A crisis of faith

My trip to the West Bank affected me more than anything else on my three-week trip. The night after I returned from my trip, I found myself going on and on at dinner at the convent to several college students who were part of a study abroad trip who were staying at the convent for a month. I told them about my visit and all the things I'd seen, as they sat, captivated, listening to the things I described. That night, I sat in my room and tried to process all the things I'd seen and experienced that day. I thought about the starkly different versions of history I'd gotten on either side of the Wall. 

In Manger Square, there was a large display showing the "History of the Occupation," from 1948 to the present day, showing the shrinking amount of land that Palestinians have had access to over the years. At the Sea of Galilee Guest House where I'd stayed the weekend before, there were old photographs on the wall with accompanying captions about the Jewish "pioneers" who'd settled that area in the late 40s. The Israel Museum in Jerusalem spoke about the "War of Independence" in 1948 and had plaques honoring various soldiers who had died. On the West Bank side, that war was referred to as al-Naqba, "the Catastrophe." 

The Jewish "spiritual travel guide" I'd bought for the trip included political sites related to the founding of the state of Israel as religious pilgrimage sites complete with prayers of thanksgiving to be recited for the restoration of the state of Israel. The Knesset, the governmental center of the state of Israel, was included as one of the pilgrimage sites. The opening scripture passage was Amos 9:11, 14:

In that day, 

I will set up again the fallen booth of David;

I will restore my people Israel;

I will plant them upon their soil, never more to be uprooted.

The introductory material for this chapter waxed philosophic about the creation of the state of Israel: "Modern pilgrims can only imagine the thrill of receiving a letter from the British government in 1917, saying that Israel might some day be born; or standing near here in 1948, hearing the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel being read. But at least we can imagine it by reading the historic letter from Britain lord Balfour, known ever after as the Balfour Declaration." The book went on to reprint the entire Balfour Declaration and the entire "Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel." I read with some irony these words from the famous (or infamous, depending on which side of the Wall you're on) Lord Balfour:

His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine...

As I read this, I thought of the third generation of Palestinian families living in refugee camps, denied the right of return to their homes. I thought about the Israeli annexation of land in the West Bank and the denial of water to Palestinians there. I thought about the massive bloodshed and violence that followed the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and I shook my head sadly at Balfour's naiviety and ignorance in 1917. "Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine," huh? What an empty promise that has turned out to be.

I picked up a copy of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem newsletter that had been given to me by one of the Jewish Israeli participants in the Jewish-Muslim interfaith dialogue meeting on Sunday night. "Here, I get this magazine that's about Christians' support of Israel," he'd said to me as he dropped us off back at Bob's apartment after the end of the evening. "You might find it interesting." 

"Thanks," I said, taking it and shoving it into my bag. Now I pulled it out and looked at it. The ICEJ was founded in 1980 "as an act of comfort and solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people in their claim to Jerusalem," and represents Christians "who share a love and concern for Israel and an understanding of the biblical significance of the modern ingathering of Jews to the land of their forefathers." 

The magazine included articles about how the Second Coming of Jesus was clearly immanent since the state of Israel has been restored and since there is much international resistance to it.

"The miracle of Israel's restoration is the validating sign heralding the return of our dear Lord," one of the articles asserted. "It is also true that the Word of God portrays Israel's restoration as taking place amidst  great international resistance to it. The nations will eventually mobilize, as they did in AD 70, against Jerusalem and they will try to remove it from Jewish hands (Zechariah 12). They will be thwarted and Jesus will return in glory and splendour to set up His throne in Jerusalem and from which He will rule the nations with a "rod of iron" (Revelation 19:15).

Another section of the magazine exhorted its readers to pray for Israel as it came under increasing international pressure to cede control to parts of the land to Palestinians, including the parts of Jerusalem that were annexed by Israel in 1967 on so-called "Jerusalem Day" - June 1 - the day I had first set out to explore Jerusalem. Some of the parades celebrating the "unification of Jerusalem" were scheduled to go right through predominantly Arab neighborhoods. The Rev. Bob Carroll, the canon pastor to the English-speaking congregation at the Episcopal cathedral in Jerusalem, told me how Jewish families would walk up and down the streets of his predominantly Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem, pushing their baby carriages.

"They don't have to come this way," he said. "There are plenty of other routes they can take. They do it to make a statement. They're saying, 'We're here, and don't you forget it.'"

Or, in other words, "F*** you."

And yet, this very large Christian organization stands "in solidarity with the Jewish people in their claim to Jerusalem." I found myself wondering how many of this organization's supporters and subscribers to this magazine had ever actually been to Jerusalem or the West Bank, how many of them had ever met a Palestinian and heard their story and their family history. Christians supporting the kind of behavior that has taken place in Israel in order to return the land to Jewish ownership seems to me a blatant violation of what Christians should stand for. Even if you truly believe that God wants the land to be given to the Jews, at what cost? Would God approve of the violation of basic human rights and dignity for the sole purpose of giving the land back to the Jews? If they're the "chosen ones" and everyone else is chopped liver, maybe so. I began to see how very dangerous this kind of theology of "chosenness" can be, and realized that I do NOT believe, with any ounce of my being, that God has "chosen" any one group over the other and wants this kind of violence and slaughter to continue.

