manoeuvre round the cars at the checkpoint, it was clear that the destruction wrought by the same tanks in the town was completely needless. Who will pay for the repairs? What has it done to the drivers of the tanks, that they have been able to inflict such needless and pointless damage?
The fourth was the more deliberate destruction of buildings. There has been the incessant call from President Bush to Mr Arafat that he do more to stop the violence. The police station in
Nablus, which perhaps might have been used to do something to keep law and order, and perhaps even to combat those who do seek to use violence, had been wrecked. Along the front of it, there was a sort of lace effect, with more than dozen tank shell holes blasted in it. I do not recall seeing a single door left on an open corridor of rooms. Offices, shops, houses, garages, - all were included in the menu which the soldiers had set for themselves, or had been set by their officers. In Sunbula shop we sell Olive Oil Soap, made in a factory in
Nablus. The factory was wrecked, as it was accused of making bombs.
And so one could go on. But the last thing to recall was the smiles on the faces of those who did venture out on to the streets, despite the curfew, and also the folk looking out from the relative safety of balconies, or behind windows and curtains. We waved to them, they waved back, often with a victory sign – and big, big smiles. How they could do it when all around them was such destruction, none of us could comprehend.
Now the Israeli army has withdrawn. What a misnomer!! It has only redeployed around the city, and holds it in a vice-like grip. Only those whom the army will permit, will pass the checkpoints. Meanwhile, the settlers on the hills overlooking the city will come and go as they wish – their security is paramount, and the rest of the people in the area come nowhere. Yet, President Bush is satisfied with the “withdrawal” of the Israeli army.
What has been accomplished? From today’s paper – “The largest military operation undertaken in the territories since they were occupied in 1967 is now coming to an end, and senior Israeli intelligence offers are already warning about the likelihood of upcoming terrorists attacks.”
The cost of Operation Defensive Shield has been set today at NIS 500,000,000 – but what has been the cost in terms of human relations?
At the risk of making this interminably long, I will close by adding, not something from
Nablus, but something from the husband of Joan’s friend Lois. It is part of his letter of today, when the 24 hour imprisonment of the population of Ramallah was lifted.
After coordinating with my colleagues at the Ministry of Higher Education, Lois and I drove to the Ministry to check the damage. The scope and intent of destruction was incredible, definitely much more than I ever anticipated. We were aware that the Ministry was invaded, but today was our first chance to see what really happened. In the evening of Friday, April 19, 2002, a half dozen of fully armed Israeli soldiers exploded their way through the six-floor, clearly marked building, used as the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. They blew open the front door, destroying and smashing anything functioning in their way, using their boots and rifle butts for maximum damage. Then, systematically, they gathered all the computers on each floor into one "fire place" and blew them up with explosives, destroying in the process walls, windows, wooden doors,
aluminum-glass partitions, office furniture, files, etc. Some servers and computer hard disks are missing-destroyed or stolen. Lois noted "the broken glass sparkles like so many diamonds on the floor, in contrast to the dirt and melted plastic from the explosions."
A mere two weeks before the re-occupation, I worked very hard in getting the suite of offices on the second floor ready for the newly-established Commission of Quality Assurance in Higher Education. I got the walls painted; I cleaned the windows, the floors, the desks and shelves . I was on the way to get a good and clean start on the road of instituting a system of quality control. In less than an hour, last Friday evening, a few young Israeli soldiers, fully armed, trained to kill and destroy, and driven by deep enmity and racism, penetrated the offices. They polluted and tried to undo what I started doing a few weeks earlier. We were planning to contribute towards a more rational and analytical thought among our new generations. We were interrupted with a well-trenched, irrational, religiously sanctioned, settler colonial mentality, propped up and justified by deadly military power.
Destruction is everywhere. But when it is yours, it has a totally different impact. I felt violated, usurped, as an individual, as an idea, as a vision, as a society. I can imagine those robot soldiers chuckling, as they went about smashing the clean walls in my office, the desks, the computers, and using their army boots to poor their vengeance on Abu Ammar's picture, which was torn from the wall and stampeded upon. Nearly all our posters, which clearly demonstrate the situation we live in here, by a poignant photo or a few clear words, were torn in half and crumpled. This is not a war on terrorism, as they try to convince the world; this is a systematic campaign of terror against the Palestinian people, the Palestinian society and its institutions. It is a pre-planned campaign to kill whatever peace initiatives there were, and to reverse all what the Palestinians have achieved during the last nine years of hard work, on the road towards building a free and independent society.
We should not loose sight that this is the first day of the second phase of the re-occupation of "autonomous" Palestinian areas. Khalil
Bye. Clarence and Joan.
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Circular
Letter No 86
20 April 2002
Sunday evening, 14th April. It has been hot today – it started with
the temperature being 19 degrees outside our bedroom at 0900 hours this
morning. After lunch, I called Helen Shehadeh, and asked if she needed
food. She told me that the curfew had been lifted yesterday for a few
hours in the afternoon, so she and one of her helpers had walked to the
local store. It was the first walk she had had for over 2 weeks. Despite
having been announced that this was an official lifting of restrictions
on movement, when she got to the store, a soldier fired a tear-gas
grenade at the shop! That helped the shopping as you can guess. Anyway,
she did need food, so I did some quick shopping – 35 litres of milk,
10 kgs of rice, 4 kgs pasta, virtually a whole stem of bananas, humus,
frozen chickens etc. I got to the check point about 1445 hours – I
left the check point at 1700 hours, with an officer still trying to get
permission for me to go through! Quite deliberately, I stood at the gate
so that I could be seen, but the officers who did speak to me
disappeared into their office building, rarely to be seen again. After
an hour, a diplomat arrived, and he too left with me an hour later,
having been refused permission to go in. Too dangerous for us, as they
had soldiers on patrol, and they might shoot at us.
