By Brenda Mehos

We had to think seriously about whether we should come on this trip because of the violence we were hearing about in the media, but we are so glad that we’ve come.  The Living Stones tours introduce us to the other side of the story and the peacekeepers in that story and that is even more important as the days go by. Many people take a tour bus to the holy sites, briefly get off, and then go back to Israel. In our trip we’ve had many chances to meet people who live in Palestine and we’ve had a chance to hear their stories.

Yesterday (Friday, 10/23) we were lucky to have the chance to stay with a family in the town of Zababdeh. This is an ancient Christian town with ruins of a 5th century church behind a current church. Overall Christians only make up 1.5% of the population in Israel and Palestine.

We were in Zababdeh to visit Abuna (Father) Firas’s family and his Melkite Church. Abuna is in the United States on a speaking engagement and we are in his home visiting so we had a Skype session with him.  Abuna shared with us that he tells people who ask him if he was born Christian, “No, I was born a baby”!  He also shared with us via Skype that we must “build bridges for peace” and “we must cover the ugly wall with hundreds of bridges”.

We then took a walking tour of Zababdeh with Abuna’s children as guides, and we settled in to either Abuna’s house for the evening or his parents’ home.  It was a treat to experience the wonderful Palestinian hospitality with tea on the back deck, candles when the power went out, a delicious meal inside, and then more tea and wonderful conversation.  Mr. Diab’s English is excellent and we were able to talk about all sorts of things including how hard it is for their young people to find jobs, healthcare, and how the elderly are cared for. The Khoury’s 24 year old grandson stopped by to visit as well and he was curious what jobs are available for girls in the U.S.

This morning we enjoyed a beautiful spread of traditional breakfast foods (that I will miss) including olives they cured from their own trees, orange marmalade from their orange trees, something like a rolled omelet, and the strained yogurt called labneh that I’m loving.  Then it was time to say goodbye, a kiss on each cheek, and we thanked them for the gift of kindness and hospitality.

By Joan Deming

If you are trying to find new insights into the current situation in Israel/Palestine, the following two articles are powerful and exactly on point – at least from our group’s perspective as we travel this land during this critical time.

We have been asking people we meet here, “How do you not lose hope?” Their answers are always similar: “What is the alternative?” We are seeing the results of the loss of hope every day in signs of violence and the aftermath of conflict. Our tour guides and driver have been incredible about moving through hot spots early in the day to avoid trouble. It has worked every time. There is SO much more to this story than our media is letting us see.

The checkpoint where these soldiers were waiting was the site of heavy protest activity later in the day.

Our trip continues to be eye-opening, heart-expanding, wonderful, intense, troubling, reassuring. Later today we will move into Israel, leaving the West Bank behind for this trip. I suspect it will be like moving to a new planet.

The articles for your interest:

“The Third Intifada – Six Things that You Should Know”
October 21, 2015 by Don Liebich , a member of Pilgrims of Ibillin’s Board of Directors
Originally published on Foreign Policy Journal

and

“Palestinian Lives Matter” – A Letter

by Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, Pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem and President of the Diyar Consortium and Bright Stars of Bethlehem.

Dr. Raheb is also one of Pilgrims of Ibillin’s “Peace-Building Partners.”

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.