But what about those passages in the Old Testament where God tells the Israelites to slaughter the Canaanites (who were in this land before the Jews!) so that they can "possess the land that I am giving to you"? I opened my Bible and leafed through some of those passages and felt my blood boiling as I did. It was one thing to have been disturbed by these passages, as I always had been, when I encountered them in church and in religion classes and it was merely an intellectual conundrum over something that happened over 5,000 years ago and the way the people interpreted those events and attributed divine significance to them. It was quite another thing to see the ways in which this kind of theology had caused violence and injustice and oppression to VERY REAL HUMAN BEINGS in the HERE and NOW.

"How can I become a priest and be a part of a tradition that considers these passages Scripture?" I thought. "How can I vow at my ordination that I 'believe the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God and to contain all things necessary to salvation' when there are these kinds of texts that essentially justify genocide? How do I preach on these texts when they come up in the lectionary?"

Before my experience in the West Bank, I probably would have tended to spiritualize or metaphorize the biblical stuff about the "Promised Land" (it's really heaven) or about being "chosen" (we're ALL chosen), but now I felt the need, the moral imperative, even the CALLING to actively preach AGAINST those notions. Although one of my seminary professors advises us to "never preach against the text" -- as in, don't directly contradict something the Bible says; find some way to use it positively, even if it's through a metaphorical interpretation -- I found myself feeling very strongly that I would not be able to do that with these passages. Tip-toeing around these passages and not tackling them head-on is exactly the kind of hands-off approach that has produced a kind of blindness and apathy and even tacit acceptance of the kind of things going on in the West Bank. I cried myself to sleep that night as waves of heart-wrenching pain wracked my body as I took in all that I had seen.

A few days later, I went to meet with Bob Carroll at the Episcopal cathedral to talk about the world of the Episcopal Church in this region. I was beside myself with frustration at the things I'd experienced and I wanted to know what the Episcopal Church was doing about it. "What kinds of things are the church doing in this area to help advocate for Palestinians?" I asked. He gave me lots of resources, including information about the World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), which sends volunteers to regions where injustices are going on to be witnesses to the activities of the Israeli government and Israeli settlers in the West Bank and to provide protection to the local people by their presence. If the Israeli government and settlers know they are being watched by an international presence, the violence they inflict on the Palestinians tends to decrease. A quote from one of the local people in the village of Yanoun in the booklet Bob gave me said this:

"Harassment by the settlers has decreased by maybe 80 or 90 percent. The reason is that you are in the village. The biggest effect has been on the children. I have asked how they feel, when the settlers come and you are here, and they say they are no longer scared like they used to be."

Bob also directed me to several websites: the UN's website for monitoring injustices in Israel and Palestine, Sabeel, an ecumenical liberation theology center in Jerusalem (I later found out that another FTE Ministry Fellow, Staci Imes, had spent time working with them this summer), and a site called B'Tselem, an Israeli-run organization that monitors human rights offenses in the occupied territories.

He also told me, as I talked about my encounters with different folks working in interfaith dialogue in the region, that interfaith work in Israel is often a ruse, a way of avoiding dealing with the hard political issues in the area. Interfaith dialogue, often initiated by the dominant Jewish community, is a way to make themselves feel good about reaching out to Muslims and Christians while not really changing anything about the oppression of these groups in the country. He told me a story about a rabbi approaching the diocese about starting an interfaith dialogue with the Episcopal Church.

"Our bishop [who is a Palestinian Arab] sat right here and said to him, 'Look, rabbi, with all due respect, are you going to do anything to help my people in the West Bank?' Do you want to work together to get medicines to the hospitals there and help with education? Because if not, I think this conversation is over.'"

I remembered the woman from Elijah Interfaith Institute that I'd met with saying that St. George's was "not known for their openness to interfaith dialogue," which surprised me, since the Episcopal Church in the U.S. is very open to such things. I'd wondered what that was all about -- and after talking to Bob, got an interesting insight into a dynamic that I hadn't been aware of in my previous encounters with the interfaith scene in Israel. Suddenly it made sense that a man who was involved in interfaith dialogue with Palestinian Muslims could also be a subscriber to a magazine about Christians supporting the Jews' exclusive right to the lands there, and advocating only for injustices committed against Jews by "Muslim extremists," with no mention on their website of the injustices committed by the Israeli government against Palestinian Arabs (who are not just Muslim but also CHRISTIAN, by the way!) that had provoked those extremists to such action!

Bob also warned me that when I went to the airport that night (it was my last day in Jerusalem), I should expect to be questioned severely, since "young women traveling alone are considered a security threat to the government of Israel."

"What??" I asked, surprised. I wasn't used to being lumped in the "security threat" stereotype category, and actually felt somewhat proud to be given that distinction. "Why?" I asked Bob.

"Well, because young women tend to come over here and visit the West Bank and get all sympathetic to the Palestinian cause," he said, and I laughed sheepishly. Well, I certainly fit the bill on that one! I guess stereotypes do come out of some sense of reality.

But perhaps the most important thing Bob said to me was his advice to not get caught up in my anger.

"This is a lot to take in right now," he said, "and it's natural that you'd get very upset upon first encountering these things. But once you've gotten home and have some time to settle in and process, it's very important to let go of the anger. Holding on to the anger is not productive, it doesn't really help anyone, and it'll just destroy you. You have to move past the anger if you want to do something productive."

