News,
articles and documents from the Holy Land
Issue No. 166 - Saturday, 3 August 2002
Dear Friends, Brothers and Sisters,
To spend one week with your family is
great especially when you have not done this since three years. To replace a
parish priest in your town parish is also interesting when you have to minister
the normal work of a priest: celebrate mass, visit sick people, baptize, bless engagements
and marriages.. all of this in one week, especially after three years of
administrative work. You feel that life is worthy to be lived and celebrated,
and it should continue and go on even if your are surrounded by death,
destruction and death. It is enough to see the news or to go down to a city
like Jenin which is under reoccupation and curfew since more than six weeks
without interruption. You have to visit this ghost twon called Jenin, I am not
speaking about the camp.. but about the town itself. Everything is upside down…
you feel that the barbers are passing by there.. My dear God! How human being
could be so evil and terrible one to another?!
In the other side also, it is not better
than ours, all the fear in the heart of each Israel, the suicide attacks, the
last explosion of Hebrew University, all the deaths and injuries… Tens of
thousands of soldiers on duty in every corner of the Palestinian territories,
day and night… poor men who should leave their families and houses and stay in
their uniforms in a state of alert… They also need to have a rest and to go
home and enjoy their lives with their families…
We simply would like to live like all the
other nations of the world… Our people deserve to have a time of rest and enjoy
their time after all these months of sufferings. This is my message for this
week, because I felt living with the people that their life is miserable and
terrible and should be changed.
You will find in today’s Olive Branch
some documents which will show you how things are still going in a very bad way
until now without any way out:
1)
In the Letter
from Bethlehem (33), Toine van Teeffelen tells us with a marvelous narrative what
is going on in Bethlehem area. He is an eye witness!
2)
In here
Jerusalem Journal # 52, Sister Mary shares with us her “reading of a
fascinating book by a British prizewinning author, William Dalrymple. It's
an insightful travel diary of a young man's journey among the Christians all
throughout the Middle East -- an elegy to the slowly dying civilization of
Eastern Christianity and those people who have tried to keep the Christian
faith alive”. But I would like to assure you that we will not die and we will
remain faithful to this Holy Land.
3)
Two
short article by my dear friend Ghassan Andoni, founder and director of
rapprochement center between people: A Cease Fire, mission blocked, not
impossible; Lunch with Rev. Jessie Jackson.
4)
Dr
Harry Hagopian believes that “The
Pope is Young Again!” after his 97th trip and his celebration of the
WYD in Toronto.
We believe that
the secret of the permanent youth hood is the youth odd of the spirit and the
true life in God and the life of God in us. Cicero said the secret is to have
the wisdom of the old people when you are young, and to have the vitality of
the young people when you get old.
I wish you
that from all my heart. Fr.
Raed Abusahlia
Letter from Bethlehem
(33)
July 25, 2002
Toine van Teeffelen
Each evening
Mary puts the TV on and off in anxious anticipation of a most important
announcement. When will be the opening hours the following day? Sometimes the
news comes late in the evening, sometimes early in the morning, or there is a
last minute change. Many institutions, such as Mary’s Bethlehem University, are
following the rule that when there are opening hours everybody should work,
including the weekend. The rule is invented in the face of complete
unpredictability. In my agenda this week I scribbled down the closing and
opening hours: Monday – closed, Tuesday – open from 9-13:00, Wednesday – open
from 9 – 15:00, Thursday – closed, Friday – announced open from 7:00 – 19:00
but at 9:30 closed, Saturday – open from 7:00 – 19:00 (a record for Bethlehem!)
As soon as the
news is in, people start to make plans and rush. Half an hour before the actual
opening time begins, cars appear on the street; in no time there are queues,
drivers become even more frustrated than they already are, small accidents
happen. Also in no time, institutions become inaccessible because everybody
uses the phone simultaneously. The word ‘bottleneck’ gets its full meaning
here. People flood into the main Madbasseh street so that one can hardly walk.
