Israel-Palestine: I can’t keep up 

Baptist church member David Nelson has travelled to Israel and the West Bank on three occasions in the past 24 months. He offers this reflection on events in the region

I can’t keep up.

At times I find I can barely catch my breath.

Every week, sometimes every day, the picture shifts, a new layer is added. My attention turns to the new thing. I forget the last one because I have only so much space and, you see, I can’t keep up. 

This evening I got footage of a new house outside a refugee camp in the West Bank. This house was built by friends of mine to replace a family home that the Israeli Defence Forces knocked down a few years ago. I have previously stood by the rubble of the old house and I have wept at the injustice, and listened as Khaled and his family explained how it happened.

And now this evening I cannot even begin to imagine how they feel because earlier today,  the IDF also demolished the new house with their bulldozers. The reason is apparently because the map of Israeli state land has just been redrawn, again.

Or more simply, the house has been demolished just because it can be.

Meanwhile, Daoud has all the rights and all the papers to his land south of Bethlehem but others want to take it off him. For more than 30 years the authorities have tried this through various means and the courts have refused to provide a judgement on what is such a simple matter.

Further south, In the hills below Hebron, Palestinian villagers are attacked by settlers, again. Their livestock is harassed, their water pipes cut – I’ll repeat that, the village water pipes are deliberately cut by people from the nearby settlement. In Awdah and Tariq’s village, the settlers have got permission to build a wall around some of the Palestinian land – which is madness because the whole of the West Bank is already walled in.

(Try to) breathe..

So to Keir Starmer, and the Israeli ambassador, and the bloke in the pub or my neighbour or work colleague, please don’t keep telling me that Israel has the right to self-defence unless you allow the same to these Palestinians who are not militants, are not terrorists. For fighting back, even arguing back, in the West Bank leads to beatings and arrests and detention in prison without charge for six months over and over.

The shifting picture of news means that today I’m supposed to be concerned about scores of people killed in airstrikes in central Beirut overnight. And yes, I am.

But this just covers over all the things that happened, less reported, in Gaza yesterday - the deaths at a school, at a medical centre, in refugee camps. Which in turn covers over all the things that happened in the West Bank yesterday, like Khaled’s house being demolished. Or even the Israeli policeman shooting, killing, a 12 year old Palestinian boy in Qalandia close to Jerusalem – you have to search hard to read about that.

And yet my acquaintances and Facebook friends who are Jewish, people I have recently sat alongside, tell me how they need space to grieve because it’s barely been a year since last October, how they are always the victims. Holding all these things together in my hands is a pretty big struggle most of the time. Daoud, despite the deep and daily stresses on his family, to his land, simply says from his Christian faith, that he refuses to be a victim. 

O Lord, help me stand because at times I don’t know how to under the weight of all that’s happening. Help me to breathe, to be there for those in Palestine and Israel and to help them – and those in Lebanon too.

Help me to do what I can, in prayer and in action, to listen carefully,  to be alongside those feeling a depth of trauma that’s beyond my knowing, to help lift up those with broken hearts and the oppressed.

May I  call out loudly about the pain and all that’s so very wrong, and may I be diligent in trying to encourage others to do the same, even just to do something, to bring about morality and justice, and thereby some peace. 

My friend Avner in Jerusalem, who has stood against the tide bravely for many years, says we must each do what we can. And then, maybe each of us can do a little more.

I don’t think doing nothing is an option any longer.


Image | 'No longer a house' | David Nelson
 

David Nelson is a member of a Baptist church in West Yorkshire. He has travelled to Israel and the West Bank on three occasions in the past 24 months.

He is a supporter of Amos Trust, a small creative human rights organisation based in the UK and registered as a charity. Their principal area of work is supporting partners in the West Bank and Gaza. Their UK-wide Christmas tour begins at the end of November.

 

Further reading and prayer points - below is material from European Baptist Federation, the Baptist World Alliance and Christian Aid

 

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EBF and BWA resources

A joint Baptist World Alliance / European Baptist Federation prayer guide for Israel and the Palestinian Territories.
View here

The EBF's Call to Prayer and an appeal for Lebanon
View here

Further resources
Should you wish to explore further resources to help build your understanding of the conflict in the Middle East and embark on conversations about a just peace, you might like to look at Christian Aid's "Learning" page here 

 

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