I've thought a lot about "moving past the anger" since I've been back. In general, that's something that's very difficult for me to do, especially when I feel that I or someone else has been wronged. I get my hackles up in what I consider to be a "righteous anger" about some wrong or injustice done to me or someone else and I want the offending party to be punished or to apologize for their behavior before I'm able to let it go. This has been a subject of discussion for me with spiritual directors and confessors, about the importance of letting go of this feeling in order to truly be able to forgive others. Forgiveness does not come easily to me -- at least not a forgiveness where the other party is unrepentant. Since I don't see the Israeli government "repenting" of their actions any time soon, I think I'll have to find a way to move forward if I don't want to come to demonize the entire state of Israel -- which is also against my principles.

On the flight home, I read a book by Mitch Albom, author of Tuesdays With Morrie, about several years he spent with his childhood rabbi before he died, after that rabbi asked him to write his eulogy. The book, called Have a Little Faith, helped me to move past some of my anger at the state of Israel and, by extension, all Jewish people. I remembered going to hear Mitch Albom speak at a synagogue in Boston with the Jewish girls who used to live in my apartment. I thought about my dear friend and former roommate Ayala, who was born and raised in Israel. I thought about Naomi and Yinon who I'd stayed with in Tel Aviv at the beginning of my trip, Naomi an American Jewish woman who had "made aliyah," using her "birthright" as a Jew to be able to immigrate there, and Yinon a born-and-bred Israeli who was a member of that Israeli military that I was so angry at. I thought about their daughter Aya, born here and oblivious to all the political implications of her birth as a Jewish child on this highly contested soil. Certainly I wasn't going to lump all of them into this one big category of "Israel" and "Jews" that I was mad at?

In the book, there is a passage where Mitch finds an old photograph of an Arab family amongst the rabbi's belongings.

"Who are these people?" he asks, and the rabbi tells him how the photograph came from a home in the north of Israel that was demolished during the war in 1948 after the creation of the state of Israel. He tells how the people fled their homes and nothing was left but a few remnants like this picture, found in a crack on the floor by one of the Zionist soldiers. I can't remember how the rabbi came to be in possession of it, but I think it said that he kept it to remind himself of the capacity of humans to do harm to one another.

"But these people were the enemy!" Mitch protested.

"Enemy, schmenemy," the rabbi replied. "This was a FAMILY."

As I sat on the plane with tears rolling down my face, I found my crisis of faith abating somewhat. This was the kind of faith I could stay on board with.

Visiting the West Bank

Author's Note: My visit to the West Bank was probably the single most powerful and moving part of my entire three-week trip, but I didn't get around to writing this entry until two months after I'd been home in the U.S. (Although this entry is dated June 7, the day this all happened, I'm writing it in early August.) I'm not sure why I kept avoiding and procrastinating writing this, probably because I know it's such a charged subject and because there was just so much to process and write about that I didn't even know where to start. I settled on simply writing a narrative about my experience and allowing the reader to "listen in" on my raw thoughts and feelings as I encountered the things I did. This entry became so long that I decided to divide it into several sections with different headers, to help break the story up. I hope you'll stick with me and read through the entire experience; all of it seemed too significant to edit any of it out. - Tracy

Planning my visit

When I was first doing research for my pilgrimage to Israel, I Googled "Bethlehem," since it was definitely one of the top Christian sites I'd want to visit -- the site of Jesus's birth. I discovered, to my surprise, that Bethlehem was not in Israel at all, but in the West Bank.

"Oh my gosh, Bethlehem's in the West Bank? Can I even GO there?" I thought, as images of suicide bombers and gunfire from the evening news flashed through my mind.

Then I checked myself. Maybe the West Bank was like Harlem in New York, or Roxbury in Boston -- places that lots of people said you "shouldn't go," and that were "scary," but the people who said you shouldn't go there were mostly white middle-class people and their fears had a lot to do with uncomfortability around racial and economic class difference or just downright inaccurate stereotypes. I'd been to Harlem and didn't feel unsafe there; I'd been to Roxbury and didn't feel unsafe there either. Granted, I didn't walk around those places alone at night, but I found that a lot of the hype was just that -- hype.

So I started asking around about the West Bank, and the general consensus I got from all the American Christian people I knew was that it was perfectly safe to go to Bethlehem and visit the Church of the Nativity. Thousands of tourists do it every day, and there are even buses that run from Jerusalem to Manger Square, they told me. I decided I definitely wanted to go to Bethlehem, but figured I'd work out all the details of that trip once I got to Jerusalem, since it was close enough to be a day trip from Jerusalem.

On the day that Rachel and Kevin and I went to the Dead Sea, they told me about a trip they'd taken to the West Bank a few days before from Jerusalem. "Oh yeah, we just took one of the Arab buses from East Jerusalem and got off in Bethlehem," Rachel said, "and we just flagged down a taxi driver and asked him to show us around."

"We're not really interested in all the religious sites," they told the driver, "we just want to know what life is like for you under the occupation." So he took them all around the West Bank on a four-hour tour of Bethlehem and Hebron, telling them all about life in the West Bank and the Israeli settlers confiscating their land and the tension and violence and physical separation barrier walls at Abraham's Tomb in Hebron between the Jewish and Muslim sides. 

"It was just so crazy," Rachel said, "because here were these people, praying in two languages that sound so very similar, and venerating the same prophet, and yet they had to have these bullet-proof barriers between them while they prayed."