The laughable thing is that the soldiers knew, and I knew, that I could
go to the unofficial entry point and get foot access there. This is what
I did – and within 10 minutes the food was at the school, I was back
in my car, and on my way home. The sad thing is that the sort of
treatment that I had this afternoon is but a sort of inconvenience for
me, but for people who really needed to move, it would have been
virtually impossible.
The following is an extract from a message from B’Tselem, a Jewish
Human Rights Organisation.
Daily Briefing Sunday, April 14 ?2002. Following, is a report of some
of the human rights violations carried out today in the Occupied
Territories. The events included in this report are only those about
which human rights organizations have been able to obtain information.
The incidents listed represent only a minute portion of the human rights
violations being committed throughout the West Bank.. Most of the
information below was received by telephone, since fieldworkers are
unable to reach the victims and eyewitnesses in order to collect
testimonies in person. The information has been verified to the greatest
extent possible given the current circumstances.
1. Amani Suleiman Mahmud Qa’abi, a nineteen year old woman from
‘Askar al-Jadid refugee camp in Nablus District, began having labor
pains at 10:00 PM last night. Qa’abi required a cesarean section in
the birth of her son a year and a half ago. According to Mahmud Abu
Kishak, Qa’abi’s husband, the couple were told that natural birth
would endanger both mother and child. Abu Kishak called the doctor who
had treated his wife and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and asked
for an ambulance. The Red Crescent told him they would send an ambulance
as soon as possible. At 9:00 AM the following morning, after the
ambulance failed to arrive, Abu Kishak called the Red Crescent again. He
was told that they were having difficulty getting to the place. Only
today at 4:00 PM, an ambulance made it to their house. At 5:30, after
being detained again by IDF soldiers, Qa’abi made it to hospital. (Source:B'Tselem)
2. B.A., a 36-year-old woman from Jenin, was scheduled for a cesarean
section at the hospital in the city last Thursday, April 4, 2002. Her
doctors had informed her that natural birth would put her life in
danger. Two days before the scheduled operation, B.A was at her
parents’ home in the village of Al-Yamun. Because of the curfew
imposed on the area, she was unable to reach the hospital at the
scheduled date. On Friday, April 14, 2002, when B.A was still at her
parents’ home, she began having labor pains. The military was still
surrounding the village and her relatives were afraid to drive her to
the hospital. That night, after the contractions became more frequent
her relatives took her to a nearby clinic, where she received labor
delaying treatment. Only yesterday at 13:00, after many attempts by
HaMoked - Center for the Defence of the Individual to coordinate her
arrival at a hospital, was B.A. taken to hospital in Nazereth, inside
Israel. (Source: HaMoked - Center for the Defence of the Individual)
As I said, my being held up at the checkpoint was a minor irritation
compared with such life and death situations.
As you can imagine, my feelings to the soldiers were not all that
charitable. However, I had to go straight to the Taizé Service at the
church, and one of the calming and healing things that happened there
was the presence of Shulamit, a young Jewish girl who had come with her
friend, a German Christian man. We have often talked, and seeing her, I
was enabled to realise that it is too simplistic to be angry at the
soldiers – something else has to be done.
After such a relatively minor experience, if I felt so upset, imagine
what it must be like for those who have to wait longer, as a matter or
routine. There are many stories from people who were detained for
questioning in the draconian round-ups that the Israeli army conducted
– and having to sit for hours in the sun, handcuffed and blindfolded.
I have been drinking glass after glass of water since we came home from
church – yet those detained had to sit longer, and in the end did not
have the water supplies to drink that I had. What are they going to feel
about the Israeli army, and the Israeli government, after the way they
have been treated?
One points out, ad nauseam, the double standards applied by “the
world” to such things as compliance with UN Resolutions. The US is
ready to take the world to war with it, as it seems to get ready to go
to war with Iraq for non-compliance with UN Resolutions. The US ignores
the non-compliance of Israel with UN Resolutions going back to 1967.
Does this double standard help or hinder the US? Does it help or hinder
the rest of the world? Is it important? An interesting article appeared
on Monday April 15th in Ha’aretz. “And if we strip the emperor
naked”. ….”The Sharon government is daily eroding the credibility
of the US. . . . Seemingly, the skies did not cave in on Sharon when he
turned down the public pleas of President Bush to withdraw from the
Palestinian cities. … But the Israeli government’s scorn for the US
is weakening, among Israel’s neighbours, the voice of Israel’s best
friend. Israel tells America to shove it today, and tomorrow the Arabs
will do the same. Fear of ‘American pressure’ was in recent years a
practical tool used by moderate Arab leaders. The minute the Israeli
government exposes the weakness of the President of the United States,
the Egyptians, the Jordanians, and the Saudis also get the impression
that the emperor wears no clothes.” It has been sad to see the way in
which the US has been “controlled” by the Israeli government – no
pull out, then a pull out which keeps the tanks at the gates of the
cities; then on Tuesday curfews and searches in Arab areas of Jerusalem.
And all the time Colin Powell is smiling and seemingly able to nothing
to influence the actions of the Israeli army.