Rushing has its
price. An acquaintance in Ramallah tells me that people there now tend not to
socialize with each other anymore. During the evening there is a curfew anyway,
while during the day, if there are opening hours, people don’t have much time
for each other either. Even the visits to neighbours during curfews are rather
superficial, she says; the sense of community is lost. I see in my own
environment that people are so depressed that they tend not to talk about other
things than the daily practicalities. Why should you make each other more
depressed than you already are? Lately I conversed with the Israeli pharmacist
on Yaffa Street in West-Jerusalem whom I regularly visit and who stays very
friendly despite the bombs which exploded close to his shop. He wanted to know
me a little better, said that he thought I was German, and upon my correction
apologized emphatically, as if withdrawing an accusation. Upon his question,
“So, how is it in Bethlehem?” I honestly answered that people are barely able
to confront the summer heat; especially when they have a big family and do not
have a garden, the walls close in on them. “That is not what I mean, how do the
people look at the Israelis, are they more for peace, or not?” I again honestly
said that at present many people do not have the energy for political
discussions but are mainly concerned with family survival.
But surviving is
not enough. A basic problem all face is how to get the pent-up energy out. A
neighbour points out the black dust all over the ground in front of our house.
It’s from the tanks, she says. A lot of work to keep it clean, I say, but she
says that she does not mind to clean every day. Many women try to get their
energy and anger out by way of persistent home cleaning.
Is there a way
to get out of our closed bottles, with or without a message? Very hesitatingly,
some dare to follow the children who already are on their scooters and bikes;
and tread the streets for a walk. In fact, Imm Hannah, my mother in law, must
walk for her health. She lately had serious problems in standing up because she
could not do her regular walks outside. Mary’s sister Norma, who came over from
Paris for a few weeks, says that people should not be so afraid. What is the
problem with going out on the street for just a hundred meters? On my usual
journey from my home to their home, I see them together, four women shuffling
along the street, breaking the curfew, unable to hide or run away when soldiers
would approach. Afterwards Mary told me that the other day her legs started
trembling when she was out and suddenly saw a tank at the end of the street. A
man in front of her who was selling watermellons hid himself with his cart
behind a garbage container. A shame that common people are bossed in such a
way.
Although some
people tresspass the curfew, there is no large-scale challenge such as in Nablus
where the inhabitants barely had any opening hours the previous weeks and
simply had to go out to get food. But Wednesday the army came back there in
full force shooting at anybody who dared to peep out of the door.
*
* *
At least there
are no snipers on the rooftops, so you feel not taregeted from an unknown
place. These weeks I regularly leave Bethlehem for my work in coordinating the United
Civilians for Peace group, a monitoring mission. A journalist told me that
it was possible for foreign passport holders to walk under curfew, at least
when the army does not declare the areas a closed military zone. When at one
point I left my house, I saw an army patrol forcing people who had tresspassed
the curfew to sit down on the pavement. They waved me to come over and asked
for my passport. I showed them my work permit and a letter saying that my
passport was at a Palestinian Ministry for visa extension. They told me that if
I work and live in Bethlehem I should stay at home. “Why?” “If you live here, you
can leave the town and come back to bring a weapon and give that to your
family.” “But any visitor can do that,” I counter. “No, a journalist would not
do that.” Me: “But yesterday the army allowed me passing the curfew.” Him: “Do
you want me to show a paper from the commander? Please, go home.” End of
argument. I had the feeling the soldiers wanted to show the youth sitting there
that they were not being mocked at. Afterwards, I took my way through the
gardens but frightened some people who suddenly heard a man climbing down from
their roof. They thought I was a soldier.
The following
days, there was no problem in going and coming back through the main
Jerusalem-Bethlehem checkpoint. At one point, soldiers waved their guns from
afar to indicate that I could not pass. Frustrated, I did not want to return
home and took the bypass route through the ecumenical center Tantur next to the
checkpoint. Next day I tried to take the same route, but (army?) dogs barked
and some soldiers ran to the Tantur fields where they caught a few girls who
were trying to enter Jerusalem. They saw me as well. Surprised after seeing my
papers, they said: “But you’re not an Arab! Please, always take the main
checkpoint.” The following day I showed my papers to a soldier who inspected
them carefully. One paper, proof that my passport is processed for visa
extension, has as heading ‘State of Israel – Ministry of the Interior.’