The driver told them that as a Palestinian, he was not allowed to go on the Jewish side of the wall. "You can go, since you are American," he said, "but we're not allowed over there." He told them how the "security" at Abraham's tomb was blatantly biased, with the Palestinians required to go through multiple checkpoints and metal detectors and scans, while the Israelis could walk right up after going through one single scanner. "They do it just to wear us down," he said, "to make things difficult for us."

The Jewish side of Abraham's Tomb (Rachel's picture) 

The Muslim side of Abraham's Tomb (Rachel's picture)

After hearing about their trip, my appetite was whetted to learn more, and I knew that I could not do what so many Christian tourists do and simply go and visit the Church of the Nativity and return back to Jerusalem without really engaging with the local Palestinian population. Given my penchant for work among homeless people and advocating for people on the margins of society, I felt that I wouldn't be being true to my faith to take that kind of isolated, spectator approach to my visit to the West Bank. Rachel and Kevin said they'd gotten their taxi driver's number and that they were sure he'd be willing to show me around. I called Rachel a few days later to ask for his phone number, but ultimately chickened out of calling him. I just didn't feel comfortable as a woman traveling alone to call up some random taxi driver and ask him to show me around. If I'd had someone with me, I might have done it, but not by myself. 

So I started investigating tours. Rachel had told me there was also a group called "Breaking the Silence," comprised of ex-Israeli soldiers, who give tours of the West Bank. This sounded fascinating to me, so I looked them up, but there were no tours scheduled to go before I would be leaving Jerusalem. So, I started looking around for other tour groups. All throughout this trip, I had bristled at the presence of tour buses packed with tourists taking pictures and generally looking very out of place. I cringed at the thought of being "one of them" for this excursion to the West Bank, but decided I'd have to just bite the bullet and do the tour bus thing for this one day, to give me a somewhat safe way to explore the West Bank. I settled on going with a company called Green Olive Tours, on an eight-hour day trip from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. I wished I could visit Hebron and Abraham's Tomb as Rachel and Kevin had, but that tour only went on Thursdays, and I was flying out from Tel Aviv Thursday evening. So, I settled on just going to Bethlehem. 

The tour description said the Church of the Nativity would be included in the tour, so I knew I'd get a chance to see it, but it also said we'd see a refugee camp and get to see the Wall up close and some of the Banksy graffiti art on it. All these things sounded like the same kind of tour that Rachel and Kevin had gotten from their taxi driver, so I decided to go for it. It seemed like I would get to see pretty much everything I wanted to see from this tour.

Arriving in the West Bank

**A note on pictures: None of the pictures in the first part of this entry are my own; I have found them online and given credit where possible. I did not start taking pictures until after I was in the West Bank and past the security checkpoint and had asked if it was ok to take pictures; before then I thought maybe I could get in trouble with "the authorities" for trying to take pictures.**

Photo from TripAdvisor

Tuesday morning I got up early and made my way to the Notre Dame Hotel in Jerusalem (pictured at right), just outside the Old City, which was listed as the pick-up spot for the tour. I had reserved my spot online, so I hadn't actually spoken to anyone with this organization before I showed up, and I essentially knew nothing about the logistics of getting to the West Bank. I assumed a big tour bus -- of the same kind that passed me constantly for the thirty minutes I waited outside the hotel (I actually got there EARLY cause I didn't want to miss it!) -- would arrive to pick up the folks on the Bethlehem tour.

I had asked the guard at the gate to the hotel where the Green Olive Tours picked up, and he pointed me to a spot on the corner. I stood there for a while, noticing two young college-aged-looking girls sitting with their hiking backpacks stuffed full and speaking in English with British accents. I wondered if they were going to be on the same tour. After thirty minutes passed and it was getting closer and closer to pick-up time and no one else had arrived to wait with us, I was starting to wonder if I was in the right place.

"Are y'all waiting for the Green Olive Tours trip to Bethlehem?" I asked the two girls. They affirmed that they were, and we shared our confusion at the lack of other tourists present. "I guess this is the right spot?" I said, looking around and peering at the tour buses that kept pulling in to the circle up by the hotel lobby and then departing without so much as a second glance at the three of us.

Suddenly, a yellow cab pulled halfway up onto the curb in front of us. The driver rolled down the passenger window and asked brusquely, "You are waiting for Green Olive Tours?"

The girls and I looked at each other. 

"Yes," I said. 

"Get in," he said quickly, motioning to the back seat.

I looked back at the girls again. What? This random cab driver is telling us to just get in with him? Where's the tour bus? What the heck is going on? 

The driver put the car in park and jumped out with a piece of paper in his hand. "Tracy?" he asked, looking down at his list. "Yes, that's me," I said, assuming he really must be with this company if he had a print-out of my registration. He identified the other girls as well and started throwing their luggage into the trunk. I don't think I would have gotten in the car with him if those other two girls hadn't been with me, but I figured, okay, what the heck, here we go...!

We got in the car, and the driver spurted off on a wild maniac dash through the streets of Jerusalem, dodging cars and traffic signs and any other obstacles in his way.

"I take you to the checkpoint, and then you meet your guide on the other side," he said.

"Um, what? You're going to drop us off?" somebody said. Maybe it was me.

"Yes, I take you to the checkpoint. Your guide will be waiting on the other side. You will see him. His name is Yamen. He is a brown-skinned man with a shaved head."

Oh, great. What specific identifying information! I pictured a whole line of brown-skinned men with shaved heads standing around on the other side of the checkpoint and the three of us very white girls trying to figure out which one was Yamen.

