By Clarence Musgrave

Circular Letter No 186

24th September 2004

At the start of last week's letter I mentioned that we had met some of the members of the Peace and Justice Network of the Anglican Church. Yesterday, there was a report in the press here (Haaretz 23rd September P 8) under the headline "Anglican delegation to recommend divestment." 'Leading members of the Anglican Church will recommend that their decision-making body adopt an anti-Israel divestment policy similar to the one the Presbyterian Church (of the USA) passed earlier this summer.' This sort of action is not dissimilar to that taken years ago when Apartheid was still the official policy in South Africa. Interestingly, in one of the meetings that we had this week with a member of staff of B'Tselem, he expressed concern about the fact that Israel might be perceived by the world at large as another version of South Africa, and hoped that a resolution to the current conflict would be found before this happened.

This has been a week of meetings. The Group from Scotland came to meet people, rather than to go and see what are referred to as "The Holy Sites." So, much of its time has been with people. Below are some snapshots of the week.

Saturday

A drive to Kalandia, past the Wall which only a few weeks ago consisted of banks of concrete slabs lying on their sides at the edge of the road, but had been erected like a giant Lego wall.

Supper with a Syrian Orthodox man and an Armenian man. The one spoke of sitting in his home in the Old City with his family in 1948 as a teenager, all of them very afraid, when their door was broken open by Jewish people and their house searched. It was not long before they were not able to continue in their home, and today he can walk past it and see new people living in it - taken from them by force. Now, he is on the wrong side of the wall, despite the fact that he has an official ID permit recognising that he is a Jerusalemite. He has no idea what will happen in the future, and though he has stayed here, he wonders what will happen to his children. Subtle, or not so subtle, ethnic-cleansing.

The other spoke of the way in which the land owned by the Armenian Church for generations is under threat. They have had to go to court to preserve some of their land on the approaches to Bethlehem, but the Church wonders for how long will they be able to retain control and use of it.

Sunday

In the evening, supper with two Jewish women who are active in the "Peace Movement", - the one in Checkpoint Watch, the other helping victims of house demolitions in Jerusalem. One could not but be moved by the personal story of one : her family had trekked from the Ukraine to Poland in the 1920's; from there they were unable to reach their chosen destination of Canada, but were given support to go to Argentina. From there they came to Israel - but it is not the place to which they came, and society has changed drastically. Retired now from her full-time work, she has taken on virtual full-time volunteering to help Arab people get registration for their land, and building permission for their houses.

Monday

Meetings with two Palestinian academics - the one who had been a Fulbright Scholar in the USA last year, and who is very active in Muslim-Christian dialogue; the other who works for the Middle East Council of Churches.

One often hears in Israeli Jewish circles about the iniquities of the text-books used in the Palestinian school system. The ones used for many years, which come from Jordan, were originally approved for use in the West Bank by an Israeli army officer! Who then is responsible for all those elements of Palestinian education criticised by Israel? Work is well under way to complete the replacement of the old books with new ones, produced by people within Israel and Palestine.

One of the aspects of the work of the Middle East Council of Churches about which we heard concerned Human Rights - the way in which the Churches feel that they are granted or denied to the Palestinians. While it is important for Economic Aid to be given to people who are suffering severe economic hardship, that must be seen as a stop-gap, and be replaced with a political settlement which will give people the dignity of being able to work and support themselves. There is growing concern about the decline in the Christian population in Israel and Palestine.

Tuesday

The Israel Committee against House Demolitions works to try to prevent demolitions in the first place; to try to obstruct them when police, army, and workers turn up to carry out demolitions; to try to assist people in the re-construction of their homes; and to raise awareness of this issue internationally. We met two young women, the one whose father survived the Holocaust and who was born in Israel; the other a Mexican person who converted to Judaism, and was thus given the "Right of Return." She herself observed the inaccuracy of the phrase "Right of Return" - as someone who had never been to Israel, how could she return to it? Yet she was here, and it had not taken her long to come to the conclusion that there was much happening to which she was opposed, and so she is working for ICAHD.

B'Tselem is a Human Rights Monitoring organisation, with its work centred on recording Human Rights abuses in the West Bank, which it then publicises in its Reports. The young man who spoke with us was yet another example of those Israeli Jewish citizens who cannot accept what is being done by their Government, and who consequently become involved in "the Peace Movement." The Reports issued by B'Tselem are rigourously researched and checked, and before they are published they are given to the Israeli army. If it wishes to make a submission or observations about the contents of the Report, its response is published verbatim with the Report.