However, the Palestinian Ministry where I left my passport, not having its own
document, had crossed ‘Israel’ out, and had replaced it with ‘Palstien’. The
soldier who inspected my documents gestured his colleagues to come over and
said half-seriously, half-mockingly: “That is very bad. And they even don’t
know how to write ‘Palestine’. I said that the Palestinian ministry should have
their own forms in the first place, and that anyway they should not split
hairs.
*
* *
During curfew
the main checkpoint resembles a desolate, hot and sandy Wild West warzone.
Nobody is there, except soldiers hanging around. During one of my checkpoint
adventures, a soldier shouted ‘stop’ at 20 meters from the hut, let me wait for
a minute, and then waved me to come over. He was a Falasha, an Ethiopian Jew.
Palestinians, I know, are afraid of them. One theory is that they often do not
communicate well at checkpoints because of lack of language knowledge;
moreover, they are discriminated against in Israel by Western Jews and in
compensation transfer their anger onto the Palestinians they meet. I asked him
whether he spoke English, a question he took wrongly. He gave the papers to a
colleague but meanwhile kept an eye upon me, asking me brief questions such as
“What is your work in Bethlehem?” pronounced as if he was giving an order. I
could not help to pity him even though that was exactly how he did not want me
to feel towards him. I pondered how young the kids were who were standing here,
many of them eighteen, some of them seventeen; child soldiers according to
international standards. I could easily be their father. On the way back, when
they were contacting their commander by phone to check my credentials, I
started conversing. “So, you are here all alone, the whole day, doing very
uncommon things like checking people, how do you feel doing so?” One soldier
turned his head away, the other answered: “I just don’t think when I am here,
just talk a bit with the other soldiers.” Me: “Is that not difficult, not
thinking all the time?” He did not know what to answer.
“Indeed, they
are very young,” an older reservist told me at another occasion. He saud that
he had volunteered to be at the checkpoint, not because he liked it there but
because it was better to have an older man there present, “better for the Jews
and better for the Palestinians.” He was like a father to them, he said, he
wanted to smoothen the contact between those who crossed the checkpoint and the
soldiers. While he was talking, the other soldiers looked a bit embarrassed.
Their English was not sufficient for a real conversation, and I could see that
they preferred to fall back to the uncomplicated pattern of giving one-line
questions and getting one-line answers, the pattern to which they are used when
dealing with ‘Arabs’. But the reservist, courteously, wanted to show them in an
exemplary manner how to conduct a correct conversation with a foreigner, and
waved me through after the distant commander once again gave his approval by
phone. I felt strangely uplifted and embarrassed at the same time.
*
* *
On Sunday I meet
Albert Aghazarian, the well-known PR-man of Birzeit University, together with
some visiting Dutch journalists. We sit down in lazy chairs in his ancient home
in the Armenian quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. For him, checkpoints have
two faces. “On the one hand, they are mechanisms of control, factories of
humiliation and hate. On the other, the people waiting there feel an
egalitarian atmosphere. The professor and the student, the VIP and the worker,
the local and international, the capitalist and the anti-globalization activist
- they all queue there. At the checkpoint, Palestine stands at the cutting edge
of humanity. At the checkpoint, people – any people - are challenged to take a
stand. Are you for or against? The checkpoint can split people but can bring
them also together. Two internationals of the International Solidarity
Movement,, a Palestinian and a Jew, found each other at a checkpoint. As to
express this egalitarianism, the Portuguese winner of the Nobel Prize for
Literature lately commented on a visit to Ramallah that ‘we are all Palestinians’.”
Aghzarian is
still recovering from the teargas which he inhaled during the times he joined
the internationals crossing the checkpoint to Birzeit. “As I am an Armenian,
and therefore stubborn, I did not want to take another route [the settlers’
bypass road which can be taken by Jerusalemites] to the university, even though
it meant that I had to queue and suffer. I did not want to show myself a coward
when those internationals are taking risks to support us.”
As always he
gives a joke. “Hell and Heaven argue their case in front of the High Court of
Justice. It is always Hell who wins. Do you know why? All the lawyers are in
Hell!” The Israeli High Court is known to routinely embrace the security
arguments submitted by the army.