The cab driver pulled up in front of the main Jerusalem-Bethlehem checkpoint, bid us farewell, and zoomed off. The girls and I stared up at the monstrous concrete complex in front of us, surrounded by iron bars, with only one way in that we could see, up a long ramp. "Um, oh BOY!" I said out loud, looking at the girls, assessing their general comfort level. They also seemed wary of this whole thing, having expected, as I did, a tour bus with air conditioning to safely escort us across the border in the hands of some seasoned local expert tour guides. "Oh my God," one of the girls said as we walked through the long corridor and into the checkpoint area, "this is the real thing."

Entering the Bethlehem checkpoint. (Not my picture)

It was around 9 a.m., so the morning crowds had already dissipated and the checkpoint was almost empty when we went through. We all had our passports out as we approached the guard timidly, expecting a severe round of harassment about our intentions in crossing the border. Without so much as a second glance at us, the guard waved us on through, without even the pretense of looking at our passports. We didn't ask any questions and just kept walking. After we got out on the other side and started down the next barred-off walkway, the British girls laughed at how easy that had been for us to cross. "Oh, well, I mean, I guess they could tell we're tourists. I mean, we don't exactly look like terrorists," one of them said. We all laughed, but I couldn't stop myself from saying, "Yes, but what does a terrorist 'look' like?"

After working on the film Divided We Fall and meeting many brown-skinned people in the U.S. who were mistaken for "terrorists" after 9/11 based on just such a stereotype of the Palestinian Arab "terrorist," it was a strange thing to now be encountering those very Palestinian Arabs that everyone was so afraid of and that were at the root of the anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiment in America. I had this sneaking suspicion that even if the identity wasn't mistaken -- these really WERE Arabs, not Indians or Mexicans or Bangladeshis or Pakistanis -- that the stereotype was still incorrect. And yet, years of conditioning via the media and movies and the general culture in America to be afraid of Arabs -- particularly in -- GASP -- THE WEST BANK -- still made my stomach tighten a bit as we crossed that border.

Any fears I had were soon assuaged when we met Yamen, our brown-skinned, bald-headed guide, who was indeed waiting for us on the other side, with a huge smile on his face and a bubbling enthusiasm. He quickly picked us out, introduced himself, and motioned us to follow him a few steps away from the area where all the cabs were waiting to pick up passengers.

Taxis waiting on the West Bank side of the checkpoint (not my photo)

"So, my name is Yamen, I live here in Bethlehem, and we're going to show you a bit about what's going on here today," he said. "People don't realize what's going on here. But we're going to show you. Now, while you're here in the West Bank, you need to learn a little Arabic. So, I'm going to teach you -- yalla. That means, "Let's go," or "hurry up," like, "Come on, let's go." Ok. Ready? You need a little Arabic. So. Yalla!" 

He bounded off down the street, with the three of us and another white woman from Belgium who was staying in the West Bank for a few days and had joined in on our trip tagging along behind him. I noticed that he was wearing a t-shirt that said, "Merry Christmas, Bethlehem!" on it in French and English, showing a cartoon of the Wall and a metal detector with a man with a large sword inspecting the shepherds and the three wise men on camels. I laughed to myself and thought, "I like this guy already."

First Encounters: Settlements and The Wall

Our first stop was just down the street from the checkpoint where we'd entered Bethlehem, where Yamen pointed out to us an Israeli settlement in the distance. 

"You see? The settlers are over there," he said, pointing. "That is Palestinian land. They just come and take it and build their settlements on it, and the Israeli soldiers protect them."

"Can we take pictures?" I asked, worrying that at any moment an Israeli soldier would show up and confiscate my memory card.

"Of course," he said, nonchalantly. He went on to talk more about settlements and how many Israeli citizens are living -- illegally, according to international law -- in the West Bank. 

"Obama talks about 1967 borders," he said, referring to President Obama's speech in mid-May calling for the recognition of a Palestinian state using the 1967 borders after the cease-fire at the end of the Six-Day War. "If you want 1967 borders, all those people have got to go," he said, pointing to an immense suburban settlement full of towering apartment complexes.

"So what do you think will happen in September?" one of the British girls asked, echoing my question to the American Israeli rabbi solider in Jerusalem just two nights before.

Yamen shrugged in much the same way as Bob had. "Nothing will change," he said. "These people aren't going anywhere. You want 1967 borders, they'd have to leave. That's not going to happen."

We then walked along "The Wall" for quite aways. (Unlike my Jewish Israeli guides on Sunday's excursion across the border, the folks in the West Bank had no trouble identifying where the Wall was!) As we looked at the countless graffiti scrawled on the Wall (not present on the Israeli side), Yamen pointed out all the Banksy art. "There, that's Banksy!" he'd say, with an air of pride, seemingly excited that the anonymous British graffiti artist had brought publicity and attention to the Wall through his art. "With Love and Kisses - Nothing Lasts Forever," said a ribbon that Yamen told us was Banksy art. Not too far from there, someone had scrawled over a figure of a man standing facing the wall, "Once a human rights teacher was born in Bethlehem." 