Ha’aretz comes with an International Edition of the Herald Tribune,
and it is there that we often learn things that are not covered in the
Israeli press. For instance, on Tuesday 16th, IHT reports : Israelis
destroy offices in search of documents. ‘Administrative massacre’
Palestinian says. The article then goes on to list some of the offices
of Government Ministries that the Israeli army has ransacked. “In one
room of the Ministry of Education the litter of papers was ankle deep,
mixed with glass from the shattered window, paperclips, photographs and
periodicals. Every filing cabinet was open, some toppled. The remnants
of personal computers stood on the desks, their covers ripped open,
their hard drives and RAMs gone. In another room the Israeli soldiers
had blasted open the safe. The explosion brought down the ceiling in
this and adjoining rooms and left an ungodly mess. Naim Abu Hommos, the
deputy Minister of Education, said the safe had been used to keep all
school test records since 1960. All were gone, as well as NIS 40,000 –
about US$ 8,500, that were kept there. A walk through the rest of the
ministry, which serves 1 million children, showed extensive damage and
extensive loss. The Ministry of Agriculture was similarly treated. The
Ministry of Industry was also trashed, its doors blown away. The Land
Registry had been ransacked. So was the Palestinian Legislative Council.
According to the Palestinians so were the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the
Ministry of Finance, the Central Bureau of Statistics, the municipal
administration building of Ramallah and the neighbouring town of Al
Bireh. A spokesman for the Israeli military said the reason for seizing
the documents in the ministries was the same as for seizing documents
from Yasser Arafat’s compound in Ramallah, namely. “to see what
going on there.”
Tuesday afternoon Joan was at a Bible Study in the home of a Palestinian
Christian in North Jerusalem – Beit Hanina. Suddenly there was an
Israeli army jeep with a loud hailer proclaiming a Curfew. End of Bible
Study as people had to run for their homes. While she was there, I had
some business to do in East Jerusalem, and so drove across town. As I
was passing the New Gate, where there are two lanes of traffic going
down the hill towards the turn-off for Damascus Gate, the car on the
inside lane beside me is stopped. A young member of the Border Police
steps out, snaps his fingers twice, and motions the car to the side.
Quite apart from the arrogance of the gesture, one asks why that
particular car was pulled over – and the only obvious reason was that
its driver was an Arab. I suppose one would get accustomed to being
picked out because of the colour of one’s skin and one’s physical
appearance, but one wonders what it does to a person’s feelings for
the authorities.
Tuesday evening was the start of Independence Day. Flags everywhere, as
is the custom. Then later in the evening there were fireworks displays.
I was working and did not see any of them, but I heard plenty. The noise
reminded me of two events in Bethlehem a few days ago where we were
there – the explosion of a “bomb” in the narrow street leading
down to Manger Square, and the explosions which signalled the demolition
of a house close to where we were sheltering. I did not find the noise
of Independence Day all that uplifting.
At 1700 hours on Wednesday afternoon there was a Reception at the
Residence of the President of Israel for the Diplomatic Corps – among
which is counted the Minister of St Andrew’s Church!! Like many, I
found I had mixed emotions in going along to the Reception, and
certainly very mixed feelings when listening to the Foreign Minister and
the President. Both were telling us all how peaceful were the intentions
of the Israeli army, and how they were doing all that they could to
avoid harming civilians in their invasion of the West Bank. It was
interesting looking round the faces of the diplomats who were there, and
seeing the blank expressions, and at the end hearing the muted applause.
It has been a hard week for those who had some optimistic feelings about
the visit of Mr Powell. For the emissary of the Government which had
called on the Israeli government to withdraw its army immediately from
the West Bank to have to stand and say that a time line had been given,
and that the army would withdraw in accordance with its own plans, must
have been hard to swallow – or perhaps he believed that this was an
appropriate response to the President’s “order”. I recall the
scene when Mr Powell was last here, announcing that there would be peace
negotiations when there had been a seven-day period of no violence, and
that Mr Sharon would be the one to count the seven days. The Americans
subsequently realised that they had been conned. Yet again, there is the
widespread feeling that they have been conned for a second time.
Certainly, I have yet to find anyone who has a good word to say about
the visit and its results.
Headlines today (Friday) read “Bush : Sharon ‘Man of Peace’ IDF
meets pullout timetable.” An American woman leaving the Hospice this
morning asked if we were actually on the same planet! What papers do not
say quite so explicitly is that the tanks have moved out of the towns,
but they sit at the gates, and the closures are still in place. Defence
Minister Mr Ben Eliezer said yesterday that the Israeli army would
re-deploy in “tight closures” around the towns from which it was
withdrawing. During the coming weeks, work will begin on erecting
physical barriers between the “territories” and parts of Israel.
What have you done for the past 168 hours? (I think that is the number
of hours in a week) The people living in the vicinity of the Church of
the Nativity have spent them all in their houses – virtual
imprisonment. In Ramallah this afternoon the curfew was lifted, so
Joan’s friend Lois went out with her husband. This was the second time
in a week, so for less than 10 hours in the whole week it has been
possible for them to be out of their home. For the second time in such a
“lifting of the curfew” they had to avoid tear gas at the town
centre. In Beit Jala last week, Helen Shehadeh also had to avoid tear
gas.
It is now Friday evening, and we have been speaking with Lois in
Ramallah. She has just had a phone call from a person whose house
overlooks the offices of the Ministry of Further Education – the
Israeli army has just blown open the door of that and gone in to it. If
their action is anything like that which they have done in other
Ministries, by the time that they finish there will be little more than
a shell. This is the office where Lois’ husband works. What price any
of his work surviving? Still, these are the troops of the ‘man of
peace’ so it must be good, while the ‘man of violence’ looks on
and wonders how the ‘man of peace’ gets away with it.