*
* *
Tamer is moving
all the time with his hands and legs. No lack of energy. A neighbour told that
it was because Mary had eaten a lot of dates during her pregnancy. If that is
true, it would suit Tamer’s name, which means ‘holder of dates’.
“If Tamer would
not be here, I would not know what to do,” says Mary with her head between her
hands. “My head explodes.” Lately she has been depressed because of
‘everything’ but especially because our holiday to Cyprus is in doubt due to
problems at the bridge to Jordan. The TV images remain the same: a kid in Jenin
shot while eating chocolate, a kid from Dheisha camp who is so battered that he
cannot speak, the children in Gaza mercilessly bombed. Mary also feels with the
students killed at the Hebrew University. “Why do they earn this?”
*
* *
Jara tries to kill curfew time together with a new, older friend, Serena, a somewhat shy girl who accepts being led by Jara. In the garden, Jara plays that she is a musical conductor while Serena is the audience. She starts nicely with a popular love song, but then brings her voice to a pitch, shouts the phrase which I cannot hear anymore, “mamnu’a tajaawoul” (forbidden to go out), and turns to sing a nationalist march. She is naughty these days, does not want to go to the summer camp when the curfew is lifted. We suspect it is because she rather likes to give orders than to take them. If she is home, she is the splendid center of the neighbourhood gang of children who roam the empty university street. She even changes clothes four times a day. “Take care, she will be spoiled, and you will not be able to handle her later on,” Norma says. We decide that when the curfew is lifted she should stay under family house arrest. However, she once again escapes us, and the next days visitors, unaware, give her presents.
Jerusalem
Journal # 52
Sister Mary
2 August, 2002
Recently I began
reading a fascinating book by a British prizewinning author, William
Dalrymple. It's an insightful travel diary of a young man's journey among
the Christians all throughout the Middle East -- an elegy to the slowly dying
civilization of Eastern Christianity and those people who have tried to keep
the Christian faith alive. Yet I am finding it most informative and not a
depressing book. Dalrymple writes about the great monasteries of Palestine
"before the Zionists expelled half the Palestinians and began to turn the
country into an American suburb...." He reminds the reader that Islam has
traditionally been tolerant of religious minorities, but is clear about the
fact that "...things are suddenly becoming difficult for the last
Christians of the Middle East. Almost everywhere in the Levant, for a
variety of reasons -- partly because of economic pressure, but more often due
to discrimination and in some cases outright persecution -- the Christians are
leaving. Today there are a small minority of 14 million sturggling to keep
afloat amid 180 million non-Christians, with their numbers shrinking annually
through emigration. In the last 20 years at least 2 million have left the
Middle East to make new lives for themselves in Europe, Australia and
America." This touches even closer to home when he writes concerning
the Palestinian Christians. "... half a century after the creation of the
State of Israel, fewer Palestinian Christians now remain in Palestine than live
outside of it. According to a Palestinian Christian writer I talked to in
London, things have got so bad that the remaining Christians in Jerusalem could
be flown out in just nine jumbo jets; indeed there are now said to be more
Jerusalem-born Christians living in Sydney than in Jerusalem
itself." I guess what also made this very real to me is that I had
just set the book down and called a friend in the Bethlehem area. A
frightened teenager answered the phone and told me of the bombing by the
Israeli Occupation Forces of a house in their neighborhood last night.
She spoke of the screams, the fire and the smoke. It isn't easy for a
Christian to live in this land....
Dalrymple
adventures will take you inside countless monasteries, introduce you to some
unique characters as he looks into their history while sharing their monastic
life in all its aspects. He will also invite you into the homes of many
Christians throughout the Levant, some here in Palestine. You will hear stories
from a perspective that never makes the news because it is often from the
perspective of little people, the anawim, of the bible.
Eric Newby's
comment about this book was, "Everything a really good travel book should
be. Witty, learned, and also very funny." So if you enjoy a good read, I
suggest you pick up William Dalrymple's From the Holy Mountain, ISBN
0-8050-6177-0. It's a book that's hard to put down and I think you will learn a
great deal about the roots of the Christian Church here in the land where it
was born, learning it through a most enjoyable read. It might even touch your
life.
A Cease Fire, mission
blocked, not impossible.