Much of the graffiti in this area played on the irony of the subjugation and oppression taking place in the city of Jesus's birth. Yamen told us that most of the graffiti was done not by locals, but by visiting tourists -- and indeed, much of it was in English. It was obvious that lots of Christian groups had not lost the connection between the city of Jesus's birth and the people who are being oppressed there today. "Jesus wept," someone had scrawled on one part of the wall, and in another area someone had stenciled the words to Ephesians 2:14 - "For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility." The British girls and I were going nuts with our cameras, taking pictures of one set of graffiti art after the other. I felt very touristy doing so, and somewhat silly, taking pictures of writing on a wall. Surely there was something more "artistic" for me to shoot? But the messages on the Wall were just so compelling, I couldn't stop myself. There was more than one allusion to Berlin, with phrases like "this wall must fall" and "Apocalypse now! Berlin 89!" Idealized murals of the city of Jerusalem showed transcendent hands holding a ladder with a heart descending from the sky as a dove flew over the city with an olive branch in its mouth, and a large Christmas tree was depicted encircled by a large, towering concrete wall. 

I couldn't help but make the Berlin connections myself as I walked along this all-too-real wall. I remembered when my sister and I visited Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin during our trip to Germany in 2005. The checkpoint was now a tourist destination, a museum nearby depicting history of Cold War-Era East Germany. Across the street from the museum was a food court area called, cutely enough, "Snackpoint Charlie." The frivolity with which that site was now treated in the tourist market was striking compared to this real-life version of an active separation wall. I found myself hoping that someday my children and I could visit "Snackpoint Bethlehem," when the West Bank Wall would be no more than a museum. Perhaps my children will one day be given pieces of the West Bank Wall in high school as an honor when they show leadership potential, as I was given a piece of the Berlin Wall in 10th grade.

Aida Refugee Camp

We continued on to the Aida Refugee Camp, where Palestinian families have been living since 1948 when the state of Israel was first created. It now looked like a fairly well-developed area of apartments -- at least in contrast to the images of people living in tents that the phrase "refugee camp" conjured up in my mind. Yamen explained that for the first seven years after 1948, the people had indeed lived in tents, but eventually began to build more solid structures as it became apparent they were not going to be able to return to their homeland anytime soon. Many of the people living in the refugee camps are Palestinians who fled from their homes in what is now Israel during the fighting and violence that ensued after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. These families were told they would be able to return to their homes after the violence stopped, but those promises have yet to be fulfilled. There is now a third generation of refugees growing up in this camp and others like it across the West Bank.

The thing I couldn't quite figure out was WHY these people weren't allowed to return to their homes -- some of them still have the keys to their homes, now on Israeli land, that their families had lived in for hundreds of years. The Palestinian people who did NOT flee the violence and remained in the land that became Israel eventually were given Israeli citizenship -- like the many Arab people I had encountered in Nazareth and Jerusalem. It didn't make sense to me -- so these refugees were punished just because they fled from the violence and did not want to be killed? What if they just wanted to go back to their homes and were willing to be Israeli citizens and didn't want to try to make Israel back into a Palestinian state? Nope, they still wouldn't be allowed back in, was the answer I consistently got from different sources, because the Israeli authorities were worried if they let the Palestinian refugees back in, the Arabs would become a demographic majority in the state of Israel.

The government's agenda is to preserve Israel's existence as a "Jewish state"... which it certainly can't be if the majority of its citizens aren't Jewish. So for that reason and that reason only (from what I could gather), three generations of people are living in refugee camps on blocks of land that supposedly belong to them -- "Palestinian territories" -- but where they are not allowed to build or plant crops and where even their water supply is controlled by Israeli authorities and is often cut off at random, for no particular reason (or worse, for a particular reason -- to benefit Israelis at the expense of Palestinians. For more on the "unnecessary drought" in the West Bank, see my fellow FTE Ministry Fellow Staci Imes' blog entry, "The Senseless Drought." Staci spent three months in Israel and Palestine this summer as her Ministry Fellowship project.)

When I say the refugee camp looked "well-developed," please understand that that is a relative term. It was certainly well-developed in comparison to a tent city, but it made even the worst of Section 8 housing projects in the U.S. look like the Taj Mahal. Concrete slab buildings butted up against one another, and livestock often lived right underneath people's homes in cages since there was no green land for farming. (The grid-like gated area under the building pictured at right housed a whole hoard of goats, for example.) The entire place was a concrete slab; I didn't see one blade of grass the entire time we were in the camp. Young children ran through the streets and smiled shyly at us, and Yamen pointed out that they had nowhere to play -- no playgrounds, no green grass to run around in -- and said they were all coming to him asking for toys and things because often he would bring them gifts when he came through here.

He showed us a school in the refugee camp run by the United Nations that was boarded up on one side because of all the gunfire that had been directed at the school by Israeli soldiers from the other side of the Wall during the second intifada in 2001-04 (approximate dates). The bullet holes were still visible in the doorway to the school (pictured below), and that entire side of the building had no windows. Why were Israeli soldiers shooting at an elementary school? "Some of the children were throwing rocks at the Wall," Yamen explained. 

On the outer wall of the school was a beautiful mural of the Kabba, the holiest site in Islam in Mecca and the site of Muslim pilgrimage, and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, where I had been just two days before. Yamen told us that it is now very difficult for Palestinians in the West Bank to travel to Jerusalem, which many Palestinians consider their capital. "I haven't been in Jerusalem since 1999," he told us, even though Bethlehem is less than six miles from the heart of Jerusalem.