As we say each week, we are well. Noise a wee while ago was like sound
bombs over Bethlehem – background to going to sleep!!
God bless.
Joan and Clarence
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Circular Letter No 85
(sorry this is longer than usual, when I had thought I might cut it down a bit!)
13th April 2002
As I am sure you will have heard me say before, and perhaps are sick of hearing it, Sundays are hard days. Hard, not in the sense of having to do anything, but hard in the sense that there comes this incessant question “Why” Why is the world allowing the invasion and destruction of Palestine? Why are suicide bombers allowed, encouraged, to do their appalling work? And so it goes on. How to encompass all this in the realm of worship, so that it is not just a sort of spiritual syrup for people, but actually does confront us with the hard questions about past, present and future, is not at all easy.
In the congregation on Sunday were officials from two Consulates. Both had been in Ramallah and Bethlehem to evacuate their citizens from the fighting. One had had to argue with the military forces to allow her to bring out a baby – she argued successfully, and the baby who might well have died, is now alive and has the chance of recovery. There is also someone who has spent years channelling financial aid to the West Bank, to help in building up the infrastructure of such things as water supplies – only to see what many regard as systematic destruction of water supply systems by the Israeli army. Isn’t it ironic that the same government subsidises the installation of water supply systems, and subsidises the military forces that rip up the same supply systems. Praying and preaching has to meet the needs of such people – both short term, and long term. There is no time to get bored!
Thursday 4 April “ A Nazi by any other name – Members of the Women in Green’s KapoWatch know perfectly well what a kapo was.” is the heading of a special article. It is yet one more example of the increasingly bitter polarisation of Israeli society.
There is the organisation “Women in Black” which basically is a Peace organisation, and has as one of its themes the ending of the occupation. Members hold a demonstration each Friday noon at the cross roads near our house.
There is the organisation “Women in Green” – which is described by the paper as the rightist response to the Machsomwatch, which was set up to monitor the behaviour of Israeli soldiers at Checkpoints on the West Bank.
Then there is the word “Kapo” – who were Jews who acted as police for the Nazis in the death camps – though in the end most of them were also murdered.
Got it all clear? Good. After this introduction, the article goes on : “And what crime did the women who watch the checkpoints commit to be thus branded (KAPOS)? “They are a group of traitors from the extreme left’ wrote Nadia Matar, the leader of the Women in Green to her colleagues last week. She urged them to stand up against ‘the anti-Israeli organisation that supports the enemy under the guise of being a human rights organisation that wants to ensure that the soldiers are nice to Arabs.” Following some of the Machsomwatch people at the Bethlehem checkpoint one morning and taking photographs of them, she responded to a question from one of the Machsomwatch : “We are from KapoWatch, we are photographing Jewish traitors. We are adding your names to the black list of collaborators with the Arab enemy, so that when the time comes you will be placed on trial for crimes against the Jewish people on its soil”.
Saturday- Sunday April 6/7 – Herald Tribune. An article by Mr Netanyahu, entitled “Only military force can succeed.” The article clearly presents the view of many on the right of Israel politics. “The message Palestinian Terrorists are sending us is crystal clear: We will murder you at every opportunity, in every place, at any time, even on the holiest of your days. . . .There is no place for negotiations and no hope for reaching any sustainable peace agreement with such a regime . . .There is only one option now available to Israel – to decisively win the war that has been forced upon it. First, we must immediately dismantle the Palestinian Authority and expel Arafat. Second, we must encircle the main Palestinian populations centres, purge them of terrorists and eradicate the terrorist infrastructure. Third, we must establish security separation lines that will allow Israeli armed forces to enter Palestinian territory, but prevent Palestinians terrorists from entering our towns and cities….”
I do not know if you have heard the name Effi Eitam, the new leader of the National Religious Party (NRP). He is, surprise, surprise, a retired general from the Israeli Army. He was elected recently as leader of the NRP, and on Monday, the Knesset approved the motion of the Government appointing him to be a member of the Government. There has been quite a lot of coverage of him, and his political views, in recent days. There has been mention on several occasions of his description of Arabs as “a cancer in the body of the nation”. “As far as Arabs are concerned, if you don’t give them the right to vote you don’t have a demographic problem,” is yet another of his statements. (Ha’aretz 09.04, p 4) Although he does not have a portfolio in the Government, he has a seat in the Security Cabinet. This Security Cabinet, with representatives of each party that is in the Government, replaces what has been called the “kitchen cabinet” of the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the Defence Minister. For Mr Sharon, the Kitchen Cabinet was a forum in which the other two members could out-vote him. In the Security Cabinet he will have a solid majority.
This is one of the major components of the Israeli political landscape – and one which at the moment seems to be growing.
Monday : Having spoken on the phone with Helen Shehadeh about food supplies at the school, I decided to load up again and present myself at the Beit Jala Checkpoint, reckoning that I could persuade the soldiers to let me in, on the basis that I had been allowed in last week. So, this time I was more adventurous, and got a reasonable supply of fruit, milk, bread, cold meat. Ross Jones, the Anglican Dean of St George’s College, wanted to come along, so we set off. It was just about the time that there was going to be a relaxation of the Curfew in Beit Jala, so it did not take long to persuade someone to let us in. People were out on the streets and cars were beginning to move about. Helen was glad of the food, though not exactly desperate for it. Leaving her, we went down into Bethlehem to sight-see!! We hoped to get to the Lutheran Church in the centre of the city, but as there was gunfire in the vicinity, despite there being people on the streets, I decided that we had gone far enough, and we turned away from the shooting. We stopped at Bethlehem University – a Catholic-run University – and spoke to the Brothers. They showed us the broken windows above their front door, and the bullet marks on the wall behind it – when a soldier took a pot-shot at one of the Brothers who had dared to put his head out of the front door. Obviously a terrorist, they said! On the table in their lounge, they had an assortment of material that they had picked up from the campus when the soldiers had left after occupying it for a few days. Live ammunition, spent cartridge cases, the remains of a wire-guided anti-tank missile that had hit the University in a previous invasion, and a bunch of the plastic thongs used by the Israeli army to handcuff people being arrested. They are bigger and stronger than that plastic bands that I have used to keep the hubcaps on the wheels of my car, - but in essence the same thing. Farewell to them, and we were off to the check point, along the main road. It is a divided road – like the Sighthill road in Edinburgh – and one side of it was completely blocked by 2 large lumps of metal, called tanks.