Written
by: Ghassan Andoni
To stop the
bloodshed, parties who are shedding the blood of each other need to talk to
each other. It worked for years when Israel and the PLO engaged in peace talks
and it can work now.
Our grieve, on both sides of the line is being used as a pretext for more
escalation, for revenge taking, and for more attempts to hurt and defeat the
enemy. As important, it is used to confuse us all in relation to what is this
conflict all about. Trapped into this cycle, we all have to be prepared to
become the next victim. Some Palestinian groups can fantasize about the
ultimate defeat of Israel and Sharon can do the same about his chances within
the context of the "war against terrorism" for an ultimate triumph,
but reality will continue to be: the conditions we both right now endure.
Simply because the triumph of any party will negatively influence their control
in the Middle East, The international super powers will not allow any of both
to win and will pay little attention to our suffering. Unless we, the victims
of this crazy crisis, make the move no one else will be motivated enough to do
it.
Firstly we need to step out of illusions into reality. A cease-fire needs for
us to talk to the one who shoots at us. No matter how we categorize or
stereotype him. No matter how much sadness, sorrow, or hate we accumulated, we
need to recognize that the other side is wearing the same shoes and enduring
similar emotions. This does not necessarily means that we submit to their
demands or accept what we consider illegal and unjust; it only means that this
continued bloodshed is more evil and much more damaging than any of the causes
that launched it.
No one can outlaw a liberation movement of 50 years history. Palestinian
liberation groups will continue to be the forefront of the Palestinian national
movement. So, stop the stupid attempts of providing military solutions. Stop
the fruitless attempts to win this war. And allow for internal talks and
negotiations to be launched.
An open conflict in the Middle East is not only dangerous, but as well lethal
to both. Keeping the illegal colonies and the potential to expand and create
more facts is not worth a drop of blood of an innocent citizen from both sides.
We were almost there. Palestinian liberation groups were ready to announce a
unilateral ceasefire. Why was it necessary to assassinate Salah Shihada and so
many Palestinian kids and women? Why was it necessary to trigger again
bloodshed?
The bottom line is: there are on both sides parties that flourish with the
continuity of the bloodshed. If it stops they will loose power. And for them
not to lose power we need to be ready to sacrifice our lives.
Lunch with Rev. Jessie
Jackson
written
by Ghassan Andoni
I had the privilege to be
invited to join Rev. Jessie Jackson at lunch in the Arab Rehabilitation
society-Beit Jala during his visit to Bethlehem. Rev. Jackson and his
"Peace Mission" group of Christian, Moslem, and Jewish leaders have
been touring Palestine-Israel and meeting with people and politicians.
While Rev. Jackson looked tired after going through an overloaded program and an
extensive experience and was apparently looking for a little period to gather
his strength, I could not resist the temptation of hearing his account after
such an experience.
I took the first opportunity and asked him: "after being in this area for
a while, and after such an experience, are you more optimistic, less
optimistic, or what?"
To my surprise, and after taking a long breath, Rev. Jackson said: "I am
clearer, especially about settlements"
I will not go to the details of the long discussion we had. As important as it
was, my mind was much occupied with his first statement.
The question that kept knocking my head was: why even influential and
interested people from the United States and maybe from other western countries
are unclear about settlements until they come personally and visit?
Is it because we failed to clarify how dangerous settlements are?
Is it because the Israeli powerful media managed to twist facts and create a
positive image of settlements and settlers?
Is it because the term "settlement" and "settler" echoes
positively in the American history?
Is it because occupation, expansionism, and resistance are very confused in
societies that enjoyed stability and prosperity without any interruption for
the past 50 years?
How can people realize, without witnessing through their own eyes that
"positive acts" like building nice villas and accommodating families
can be lethal to others?
How "legal orders" of expropriations and building equipment can be
turned into a lethal weapon that can exterminate and transfer a whole nation?
How can people understand that each nice Villa built is an added stone to an
apartheid system in process?
I guess there is no way but to come and see for your self.
A week ago, one American visitor told me: "the only place in which
settlers were defeated is Africa, they won everywhere else"
I promised my visitor that settlers in Palestine will never win. We need the
efforts of each and every one of you to prevent settlers from destroying the people
of Palestine. Might be mission impossible but never forget that if they are
allowed to win in Palestine, you will be living in an entirely different world,
where facts will always overrides rights and were the jungle law will govern us
all.