Now I know my A, B, Cs... for today, at least

After our trek through the refugee camp on foot, we made our way to Yamen's car, a six-door extra-long vehicle that could seat eight and had "Limousina" plastered across the front windshield in stickers. We all piled in and Yamen gave us a driving tour in his very un-air-conditioned car of the greater Bethlehem area, singing along in Arabic and English at the top of his lungs to the different songs on the radio. He pointed out various shops, restaurants, historic sites, and the "borders" between the different "areas" in the West Bank -- Area A (full Palestinian control), Area B (shared Israeli-Palestinian control) and Area C (full Israeli control). The boundaries of these areas were marked by short concrete pylons sitting on the sidewalks (pictured below).

"Um, what?" I asked, incredulously. "That's IT?? That's what marks the boundaries between these different areas of control, and yet there's this huge wall around the whole West Bank to mark THAT boundary?"

Yes, well, apparently these boundaries are a bit more, shall we say... mobile. Yamen explained that these concrete blocks would change color or move on a regular basis and an area that had been Area A (full Palestinian control) would suddenly become Area C (full Israeli control) and the Israelis would start building a settlement on that land.

On our tour, Yamen took us to an area just outside of Bethlehem that had recently been designated Area C and where construction was beginning on a new settlement. Just down the road from that site, he pointed out a completed Israeli settlement, which we could expect that other area to look like soon. The Wall (which is still under construction) is being built in such a way that it essentially annexes these lands for Israel, putting the settlements on the "Israeli" side of the Wall and cutting off access to those areas for Palestinians.

Israeli settlement near Bethlehem, with barbed wire where the Wall will eventually go

As Yamen told us about this, I couldn't believe my ears. Well, I could, but I couldn't. So the Israeli government can just come in and... excuse me, but I can't seem to find a better word for this... f*** with the boundaries of what land Palestinians actually have control over, and no one does anything about it? Why don't the Palestinians do anything about it?

Well, really, what can they do? The Palestinians don't have a real government or a state, and most of the areas that are actually SAID to be under "full Palestinian control" are only the central parts of the cities. The areas that Palestinians actually control are a bunch of isolated geographic pockets that aren't even contiguous (that is, they don't share a border or touch each other), so they are completely surrounded by areas under Israeli control. All the transactions we made in the West Bank took place in shekels, the Israeli currency. And yet, we left the state of Israel when we left Jerusalem and crossed the checkpoint... but we weren't really in another country.

It was all very confusing to me and didn't seem to make sense; my mind didn't have a place to put "occupied territory that isn't part of any country" in my system of categorization. I began to understand where the so-called "terrorist" violence in the West Bank comes from. If I lived there, I'd probably want to start shooting at Israeli soldiers, too. What do you do when you are rendered politically impotent and are unable to organize your people in any meaningful way to work for change? What else is there to do but turn to violence? I found my strong belief in non-violence being tested. I didn't want to think that violence was the answer, but I literally could not see any other option for these people. I was about ready to sign up to join a revolutionary army to overthrow the state of Israel.

Yamen then took us to see a section of the Wall that was still under construction. As we drove, I was surprised to notice that I actually recognized the road we were on -- it was the same road we'd taken when I was with the Israeli folks for the interfaith meeting at the restaurant in "no-man's land." Then we turned on the road to Beit Jala that the Israelis had pointed out to me on Sunday, saying, "See that road? We can't go down there." And two days later, here I was, going down that very road with a Palestinian guide! I realized what a unique position I was in as a visiting American, able to travel freely between the ares that were restricted to the people who actually live here.

I was surprised to see, as we looked at the Wall from this high vantage point, that it was encircling the very road I'd driven on from Jerusalem in the car with the Israelis on Sunday -- the same road where I'd noticed what looked like a large sound barrier and asked if it was "The Wall," and been given a negative answer by my Israeli car-mates. Well, turns out that "sound barrier" actually WAS part of the Wall. I don't think my Israeli hosts were intentionally lying about it; I think they really didn't know that it was part of the Wall. It certainly looks very different on the Israeli side than it does on the Palestinian side.

View of the Wall from the vantage point of the road to Beit Jala

View of the wall from the Israeli side, driving on the road seen in the picture above

The Wall from the Palestinian side -- all concrete slab, no nice stone ornamentation

Later in the day, Yamen drove us down a "shared road" that both Israelis and Palestinians could use that ran through the West Bank to some of the Israeli settlements and showed us a bus stop where Israeli settlers waited for buses to Jerusalem, where most of them work. Orthodox Jewish women in long skirts pushing baby carriages waited for the bus, surrounded by several Israeli soldiers with large machine guns. 

"See, the Israeli soldiers come out here to protect the settlers, because people here shoot at them and throw things at them," Yamen explained.

I was livid. Something about the image of these women standing here in a land they do not even own and being "protected" by the military forces who were illegally occupying this land, really set me off. I wanted to throw rocks at them! Shouldn't someone be "protecting" the Palestinians from these settlers instead of the other way around???? I began to feel a deep anger building within me toward the entire state of Israel, at its very existence, and at the twisted theology that made these people feel they were entitled to this land because God gave it to their ancestors over 5,000 years ago.

Church of the Nativity

Our visit to the Church of the Nativity was strangely anticlimactic for me. After being bombarded with all this information about the injustices happening in the West Bank, to just saunter off to visit the church seemed rather unimportant. We met a different guide at the church, who took us through on a very orderly timeline, to have us back to Yamen in time for lunch.