On the way to the check point, we came up behind an Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC), and decided to stop and let it get ahead. Then we got to the soldier, who was one of the less helpful ones that I have encountered. Anyway, after 45 minutes of standing around and refusing to go away, we were allowed to pass the check point. While we were there, some APCs came and went, some jeeps rolled in and out of the military post, and a tank arrived. It sat in the middle of the road, - very large when you are a pedestrian. From time to time the driver revved up the engine, and in the open air where we were it was quite a noise. I thought of the people shut up in their homes in Bethlehem due to the curfew, and having to listen to the noise of the tanks going up and down their narrow streets. That would have been bad enough, but if the tanks were shooting, it must have been extremely frightening.
( Just as a sort of foot-note in the middle! – Joan had a phone call with a friend in Ramallah. She told of the virtual impossibility of getting to sleep through the night. First there were sort of aerial sound bombs that were fired periodically, which would produce a tremendous explosion in the air, and the sound would reverberate all over the city. Then, at 0400 hrs one morning, the Israeli army sent round trucks with loud hailers, telling people that they should not go out, as the curfew was still in force – at 0400 hours! )
One of the interesting little things that happened when trying to get in to Beit Jala. I always wear a blue clerical shirt and clerical collar, and make sure that it is clearly visible. As I was talking to the driver of a jeep, trying to get the officer beside him to agree to our going in with the food (which he eventually did) the driver asked me what my clerical collar was. It is easy to forget that many Israelis will never have spoken to a “priest” and perhaps not even have seen one close up, when they could ask such a question. I suppose it is not dissimilar to my asking questions about the clothes that the ultra-Orthodox Jewish men wear. If I think they have a strange uniform, why should someone not wonder about my uniform?
Monday evening : An opportunity to hear Hanan Ashrawi speaking. She is a leading Palestinian politician and a Christian. She was speaking at a meeting organised by Sabeel – the Centre for Palestinian Liberation Theology. It was chilling to hear from her of the systematic destruction of the Palestinian Authority all over the West Bank. Be it the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the Statistical Office – whatever – there has been widespread destruction of their buildings, and such things as computer records have been removed and computers broken. As she said, having demolished the PA, with whom do the Israeli government think they can negotiate? And who can enforce a cease-fire when it comes?
Tuesday : We had a service in the Church at 1700 hours, to give thanks for the life of the Queen Mother. Not surprisingly the congregation was small, but one Israeli man turned up with a huge bouquet of flowers, saying that one of the members of his family had been on the staff of the Queen Mother years ago. It was he who insisted to the organist (an American) that the Minister was derelict in his duty by not having the National Anthem sung, and would she please play it – which she did!
Thursday evening : The incessant coverage on TV of what is happening on the West Bank; the papers that are full of little else than the crisis in Israel; and the fact that when you meet someone, the second topic of congregation is the “situation” – the first being the obligatory “How are you” to which comes the conventional reply “Fine”!! (as if that fools anyone) – all combined to make me do a wee bit of writing, possibly for the press. It was short, about the Church of the Nativity, and Sanctuary. I ended it with the questions :Am I my brother’s keeper? – and if so, how am I the keeper of my brothers, the Palestinians and the Israeli soldiers caught up in the siege of the Church of the Nativity? And so to bed.
Friday morning : 0730 hrs. A phone call to ask me if I would be free to go for a walk. Sure, I replied. Good, said the caller, we are going for a walk to Manger Square. What could I say, but agree.
Friday evening : So, at 1345 hours, I found myself with 7 others, who had all managed to get into Bethlehem by avoiding checkpoints, walking down the street to Manger Square. We were a disparate bunch. 4 from the Christian Peacemakers Team (CPT) from Hebron. This is an organisation of the Mennonite Central Committee in the States, and these people live in Hebron, to try to make some sort of peace between Jews and Arabs in that tinder-box of a situation. So they are quite experienced at the sort of walk we were doing. The oldest was a 75-year old nun from New York! There was a Jesuit priest from New York, a Lutheran Pastor from the mid-West, an Anglican theologian also from the States, and myself. We carried some bread and milk. We walked down the street to the square – out into the middle – and then were shouted at to stop. Not surprisingly we did not get to the church, but we gave some food to people under curfew in the houses around the Square. One of the reasons given for not allowing us to go to the church was that the people inside would shoot us! This is a stock argument which we have heard before at check points. Given the events of the past week, with a monk hit by Israeli snipers, we would have been more at risk from people outside than inside. We talked with the soldiers, we knelt to sing and pray – and one of the soldiers either knelt or crouched with us – and on our way back to the meeting point, called in to see the Lutheran Pastor whose letter I shared with you recently. What did we achieve? Perhaps not a lot, but at least a few soldiers were confronted by a bunch of ??? (fill in the appropriate word) like us. A little food reached some people, and a gesture was made. The curfew was lifted on part of Bethlehem while we were there, and life came back to normal for a few hours.
