Hosam Naoum – Dean of the Cathedral of St George, the first Palestinian Dean

By Joan Deming

Our day in Jerusalem Wednesday left all of us a little spiritually tender. We saw people with guns – both military and settler/civilians – with a scary amount of arrogance. The streets and holy places were sometimes jammed with religious pilgrims from all over the world, but locals were scarce. So we started our Thursday in East Jerusalem and Ramallah with a need to be a bit gentle on ourselves. Our speakers and a little relaxing time in the afternoon getting juice in central Ramallah helped fill that need.

At St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem, the Dean of the Cathedral, Hosam Naoum, thanked us for coming to the Holy Land – a universal welcome in this place. He spoke about the unusual clamp-down on Palestinians, with extra roadblocks and checkpoints stopping all normal life completely until suddenly most were lifted just in time for our visit. He offered 4 “P’s” as guides for friends’ support: Prayer, Peace-building, Pilgrimage, and Pounds (better than Pennies!).

Our briefing at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs was like drinking from a firehose. If you need accurate, “just-the-facts-type” information on the Occupation, this is your source! (Google OCHA, Occupied Palestinian Territories)

Qalandia checkpoint was a chaotic mess of cars, trucks, buses, people walking, horns, dust…. Other checkpoints were closed, and traffic was just a mess. As a perfect bookend experience, our trip back to Bethlehem at the end of the day took us on back roads, windy detours, and a very long time of creative driving for our wonderful driver, Samir. We got home with no incidents, but only because Samir and Usama were tuned to trouble and kept going around it.

Sam Bahour

Our afternoon with students from the Friends School and then with Sam Bahour capped another interesting and challenging day. Witnessing all this is really important. Making sense of it will have to come later.