The Plight of the Palestinians

Art work on the Bethlehem side of the wall

Last month, when I was in Palestine on a tour of the Holy Land, there was significant concern about what would happen with the election of ultra-right Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister and the appointment of his even-further-right choice for defense minister.  The answer has come with an attack on the Palestinian refugee camp that is Gaza and answering violence from a Palestinian youth on a Jewish synagogue.  This was followed by another attack on the West Bank farming community of Jericho.  As tensions once again escalate in this region, I wish vainly for a resolution to such hostilities. 

Let me begin my reflections on my visit to Palestine and Israel with a caveat:  I firmly believe in the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people who have suffered discrimination and persecution for centuries.  I have traveled extensively in Europe and seen many reminders of such.  I walked through Dachau, one of the German extermination camps of World War II.  I have visited several Jewish cemeteries and synagogues—those still standing and those that are only ruins.  The Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw provides compelling evidence of the need for a place where these people can live in peace and security, as does the Holocaust Museum closer to home in Washington, D. C.

In preparation for my trip to the Holy Land, I read several books, including Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour, which provided an historical and cultural framework for understanding the dynamics of this region.  Chacour writes eloquently about growing up in an olive tree grove near the Mount of the Beatitudes in Galilee.  Generation upon generation of Jews, Christians, and Moslems had lived in harmony with one another in the region known as Palestine and then Israel.

The Palestinians have rarely, if ever, ruled themselves.  They had endured centuries of control by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and Turks before being placed under the “protection” of the British at the end of World War I.  Between the World Wars, Jewish Zionists began demanding creation of a Jewish homeland in the region, which led to violence between Jews and Arabs.  After the Holocaust of the second World War came to light, demands for establishment of a Jewish state increased.

Shireen Abu Akleh, an American-Palestinian journalist
was shot in "tragic circumstances" by the
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in 2022

Amid the Arab-Jewish violence that ensued, the British withdrew in 1947, and the Zionists, under the leadership of David Ben Gurion, proclaimed the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.  The United Nations recognized the state of Israel and gave it 54 percent of the land previously known as Palestine. 

In Blood Brothers, Chacour describes how his family, along with hundreds of thousands of others, were forced from their homes at gunpoint and ordered out of their towns.  These displaced people lived in caves, immigrated, or ended up in refugee camps.  I can completely understand the frustration and anger this caused and how that led to uprisings and violence. 

In support of the Palestinians, the surrounding Arab nations attacked Israel in 1967.  With their superior air power, Israel quickly suppressed its enemies in what became known as the Six-Day War.  A second violent uprising in 1973 is known in the west as the Yom Kippur War.  The Palestinians refer to these as the first and second wars for independence.  With each war and with the building of continued Israeli settlements, the amount of land that Israel claims has increased dramatically. 

In 1978, the Camp David Accords were signed establishing the Palestinian Authority along the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip on the Egyptian border.  Only 12 percent of the land once known as Palestine now remains under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA).  While the PA has established governmental structures, it has not been recognized as a nation by the United Nations and its lands are continually being eroded by the establishment of illegal Jewish settlements.  A recent Washington Post article reported that “settlements are set to expand further under Israel’s new government which has vowed to legalize dozens of illegally built outposts. . . . Settler violence, already on the rise is likely to increase.”

Statistics released by the United Nations Population Fund in 2021 indicated of the nearly 14 million Palestinians worldwide only 38%, or 5.23 million live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The rest live in other countries such as Jordan, Syria, Chile, and the US.  And more than five million Palestinians continue to live in refugee camps.  We visited one such camp in Amman, Jordan.  According to our tour guide, this is the only camp that provides permanent housing.

Palestinian refugee community in Amman, Jordan

In 2003 Israel began building border walls throughout the country, ostensibly as a security measure, but in effect the walls, such as the one around Bethlehem, confine Palestinians.  Passage through the walls is controlled entirely by the Israelis.  The International Court of Justice has ruled the walls illegal and ordered Israel to remove them; an order that Israel continues to ignore.  As I gazed at the wall that surrounds Bethlehem, I was reminded of the remains of a similar wall erected around the “Jewish Ghetto” in Krakow, Poland. So, I have been pondering this question: how can a group of people who suffered so much turn around and inflict that same mistreatment on others?

The wall, topped with barbed wire, around Bethlehem and a guard tower.

Mark Braverman, an American Jew who lived for a time in Israel, says that he wrote his book A Wall in Jerusalem “with an ager that burns at the injustice being suffered by innocent people on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.  The Palestinians have lost their land and live under daily, crushing humiliation.  The Jewish citizens of Israel live behind a wall of soul-killing racism. . . . The great majority of the Jewish citizens of Israel are prisoners of their own fear, fear created by their failure to know their Palestinian neighbors.”

The Bethlehem side of the wall is covered with graffiti

More than once, I heard the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians called “apartheid.”  According to the Washington Post, “Jewish settlers in the West Bank are subject to Israeli civil law while Palestinians live under military rule and do not have equal rights.  Israeli authorities restrict Palestinians’ movements, building rights, and access to resources” such as water and electricity.

Here are some of the things I learned while visiting the region.  Palestinians who live in either Israel or what are now known as the Palestinian Territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are denied passports.  They are essentially people without a country.

Palestinians may not fly in or out of the international airport in Tel Aviv.  To leave the country, they must go to Jordan and fly in or out of Amman.  This rule also applies to American citizens of Palestinian descent.  Our tour organizer, Elias, could not fly with us to Tel Aviv.  He is an American citizen and holds an American passport, but had to go through Amman and meet us at our first tour stop in Tiberias.