The devastation that we saw was incredible. Often we were walking on a carpet of broken glass; metal shutters of doors and windows had been torn off the walls and were mangled wrecks; cars had been shot up, driven over by tanks, etc; some buildings showed signs of fires; - how to win friends and influence people! We hear it over and over again – the Israeli army action is just creating a counter-army of people wanting to hit back at Israel in the only way that they feel is open to them – the suicide bomb. And as we came into Jerusalem, sure enough there had been another bomber. Neither the shooting of civilians by Israeli soldiers in Bethlehem, nor the bombing of civilians by Palestinian bombers in Jerusalem is acceptable, and seems from this perspective to do nothing but to prepare for the next shooting and bombing.
Stay well. God bless and love
from Joan and Clarence.
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Circular Letter No 84
Saturday 6th April 2002
A word of thanks at the beginning to all who have sent messages. I fear that I seem to present ourselves as in greater danger than we actually are – yesterday we had in fact what was probably the most dangerous journey that we have made for some time – we risked life and limb on the main road to Haifa, and lived to tell the tale! At one juncture we watched with disbelief as a taxi weaved in and out of the traffic on 3 lanes, travelling well in excess of 100 kph – and glad that he was past us!
The reason for our journey to Haifa – it is about the same distance as Edinburgh – Aberdeen, return journey with a bit of driving around Haifa area was 400 kms – was to take young Catriona Lachlan up to stay with a friend there for the weekend. Catriona is the Volunteer working at the Hospice this past year. She is doing her “Gap” year between school and University – comes from Fort William. What a year to choose to come here! Still, despite all that has been happening, when things have been quiet and “normal” she has been able to get in to Bethlehem and Ramallah, to teach music at Refugee Camps and to visit friends. She will be leaving towards the end of June. Any volunteers to replace her? Guaranteed that life will not be dull. We thought that we would take her to Haifa, as a way of getting out of Jerusalem for a day, and perhaps being able to see some other things that would provide some sort of “escape” for the day.
So, when I was finished with work at the YMCA which had started with breakfast with a group from YMCA/YWCA of Switzerland who were here on a sort of fact-finding mission, and a meeting with the Senior Staff of the Y, we set off with Catriona and Yvonne Groger, a young German girl who had been here last year doing volunteer work with autistic children. For the first time in over a week, the sun was shining and the sky was blue. To match the feeling in the country at large, over the past week the sky has been leaden, and the rain has come down in torrents,– and it has been very cold.
It was therefore a welcome relief to have the heat and the sun yesterday. The countryside was marvellously green, with thick luscious grass in places, and carpets of wild flowers on empty ground along the roadside. In particular there were acres of tall yellow daisy-type flowers, which reminded us of the beautiful colour of the roadside past Dunkeld on the road to Pitlochry when the broom was in flower.
To remind us that the warmer weather was approaching, we saw hundreds of storks, circling on air currents and resting as they migrated northwards. Joan wanted to get close up to them to have a good look, but as they refused her invitations to come down to her, and as she could not fly up to them, she had to be content with looking at them from the ground, just like the rest of us. What graceful and beautiful birds they are.
In order to check directions in Haifa, we stopped at one place close to where we thought we wanted to be. I went across the road into a small shop, to ask help. In Haifa, we know only one family – that of Rizek’s late sister – and it turned out to be their shop! So, we had a chat, made a phone call to Rizek to let him know of the co-incidence, and then went to meet Catriona’s friend.
Lunch was a sandwich on the promenade above the Baha’i Centre Gardens – spectacular gardens rising up the side of the hill, and laid out on 18 different levels. Then we went on for a drive along the Carmel Ridge, where Elijah had had fun and games with the prophets of Baal, and came to a Druze village, Daliyat el-Karmil. We stopped and had a wander around the shops on the main street. It was bright, sunny, warm, and there were relaxed groups of people doing as we were doing, browsing and shopping. I had to pinch myself to make sure I was not dreaming – we were only a few miles from the West Bank, where a war was taking place, and you would never have known it here. (There was a similar experience on Thursday, when I had been along the Hebron road past Gilo, driving past Beit Jala and Bethlehem. You would never have known that a sort of life and death struggle was taking place a few hundred metres away, on the other side of the hill). On our way back south, we stopped at a beach for Joan to paddle in the sea. Sadly, the beach and the car parks were heavily polluted with plastic containers, broken beer bottles etc., but the sun was shining and the beach was thronged with folk glad to get out into the warmth.
It is one of the ironies of life here that there is such tranquillity and pleasure only a few kilometres from places where there is such violence and anguish. It is also, in my eyes, one of the great injustices that even in normal times, the beaches of the Mediterranean are not accessible to the majority of those who live on the West Bank.
As it was close to the beginning of Shabbat, the traffic on the road home was lighter than normal. Not quite the same on the other side of the road, as people headed away from the Tel Aviv area for Haifa, Galilee and the North. There was quite a lot of traffic. At one point, it was quite slow moving, as the inside of the two lanes of the road was occupied with tank transporters. We saw 8 of them, moving tanks north – whether back to some sort of depot, or to the northern border with Lebanon, we could only surmise. I am sure that the information is available somewhere, telling us the number of tanks in the armoury of the Israeli army. I imagine that it must be one of the highest rates of tanks per head of the population of any country in the world.
