wfn.org | Israel-Palestine - Inspired by Their Resilience, Hope and Faith

["Frank Imhoff" <FRANKI@elca.org>]

FEATURE
Personal Reflections after Visit with Palestinian Communities

(Peter Prove, Assistant to the General Secretary for International
Affairs and Human Rights, traveled to Israel-Palestine to attend
the June 7 meeting of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF)
Executive Committee. Together with Rev. Thorbjoern Arnason,
Chairperson of the LWF Standing Committee on International Affairs
and Human Rights, he spent some days in the region meeting with
Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups, as well as with
pastors and members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
Jerusalem, and representatives of the LWF Department for World
Service Jerusalem program, which includes the Augusta Victoria
Hospital. These are his personal reflections on the visit.)

JERUSALEM/GENEVA, 2 July 2002 (LWI) - I have recently returned
from Israel-Palestine, not depressed by the destruction and
violence but inspired by the incredible hospitality, resilience,
hope and faith of the Palestinian communities in the midst of the
current appalling situation.

Accompanying an Augusta Victoria Hospital (AVH) health clinic team
to Kharbatha Bani Harith village near Ramallah, Rev. Thorbjoern
Arnason and I were invited to the home of a Palestinian Muslim
family. We, complete strangers to them, sat in honor, under their
olive tree, and were served the very best they had?home-made bread
and goat cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes and olives picked from their
garden. They could not afford to buy any goods. While neighboring
Ramallah lay under another Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) curfew,
and forgetting for a moment the three military checkpoints in the
25 or so kilometers between East Jerusalem and the village, we
enjoyed this family's kindness.

Eight-year-old Abed brought out his English school books, testing
his fragmentary vocabulary?the only one in his family who could
speak a word or two of English. Ali, the youngest boy sat on
Thorbjoern's knee, holding up three fingers to indicate his age.
Their 12-year-old sister gave me an intensely fragrant rose from
their well-kept garden, as Walid, their father, counted his
children for us?ten in all. His wife displayed her embroidery as
we drank the tea which she had flavored with freshly picked herbs.
Not knowing how else to show gratitude for their hospitality,
Thorbjoern tried to offer young Abed a 10 shekel coin, which he
rejected waving his index finger. When we parted company, Walid
held my face in his rough hands with a gentleness that those hands
and that weather-beaten face hardly seemed capable of.

Walid and his family are a perfect antidote to preconceptions of
Palestinians as an aggressive, violent people?a nation of suicide
bombers and terrorists. Having experienced the kind of hospitality
that we did, it is not easy to cling to the popular stereotypes
that make policy on Israel-Palestine so much easier to form.

Jamil Injas, the local English teacher, showed us around the
village school, and his 'labor of love'?the children's community
center which he tries to keep going on almost nothing. Although
only a few relatively bare rooms with no electricity, he had an
obvious pride in the attempt to keep the community together and
provide the children with an oasis of hope and freedom.

The last patients to the village health clinic that morning were a
young couple with their 12-month old baby girl, who had developed
a sudden rash on her face and body. The checkpoints between their
village and the medical clinic had been closed as a result of the
military action in Ramallah. They had walked five kilometers to
get to the clinic, over stony hills in 40-degree heat. Assured by
the doctor that their child had only a minor condition, they left
the clinic smiling broadly and cuddling their daughter, and set
off for the long walk home.

In Bethlehem, we visited the Christmas Lutheran church and its
young pastor, Mitri Raheb. A man with incredible vision and drive,
he dreamed of building an international conference center, a place
of interfaith encounter inside the old buildings in the church
compound. Against all odds, he raised the necessary funds and
started the work. Then came 'Operation Defensive Shield'. Mitri
spent several terrifying hours inside the buildings, with Israeli
tanks stationed on either side of the compound, firing
intermittently down the narrow alleyways into the old town. A tank
shell grazed the side of the compound. Windows throughout the
building were shattered, and the walls pock-marked by bullets.
Mitri himself was detained, and disappeared. Frantic appeals from
around the world led to his release. And when the soldiers left,
the community banded together, cleared the debris, repaired the
damage to the best of their ability, and resumed building their
dreamed-of center.

Similar story in Beit Jala. No sooner had the occupation of the
town ended than Pastor Jadallah Shihadeh of the Resurrection
Lutheran church started work again on their project?'Abraham's
House'?designed to be a place of retreat and encounter for youth
from Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities. A suffering church
itself, Jadallah's church also has a social program that reaches
out to the wider community with support for the unemployed, sick,
elderly, university students and a children's boarding home.

And at the Hope Lutheran School in Ramallah and Dar al-Kalima
Lutheran School in Bethlehem, in the aftermath of 'Operation
Defensive Shield', the local people surveyed the hateful vandalism
of the school buildings and equipment, including the children's
artwork, then rallied to repair, restore and resume. Within days,
the children began to return to a functioning school.

Claims for compensation for even the most obvious and purposeless
cases of vandalism have been rejected, since the damage was, of
course, the result of legitimate wartime actions.

But what faith these people have! Such incredible resilience,
optimism and hope for the future. And with so little earthly
reason in the current context. I want so much to help give them
more reasons to believe in a better future. But in truth the
example of their determination and irrepressible warmth and joy is
a greater gift to me than any I could give them.

(The LWF is a global communion of Christian churches in the
Lutheran tradition. Founded in 1947 in Lund (Sweden), the LWF now
has 133 member churches in 73 countries representing over 60.5
million of the 64.3 million Lutherans worldwide. The LWF acts on
behalf of its member churches in areas of common interest such as
ecumenical relations, theology, humanitarian assistance, human
rights, communication, and the various aspects of mission and
development work. Its secretariat is located in Geneva,
Switzerland.)

[Lutheran World Information (LWI) is the information service of
the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). Unless specifically noted,
material presented does not represent positions or opinions of the
LWF or of its various units. Where the dateline of an article
contains the notation (LWI), the material may be freely reproduced
with acknowledgment.]

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