The Augusta Victoria Hospital in Jerusalem is administered by the Lutheran World Federation and provides medical care to Palestinians, particularly those suffering with cancer or diabetes.  This is the only hospital for those Palestinians who live in Israel or the Palestinian Territories.  We were told by the hospital administrator that the biggest frustration they face is providing care to those Palestinians who live in the West Bank or Gaza because these people need permission from the Israelis to travel through Israel to Jerusalem.  This is especially problematic for children when their parents cannot accompany them to the hospital for treatments.

Waiting to go through a security checkpoint at the wall

Getting through the checkpoints in one of the walls is at the discretion of the Israeli guards who are in charge.  Each day as we traveled in and out of Bethlehem, we waited in a line of vehicles to pass through the border gates.  Each car was stopped, papers were examined, and the driver got out and opened the trunk for inspection by the Israeli soldiers.  When it was our turn, the bus driver and guide had to produce their documents, and we passengers had to hold up our American passports.  On two occasions, the gates we wanted to pass through were closed.  One evening, after waiting in the vehicle-entry line for about fifteen minutes, our driver determined that the gates weren’t going to be opened, so he got out of line and drove around the town walls for thirty minutes to another entry point, which was open.  Another day the gates were closed because it was raining.  We were told that such occurrences are common and completely random.  If the Israeli guards decide to close an entry point, they do.  There is no warning and no information provided about reopening.  People just have to accept this as a “normal” part of life.  (For a view of how this impacts the Palestinian people, I recommend watching the short film, “The Present,” which is available on Netflix.)

During our tour, we met with Palestinian church leaders and had opportunities to hear personal stories from our local tour guides, who, along with our bus drivers, were Palestinians.  We also visited Dar Al Kalima College in Bethlehem, where we talked with its founder and president, Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb.  He told us that DAK started as a community college for Palestinian students; it became a four-year institution in 2022.  Dr. Raheb’s vision is to educate the next generation of “creative leaders” who can find solutions to age-old problems.  This can best be accomplished by using art and culture for social transformation.  The college focuses on developing “cultural resistance as a strategy for resilience.”  DAK is also committed to gender justice.  About half of the administration and teachers at Dar Al Kalima are women as are 62% of the students.  About 15% of the students come from refugee camps such as the one in the Gaza Strip. 

Dr. Raheb told a story of one student who came from a village surrounded by Israeli settlements.  The settlers prevented the installation of electricity or paving of roads to the Palestinian village.  To solve the village’s electricity problem, the Dutch government gave them solar panels, which were confiscated by the Israeli settlers.  In response, the women of the village, under the leadership of the DAK graduate, organized and went to court.  They won and the panels had to be returned.

Dr. Mitri Raheb

A third goal of Dar Al Kalima is to enhance the employability of graduates through entrepreneurship and innovation.  If graduates can’t find traditional jobs, they have the skills to create their own enterprises.

We met a young American woman, Anna Johnson, who is living in Bethlehem while conducting research for her dissertation on “authentic tourism.”  According to Dr. Rahib, 99% of tourism in the region is religious, and most tourist groups “run where Jesus walked.”  Authentic tourism includes opportunities to meet people, hear their stories, view their art, and eat their food.

From the DAK art gallery:  "MaryAm" by Iman Haram

"The Last Supper" (Palestinian version) by Suliman Mansour

When we asked Dr. Rahib how we could help, he encouraged us to do three things:  go home and tell the story of the Palestinians, encourage others to come and visit in an authentic way, and lobby our Congressional leaders.  According to a 2022 report by the Congressional Research Service, Israel has been the largest recipient of US foreign aid since World War II, and most of that aid is for “military defense.” 

Palestinian dancers performing at our farewell dinner

Somehow, the world has to find a way to honor Israel’s need for a home country as well as the Palestinian’s right to their own country (the “two-state solution”).  Dr. Rahib said that he hated hearing the phrase, “it’s complicated.”  In his mind, Israel just has to grant the same basic right to freedom to the Palestinians that they themselves enjoy.  Chacour’s plea at the conclusion of Blood Brothers is for peace between his Jewish and Arab brothers.  One quote from Chacour's father resonates throughout the book: "The Jews and Palestinians are brothers--blood brothers. We share the same father, Abraham, and the same God."  After the family was driven from their home by Zionist soldiers, Chacour’s father prayed: "Forgive them, O God.  Heal their pain.  Remove their bitterness.  Let us show them your peace."  Chacour concludes his book with this statement: "We do not need friends who take sides, we need common friends."

"God Is Love," woodcut by Kamal Bullata

Recommended Reading:

Blood Brothers, by Elias Chacour, was originally published in 1984 but has been reissued several times.  The version I read was published in 2013 by Baker Books of Grand Rapids, MI.

The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and The Heart of the Middle East, by Sandy Tolan.  This is a true story about an Arab family forced from their home which had a lemon tree in the yard.  The house was occupied by a Jewish Romanian family who had suffered during the holocaust.  A son and a daughter of these families form an unlikely friendship but ultimately can’t bridge the gulf that lies between their peoples.  The paperback edition was published in 2007 by Bloomsbury USA.

A lemon tree in Bethlehem

Apeirogon by Colum McCann was published in 2020 by Random House and won critical acclaim from many sources.  The novel is based on a true story of two families from different sides of the divide but who share the grief of lost children.  I haven’t read it yet, but plan to soon.

A Wall in Jerusalem by Mark Braverman was published in 1976 by Jericho Books.  This plea for humanity was written by an American Jew.  While he comes at the problem from a different perspective, his conclusion is the same as that of the others—the Jews and Palestinians have to find a way to know one another and live in peace.