Back home, we dropped Yvonne off at one of the northern suburbs of the city, and then had to pass through an armed check point. We were indeed back home, and the sort of idyll of the day ended.
A footnote to a journey. The war is costly – the call up of 20,000 reservists might cost as much as NIS 500 million. There is a lot of discussion in the financial pages of the papers about the economic effects of the war. Apart from the cost, there is the fact that with the general slowdown in economic activity, there is a lower level of revenue coming to the government from tax collection. One simple way to raise some money has been to put up the price of petrol. It went from approx. NIS 3.85 per litre last week to NIS 4.17 this week – just over an 8% increase in price.
When we reached our apartment, we debated about turning on the TV, and switching on the computer – would it be possible for one day to forego the trauma of watching the news, and reading the e-mails. Of course, we did both, watch TV and read e-mails. There was quite a long report on the journey of the coffin of the Queen Mother through London to Westminster Hall, and pictures of the long lines of people queuing to file through the Hall and pass by her coffin. It was quite a scene – as were the scenes from some of the racecourses that she had frequented – with jockeys, trainers, bookies and crowds, all standing still as a mark of respect to her.
The e-mails last night contained several about the Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. To preface them, let me tell you of headlines in the paper during the week, about events in France. On Monday, under the headlines “Intifada spurs rash of anti-Jewish acts in France” there was a picture of a synagogue in Lyons which had been set ablaze on last Saturday. The accompanying article spoke of many such attacks since the Intifada started. These attacks have been denounced by the political leaders of France, as they should be. It is also important that they are reported in the press, so that people are aware of what is happening. Knowledge may prevent a recurrence of them.
The e-mails from Bethlehem tell of events last Thursday, when soldiers of the Israeli army broke into the Lutheran Church Centre. The following is part of the Press Release put out by the Lutheran Church office in Jerusalem.
At 1:45 pm Thursday afternoon, April 4, 2002, three groups of Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers entered the compound of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. When Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb heard the soldiers entering, he telephoned the bishop in Jerusalem, alerting him to the impending danger to the property, to him and to his family. Bishop Dr. Munib Younan immediately began making telephone calls to the Israeli military and government authorities and various diplomatic corps, demanding that the soldiers be removed from the church property and that Rev. Raheb and his family be kept safe. The Christmas Church is one of six ELCJ congregations. The soldiers went from room to room in the compound for nearly two hours, breaking into offices and detaining Rev. Raheb in a corner of his office. When the soldiers heard Rev. Raheb speaking in Arabic on his telephone, their treatment of him became more rude and rough, according to the pastor’s account of his experience. He was then prevented from using the telephone. Finally a second commander arrived who ordered the soldiers out, spoke kindly with Rev. Raheb and assured him that he and his family would be safe. The commander and some of the soldiers then secured broken windows and doors facing the street so the property would be protected. The gift shop could not be secured because two tank shells had wreaked considerable damage. The soldiers left at about 4:10 pm.
Sadly, this is not the first time that property of the Lutheran Church has been abused. During the last invasion, the Israeli army entered the Dar al-Kalima Academy run by the Lutheran Church. Among the items damaged were two crosses – one a ceramic tile with a cross on it, and the other a wooden cross. Both had been pulled off the wall, and left broken on the floor.
I will look in the papers tomorrow when they come out, to see if there is any mention of these attacks on church property. Sadly, I suspect that there will be nothing. If attacks on synagogues are demonstrations of anti-Semitism, what are attacks on churches and church property?
I have been able to talk with Helen Shehadeh, Elias and Najla and George on the phone.
There had been a relaxation of the curfew on Friday, and this allowed people in the Bethlehem, Beit Jala area to get out to the shops. In the greengrocers, as there had been no fresh fruit arrived, and as everything had been closed for some days, it was a case of the shopkeepers throwing out the rotting fruit and vegetables. Sadly it was also the case of people [picking through the food that had been thrown out, to see if there was anything that could be salvaged. Not knowing if and when the curfew would be lifted, the bakeries had not baked bread. Milk had not been able to be brought in to the area, so there was no fresh milk. One keeps asking who is showing terrorism to whom, and who is imposing violence on whom?
Helen has more of her staff in with her, and so the strain of two people, one of them blind, looking after 15 children, all with little or no sight, had been eased. She had managed to get some food, but still needed more. (I managed to get through the Beit Jala checkpoint on Thursday with some milk, bread and eggs. However, not knowing if I would be allowed to pass, I did not take as much as I could have done. Something was better than nothing.)
Elias had walked from home along the road to the shops, but he told the same tale. What was there to buy? They have flour, so can make bread. They are lucky, in that their water supply has not been affected. But depression and anxiety was so clear in his voice – what still was going to happen.
Najla had been on a trip to Italy, on behalf of Beit Sahour. She had been with some who had been trying to sell olive-wood objects, and she had taken embroideries from Sunbula. Tuesday night they had returned to Amman, and on Wednesday had managed to cross the Allenby Bridge – the main crossing point from Jordan to Israel/Palestine at the southern end of the Jordan valley. Somehow or other, they had found transport which brought them to what is known as the Tunnels Road – from Jerusalem to Hebron. They had got to the top of the hill, and managed to get into the town. She got a lift to the local hospital, and this was as far as they could get the taxi driver to take them. Najla saw some journalists, and never stuck for a word, asked them to take her to Beit Sahour, on the other side of Bethlehem from where they were. They replied to the effect that there was a war going on in Bethlehem, and they were not about to try to get her home! So, she found a friend, and spent two nights with her. Then on Friday, when the curfew was lifted, she put her bag on her back and started walking. As she came into Bethlehem, she came upon rows of tanks, and soldiers. Picture someone about 5 feet tall, if that, with her bag on her back, her hands in the air, calling out in English to the soldiers that she was trying to get home! They did not listen, but equally they did not shoot. So, after a detour, she ended up at a place where her husband could reach her, and she got home!