The Pope is Young Again!
Dr Harry Hagopian, KSL – KOG
Vicisti Galilaee!
The first and last serious
attempt to annihilate Christianity as a world religion possibly began in the
year 361 AD when the Roman Emperor Julian endeavored to restore the pagan cults
abolished by his uncle Constantine the Great. But his attempts failed, and
Julian died of wounds on the battlefield two years later. Christianity had been
the sole official religion of the Empire for less than fifty years, but within
that short time it had changed peoples’ expectations of religion. It was no
longer possible to pull down the churches and let the garden run wild again!
Julian was forced to create a parody of Christianity which even he realised was
futile. Europe was still overwhelmingly pagan, but at its very heart paganism
was dead, and could only exist as an object of nostalgia. In what was, for all
the grandeur of its claims, a small corner of the world, humanity had changed
inexorably - and in all likelihood permanently too.
Over the centuries, it is
quite true that Christianity has witnessed let alone aided and abetted some
ugly moments, violent upheavals and bloodletting episodes. However, those
deplorable aberrations had much less to do with the message itself and much
more with the messengers themselves. Slowly but surely, the fundamental change
of the early century spread to different corners of the world. In fact, history
records that Julian’s last words before he died were an acknowledgement of his
defeat when he sighed, ‘You have won, Galilean’. Indeed, the young and pastoral
Galilean had won the day as he established a major religion claiming well over
a billion followers or adherents today.
In one sense, I was reminded of those early
clips of Christian history only last week when I watched HH Pope John-Paul II
celebrating the World Youth Day 2002 in Toronto. This 82-year old man, weakened
by Parkinson’s disease and still struggling against an erstwhile fractured
femur, had left Rome for the 97th foreign trip of his pontificacy
that would take him to Canada, and later to Guatemala and Mexico.
In Canada, I was amazed to watch this man of
faith as he galvanised the youth in Canada and helped them emerge from their
spiritual torpour. In a couple of days, the organic bond between hundreds of thousands
of hitherto insouciant young men and women of the world and this old man had
clearly been re-awakened. In his discourses with them, the Pope joked that he
still felt young at heart although he no longer counted his years! But he also
encouraged his audiences to reject ‘a world of terror and hatred’ and to
‘prefer instead the path of justice and peace’ as defined by Christ. He then
reminded me of the future Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams when he added
that many young people today were lured by money, success or power, and were
influenced by a happiness that traced its source to superficial values and
fugacious senses. He exhorted them
to believe in God by following His teachings.
But what is it that forges
this bond between an old man and those generations of young men and women?
Perhaps I can suggest a few traits in Pope John-Paul II that have sadly fallen
out of fashion with many religious leaders today:
§
He
is not a demagogue, and does not playact a role
§
He
sells nothing other than an integrity of the self
§
He
is a weak and tired man who is nonetheless bestowed with immense resolve,
stamina and charisma
§
He
says what he thinks and does not sanitise or colour-rinse his statements in
order to suit the occasion
§
He
believes in the truth, and shows his respect for others by articulating it even
when it displeases them
§
He
believes in happiness, and promotes a moral rather than austere brand of
Christianity
Moreover, I would suggest
that this special fondness between the Pope and the younger generations is also
due to the fact that many people do not expect him to live much longer. They
want to witness the twilight moments of a Pole who has had a towering influence
over Christianity. Mind you, many love him just as quite a few hate him too.
Yet, watching him preside over the open-air mass in Toronto on Sunday, it was
quite difficult to deny that this man from Poland, born in Wadowice and
educated in Krakow, has shaped so many lives and influenced so many believers
regardless of how indifferent we may feel toward him or how we interpret his
system of beliefs and practices.
In May 1085, Pope Gregory VII lay mortally ill in
Salerno. He said, ‘I have loved justice and hated iniquity. Therefore I die in
exile.’ His aide replied, ‘How in exile, Holiness, when the whole world is
thine?’ This is not the Christianity of the third millennium anymore, but it
behoves well for Christians not to lose sight of it far too facilely either!
harry-bvH @ 30 July 2002
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