Jerusalem My First Day
After facing an early morning breakfast feast, which they call buffet breakfast here in the American Colony Hotel , I am anxious to get sightseeing around Jerusalem. It is Friday so I must avoid the crowded Moslem areas but there are plenty of Christian areas to visit.
My first visit is to the Anglican cathedral just up the road from my hotel. Walking up the road, I notice a number of policemen and soldiers manning barriers and stopping cars now and then. No bigger than a country parish church, the cathedral has a pilgrims’ quadrangle which houses Christian groups and provides cheap meals and free drinks for people like me! (Their Arabic coffee is the best I have ever tasted!!)
In the corner I spy a young girl talking to a group of American theologians. I ask the group leader if I can listen and he gives me the OK. The talk concerns Palestinian houses deemed illegal. They can be demolished without warning so their owners live in fear from day to day. The speaker is nineteen years old. She is an Israeli who has just got out of jail after refusing military service. This event will apparently brand her for the rest of her life so career prospects are almost nonexistent.
One of the explanations I received from Israelis later was that the houses deemed illegal were built by Arabs post 1948 when the new Jewish state was set up after the United nations had partitioned Palestine. Of course, many of these “illegal” builders were Arabs who had been driven out of the partitioned land set aside for the new state of Israel.
When the group gets up and heads for their bus, I ask if they have a spare seat for me. (I’ve become a little braver these days!!!) To my surprise, the leader tells me that it’s OK to come and look around the sites with them. What a brave man he is. So off we go!
The issues covered in the tour of Arab houses which are being demolished are many and each of them is too complicated to be described sensibly here. Things are really terrible for Arabs living within the present Israeli borders. Maya Yechieli Wind is an Israeli Jew who is passionately concerned about the housing demolitions which are going on. Arabs live in houses deemed illegal wondering whether they are next on the list for demolition. She showed us examples of rubble which were once peoples’ homes and also main roads which have been blocked by the huge wall which blocks the way from the West Bank into Jerusalem where there is more work available. The Israeli government is using many methods to clear land once owned by Arabs who, together with the Jews, were the original Palestinians.
Maya tells us that ‘settlements’ – those wonderful suburbs I saw on my way into Jerusalem in the shared taxi – are gradually filling in the space between Jerusalem and the West Bank. The checkpoints, which can protect the settlements when needed, also provide control over the movement of Palestinians around those areas. The rate of building in the settlements is alarming many Western governments including the USA. But the real ‘killer’ of a settlement is “E1”. We looked at a huge valley which will be filled by the new E1 settlement. At one end is Jerusalem. At the other end is the “wall”. I am amazed, after seeing many television documentaries on this problem, to see how near the “wall” is to Jerusalem. The new President Obama has managed to stop ‘E1’ but has agreed with a few hundred more settlement houses. I should point out that most Israelis would not see these beautiful suburbs as “settlements” but Maya thinks that regarding them as settlements is the only credible explanation.
Maya says that most Israelis are oblivious to these policies which allow new settlements in strategic areas whilst demolishing any Arab houses nearby. Arab Christians and Moslems are effectively second class citizens. Only Jews serve in the military.
We then joined a group of Jewish ladies called “Women in Black” who have been staging a protest in the centre of Jerusalem every Friday for the last twenty one years. They are specifically protesting the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. There’s a video of this (including me holding up a Hebrew sign!!) at URL …
In the afternoon we join a “Hands of Peace” meeting in the cathedral quadrangle. This organisation gets Jewish, Christian and Moslem Israeli and Palestinian young people together in order to foster understanding. I am able to help one girl who wants to study music. A very talented girl, she comes armed with a ‘demo tape’ for me to hear! (Her guitar player was also good!) Another nineteen year old girl sitting next to me during our talks is going to jail next week for refusing military service.
This was my first day in Israel and it was not how I expected the day to be. But I couldn’t resist the opportunity to explore further with this group. Although they had different names for their churches, they told me that they roughly correspond to the Uniting Churches in Australia or the Presbyterian church in England. But in Jerusalem today there is no room for sectarianism apart from Catholicism but all other Christian work towards peace is a combined effort.
Keith of Ninewells 