All the other things that we go through seem sort of insignificant when we hear stories like that. Hats off to Najla.
We hope things are well with you all.
God bless.
Love from
Joan and Clarence
PS Tomorrow at church will be a bit less colourful. Our Sunday School, or 60% of it, has gone home to USA with mother. Father is in the US Consulate, and they have been offered the option of having families go home till things calm down a bit. We hope they will be back for the autumn term in school.
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Circular Letter
No 83 2-4 April 2002
Tuesday 2nd April : 0700 hours. At first on waking it was the silence which I heard – a relief from the sounds when I was trying to go to sleep about 0100 hours. But then, in addition to the normal mundane sounds of neighbours unlocking their doors and cars and trucks outside, I began to pick out the more distant sounds of the helicopters.
At 0045 hours Tuesday, the F16s had begun to roar over the southern part of the city, I presume their target being the Bethlehem area. I did not hear the sounds of any explosions, so perhaps they were merely flying over to remind people of their potential to bomb them. I might hear more when I turn on the TV and start phoning some of our people inside Bethlehem. Around 0100 hours, the thudding sounds of the large military helicopters started, as they circled overhead, presumably on spotter station in connection with the invasion of Bethlehem. By 0115 hrs there had been the first bursts of heavy machine gun fire, and it was with this in my ears that I think I must have fallen asleep.
Thursday 4th April 0055 hours. Sleep not coming, I thought that I would inflict some more words on the weary world!
In Western Zambia, at the announcement of the death of the Paramount Chief, it was regarded as a sign of blessing and acceptance of his life as a good life, if the rain fell. On the only occasion when I was present at such an announcement in
Lealui, the thunder crashed overhead, and the rain came down in torrents. It was assumed that his life had been very good, and that the gods were happy and expressing their blessings.
Wednesday morning at 1000 hours, a group of clerics gathered at the checkpoint on the road to Bethlehem. The Latin Patriarch was there, the Episcopal Bishop, the Lutheran Bishop, the Syrian Orthodox Patriarch, and an assorted bunch, including myself – about 50 perhaps in all. We had the intention of trying to have a Peace Walk into Bethlehem to the Church of the Nativity!! We were stopped by soldiers, and pretty soon we had 16 of them, fully armed, stretched across the road in front of us. Then the brought up a few jeeps to block the road more securely. Conversations, of a reasonably good natured sort, took place between the leaders and the soldiers. A more senior officer came, and a local commander came. In the end, they refused permission to pass. The road was linked with armoured personnel carriers, at least one tank, and behind us one bulldozer. It was huge – the blade at the front was at least 6 feet high. So, after about 45 minutes, we departed.
The reason for the little story about the rain was that all the while we were there, the rain came slanting down – cold, heavy and depressing. To our left, out of the mist came the buildings of the new Settlement at Har Homa – a dagger thrust at the heart of Bethlehem and Beit
Sahour. Further away, in the low clouds, we could see the Herodion, a memorial to another military ruler in this part of the world – a ruler who must have seemed invincible at the time, but whose power came to an end. Instead of the heavens showing approval of the current situation, I would like to think that they were sharing in the weeping that is going on all across the West Bank.
The images that are coming out of the West Bank are appalling.
I spoke with Helen Shehadeh earlier in the day, and she had sufficient fresh food for Wednesday, but Thursday could well be another matter. I spoke with Elias, and he was all right, but you could tell from his voice that he was apprehensive about what might happen.
I had a phone call from John Gang, our Korean Elder who lives and works in Bethlehem. He had come out at the weekend to go to lead a church service in Tel Aviv, and has not gone back to him home. He told me of a phone call from one of the teachers of his school. The road past the school is narrow, and as it comes to the vicinity of Manger Square, it narrows down to much that there is just about room for a car, but not for the car to pass pedestrians. He told me that the Israeli army had taken a tank or tanks along the road, had run over cars parked there, and had damaged the walls of the buildings abutting the road. When we get back into Bethlehem, we will be able to go and see this for ourselves. Assuming that his information is correct, this is the way that the Israeli Army goes about looking for terrorists. Who is terrorising whom?
The following is the text of a message received from the Rev Dr Mitri Raheb of the Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. Some of you will know him, not so long ago I arranged a meeting between him and the visiting group from the Church of Scotland. Who were meeting people about Theology of the Land.
Just a quick note to let you all know that we are still alive. My wife, mother and two daughters are O.K. But Bethlehem is experiencing the worst invasion since decades if not centuries. The whole infrastructure is under attack. The beautiful stone-paved streets around Christmas Lutheran Church are devastated. The tanks were standing around our Church and firing at the center of the old town. The entrance to our parsonage, garage and staircase were destroyed. Most of the shops on Paul VI Street were totally damaged. Our Art & crafts workshops, where we are trying to train young women to earn their livelihood, to appreciate beauty experienced great destruction. The offices of our architect and engineer also experienced much vandalism. The apartment of our volunteers as well. My office was hit too, this is why I can't write as usual. I hope that our communication specialist will be able to post some of the pictures I took on our website. Please check there in few hours. These are first reports of what is going on here. Journalists are forbidden in entering the city to cover the cruelty of occupation. I wonder for how long can the world watch Sharon destroying everything we try to build. This ha |
