EYEWITNESS FROM JERUSALEM

A WEEKLY JOURNAL WRITTEN BY SISTER MARY

Jerusalem Journal # 28

September 9, 2001

  I returned to Jerusalem on September third and as soon as possible made my way to the Christian village of Beit Sahour to visit friends who endured the invasion of their town. I heard from one family after another about how they were alerted to the imminent Israeli invasion and how they began to flee with just the clothes on their backs.  Many went to Bethlehem where they listened to the constant artillery for the next forty-eight hours. Not only was the Israeli Occupation Force firing in the narrow streets of their town, additional military support came from the Israeli outpost perched on the hillside above Beit Jala at the settlement of Gilo, and from the windows of the Bethlehem Inn hotel which the Israeli Occupation Force confiscated in Bethlehem about a year ago.

    The inhabitants who got stuck in Beit Jala remain traumatized by their ordeal and they still wonder if the world knows what the Israelis did to them: setting up camp in their homes and making some of the inhabitants remain inside the house, so that defenseless families would also be in the firing line. The family members watched as their homes became a military zone: furniture overturned and dragged around, the contents of their freezers and refrigerators thrown out the door to make room for the army's food and drink; they watched as their children clung to them. As one Christian woman said, "My youngest son wants to hug me all the time now and doesn't want to let go of me."

    When asked how they endured those fifty hours, the response from the Christians of Beit Jala was that they simply prayed: prayed as they lay awake that first night listening to the shelling, prayed continually through-out the days and nights, prayed that the shelling would stop, prayed for safety for themselves and for their neighbors -- especially those who were stuck in the town. As one woman who fled Beit Jala with her five children said: "If I get stuck, I get stuck; the Lord will know what happened."  And that may well happen, for both the Israelis and the Christians of Beit Jala see little chance of this violence and terror ending; it is all part of a vicious circle of action and reaction.

    Last Saturday I returned to Beit Jala and found the inhabitants trying to clean up the mess and to repair some of the damage. Even so, many of the people of will still go back to Bethlehem to sleep at night, for fear that their West Bank town will be invaded again.

Return back to HOMEPAGE