Supper was with a Jewish couple, who described themselves as probably the most right-wing people whom the Group would meet. They spoke of the fear in which they lived, the anxiety which they had for the future, the fact that their children could well end up living abroad but they would remain here. One of their comments was that they would never take a public bus.

Wednesday

There were 3 meetings in Ramallah; a school and two community development/service organisations.

The Evangelical School has over 600 pupils and grew out of a conviction shared by 3 women 50 years ago that they had to do something to provide care and education for youngsters in Ramallah, particularly girls. The School now is co-educational. Impressive was the new secondary classroom block, begun just at the time of the start of the Intifada, and completed last year. It is a real commitment to the future of the youngsters of Ramallah.

Inash works mainly with women, providing a whole range of services from Childcare facilities, to sewing and embroidery workshops which make garments for sale, to nursing and secretarial courses, and a Folklore Museum and Library. Through the Society sponsorship for over 1,000 children and families is arranged.

The part of Annahda Women's Association programme that we saw was the Audiology and Speech Pathology Centre, but it also has a major facility for work with children and adults with mental disability. In both centres that we visited, there were apologies for the fact that there were so few people around - the Israeli army had imposed restrictions on movement within the West Bank during the Israeli holidays associated with the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur.

On our way back into Jerusalem, we were caught up in the traffic jams caused by the Suicide Bomber at the French Hill intersection. We sat for 50 minutes with no one moving at all. On the radio we heard something of what had happened, and when we drove past the site of the explosion, it was plain to see the shock of it all.

In the evening we were able to see a special showing of the film "Jenin Jenin" - set in the Jenin Refugee Camp after the withdrawal of the Israeli army. The physical destruction of buildings was overwhelming, and the grief of those who had seen their homes demolished and their possessions destroyed was heart-rending. The neatly laid out rows of tents were eloquent testimony to the numbers of people made homeless. There were many telling moments in the Interviews, but one that remains with me is of a man speaking in a reflective mood. "We can rebuild; we can have more children; we have our society and our faith. It is the Israelis who are the losers from this - they will have to live with themselves and come to terms with what they have done."

Thursday

A representative from Machsomwatch (Checkpoint Watch) spoke of its origins in early 2001 when Jewish women went to see for themselves what was happening at the checkpoints. She was in many ways the most impressive person whom we met - by her quiet commitment to what she was doing. Each member of the organisation goes once a week to observe a checkpoint - unarmed, unprotected, yet able to influence soldiers by the "grandmother effect". Soldiers do not want to be seen doing things that they would not like their grandmothers to see them doing! They produce a report on their observations, and they have now had meetings with all the major Israeli commanders, including the Chief of Staff. Their reports go to the Knesset and to the Israeli army. With their network of contacts they are often asked to intervene in human rights abuses that have nothing to do with checkpoints.

Her most recent story was of a Schoolmaster whose ID had been taken by soldiers who had come into the school. Whether because of their phone calls or not, the ID was returned the next day, and the schoolmaster was convinced it was the result of the efforts of Machsomwatch. Her story was typical of so many. Her parents had left Germany in 1933, just after Hitler had come to power, and had managed to settle in Palestine. Now, with many others, she is very concerned at what the policies of the Israeli government are doing to both Palestinian and Israeli. A recent phenomenon which was worrying was the way in which Settlers had now come to some of the checkpoints to harass the members of Machsomwatch.

A mid-week service at Sabeel brought together people from Samoa, South Africa, a Congolese refugee living in Uganda having lost house, home and possessions, England, Scotland, Israel, Palestine. It was a microcosm of the Christian community to which we belong. It was also a time of spiritual renewal and a re-statement of where it is that Christians get their inspiration and what they are called to do. One of the verses in our reading was: "First of all, then I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings should be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity." (I Timothy 2:1-2) No matter what we feel about the Bible, it is not always easy to put it into practice, but it was the Congolese refugee, who had suffered as much as anyone present, who spoke movingly about his prayers for the people who had turned him into a refugee.

When we met our Jewish friend with whom we had dined on Tuesday, almost her first words were to ask where we had been when the bomb had exploded, as she had known we would be in Ramallah that day.

One of the most telling remarks made during our meetings was by a Palestinian woman. Speaking about the recent Bombing in Beer Sheva, she said that it had been reported that this bombing had come after a lull of several months when no such attack had occurred. "Lull", she said, "was only in the Israeli Jewish community, in our community the "lull" was marked by over 70 killings of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers." Below are a few figures just received from B'Tselem.