By Beth Nelson
Children play on the Wi’am playground while we learned the basic Occupation “facts on the ground” from Usama and Zoughbi.
We began at Wi’am Center in Bethlehem, where we heard from Zoughbi Zoughbi, its founder and director. In short, his message was about finding and creating beauty and giving hope in spite of challenges facing the Palestinians. The center is literally next to an Israeli guard tower, where armed soldiers keep watch over the area. It was quite a contrast.
Children in Aida Refugee Camp were also busy being children.
From Wi’am, we walked around the Aida Refugee Camp. As we passed through the streets, children approached us with smiles on their faces, some even requesting we take their pictures. Our guide led us to the Seraj Library and to the Al Rowwad Center. Both places appeared to be refuges within the camp. These are places where young people can go and do things that kids their ages should be doing…playing, dancing, doing, doing, doing. It was evident that the staff and the young people take pride in these places of refuge.
The third place we visited was Hope Secondary School in Beit Jala. What was striking was the evidence of a Christ-centered education. While the student population is about half Muslim (the other half being Christian), this Christian school appears to be a success story. The director shared with us about the school offering “a second chance” to students who might not have any such hope elsewhere. How uplifting!
Laila and Khader from Hope School, along with Joan and George from Pilgrims.
Our final visit of the day was to the International Center of Bethlehem. Here we learned about the Diyar Consortium. A detail that sums up the hope and resilience is that lovely stained glass ornaments are fashioned of shards from windows that have been broken by bullets and bombs. Good things are happening at this place.
Let us pray that God’s hand is at work in bringing hope to the oppressed of Palestine. Perhaps He will bring about a miracle and soften hearts so that all His children can live together in peace “…the wolf will dwell with the lamb…” (Isaiah 11:6)