EYEWITNESS FROM JERUSALEM

A WEEKLY JOURNAL WRITTEN BY SISTER MARY

Jerusalem Journal # 32   October 20, 2001

As I begin writing this, the muezzin calls out from the mosque that this is time for prayer, to remind ourselves that God is great.  The church bells will next ring out to remind us Christians that God is greater than anything we can ever imagine, for the Angelus prayer announces that God took our flesh and dwelt among us ... who could imagine? It seems like a normal day in the Old City of Jerusalem, but things are far from normal.

Helicopter gunships announced their presence above us even before 5:00 this morning.  Our apparently safe quarters behind the ancient walls of the city, reverberated with the events of the week which continued the spiral of violence in this land.  On Monday and Tuesday we were lulled into the thought that maybe things were going to get better, but then on Wednesday the Israeli minister of tourism was shot and the retaliation began.  Thursday a Palestinian leader and his two companions were assassinated in the Bethlehem area and the towns north of Jerusalem: Ramallah, Nablus, and Jenin were attacked and closure was imposed.  There the Israeli Occupation Force targeted a girl's school, killing one eleven year old girl and wounding others.  The towns south of Jerusalem, in the Bethlehem area were also closed and gunfire and bombardment commenced.  Friday morning, residents of the Old City discovered that they could not reach their parents or children in Beit Jala, near Bethlehem. Phone communications had been shut down.  I received word, via mobile phone, that a family I know in Beit Jala had escaped their home for Bethlehem to sleep on a floor in a room there, only to find that Bethlehem was also a dangerous area.  They said they were now going to try to make it into Jerusalem, but the checkpoint has been closed.

We in the Old City try to act normal, doing the things we do each Friday: cleaning and shopping.  Friday is a day off from school here; but this morning there were only a few children outside and those stayed on their doorsteps.  The neighborhood was extremely quiet and one could hear the Arabic news being broadcast from radios or T.V.s in the houses; news of American retaliation in Afghanistan and of the Israeli retaliation throughout the West Bank. News, too, of Sharon insisting on seven days of absolute quiet while the Israeli Occupation Force arrests and legally tortures more people; seven days of absolute quiet while more land confiscations are made and more homes and olive groves bulldozed.  But how can this lead to any quiet?  It is as though terror rules the day and proclaims itself greater than God.  The words of Jeremiah, spoken here in Jerusalem, now seem to reverberate from the walls of the city: "...the Lord will name you 'Terror on every side.'  Indeed I will deliver you to terror...." (Jer. 20:3-4)

Yet, I know that on Sunday, the Palestinian parish church, San Savior, here in the Old City, will be full of the Catholic community at worship, wanting to seek the kingdom of God.  What a mystery that kingdom is as these parishioners experience "terror on every side".

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