I joined the crowds in line to touch the spot where tradition says Jesus was born, and after I knelt down and touched it and stood up, an Orthodox priest handed me a little paper icon of the Nativity, like my own personal certificate of completion for kissing the spot where Jesus's bloody body rushed out of his mother's womb. 

Outside the adjacent Roman Catholic chapel was a small plaque that said, in English and German, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. (St. John 1.14) When dark is the world today, This Child brings the world the light." It was particularly poignant given all the things I had just seen, and I began to understand that Jesus lives not only on the streets of Boston and New York and Atlanta where I had encountered him in the faces of homeless people. Jesus lives in a refugee camp in Palestine. 

We left the church and met back up with Yamen, who took us on a walking tour of Manger Square and the market (sooq) there. As we walked, he asked me what I was doing on my trip to Israel, and I said I was on a pilgrimage. He looked somewhat alarmed.

"You do realize this is not a religious tour, right?" he said. He later told me that he often had "religious people" get angry when they realized that this tour was not just about seeing the church but about seeing the realities of life for Palestinians in the West Bank. "Why are you showing us all these things?" they'd ask angrily, when Yamen led them into the refugee camp. "I don't want to get into this 'political' stuff; I just want to see the church."

I assured him that no, I was well aware that this tour was about getting a taste of Palestinian life under the occupation, and that to me, that was a religious pursuit.

"Personally, I don't think I'd be being true to my faith as a Christian if I were to come here and NOT meet the people and see the injustices that are going on here," I told him. "For me to come here and turn a blind eye to what's happening to the local people and just go to 'see the church' would pretty much contradict everything that Christianity is about."

"Ah, I get it," he said, nodding. "Yeah, I know what you mean."

Beautiful Resistance

After a wonderful lunch at a local Palestinian restaurant, we went back to the refugee camp to meet with the general manager of the Al-Rowwad Cultural and Theater Training Center, Dr. Abdelfattah Abusrour. Dr. Abusrour, who appeared to be in his late 40s, was born in Aida Refugee Camp and left to get an education in Europe. He talked about experiences in school when administrative people tried to figure out what to put in his "nationality" box on his forms. 

"They listed me as Jordanian," he said. "I took it to them and said, 'I am not a Jordainian. I have never lived in Jordan. I am a Palestinian living under Israeli occupation.' So they took it back and changed my nationality to 'undetermined.' I do not have a country. It's like I do not exist."

After living abroad, Dr. Abusrour decided to come back to his homeland, even to the refugee camp itself, to work with his people and help motivate the children to what he calls "beautiful resistance" to the Israeli occupation -- through artistic expression in visual art, theater, and music. His organization is committed to non-violence, a stance he had chosen because of all the negatives he had seen come out of violence, even violence in resistance to the occupation, even violence "for a good cause." 

"Violence is never the solution," Dr. Abusrour said. "Violence only creates more violence. I call my work 'beautiful resistance,' which some people take offense at because they think I am saying that other kinds of resistance are not beautiful. Well, I don't think they are. Violence is never beautiful, and I want our children to realize that they have another option besides violence to resist the occupation."

Dr. Abusrour spoke to us in his office, where I noticed he had posters of Martin Luther King, Jr., Ghandi, and Mother Teresa hanging up over his desk. He offered us tea and showed us this 10-minute video (below) about the work of Al-Rowwad that brought tears to my eyes. 

When the video was over, we had some time to talk with him about his work. After many questions and answers about the specifics of what Al-Rowwad does, about its history, about his personal history, and about his opinions on a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine, I changed the topic a bit. I asked him -- and Yamen, who was with us -- how they could keep going every day, how life under the occupation didn't completely tear them down.

"What gives you hope?" I asked, remembering a question my friend Valarie Kaur asked all her interviewees for the film Divided We Fall that we worked on together. After talking in detail about their experiences dealing with post-9/11 hate crimes and being at the brunt of violence and discrimination, Valarie would ask, as a final question, what gave these people hope. I sat in on some of the interviews for the film and I was always impressed with how that question changed the tenor of the conversation and the atmosphere in the room. Now, sitting in the office of a Palestinian man in a refugee camp in the West Bank, the answer to that question seemed more important than ever.

Dr. Abusrour took a deep breath and sat back. The answer to this question did not come as quickly as the sound-bite speeches about what his program does that he has probably delivered thousands of times.

"We do not have the luxury of despair," he said slowly. "We can't. We must keep going. For our children. We have to give them the belief that their future can be better."

As if on cue, his younger daughter, who seemed to be around six years old and who had been running in and out of the office throughout our time with him, came running into the room squealing, evidently having been the brunt of a squabble with her older sister and the other kids who were playing in the next room. She crawled onto her dad's lap and buried her head in his chest, looking up occasionally and peering at us -- especially me, it seemed -- with deep beautiful brown eyes.

As her eyes held mine, I thought about the young girl I'd encountered on the streets of Turkey during my foreign study in college who had motivated me to begin outreach to homeless people. This girl appeared to me as a similar icon, as a manifestation of God's presence, as a messenger or prophet. What will her life be like growing up here? I thought. And what am I going to do to make a difference for her life and the lives of thousands of other children here?

"For me, I am a Muslim, so I turn to my faith for hope," Dr. Abusrour continued. "I really do believe that ultimately injustice will not prevail. I believe that one day all of us will be able to live together in peace."

Yamen shrugged off my question with a smile and a yalla -- it was time for us to go, and Yamen didn't seem to be the deeply philosophical type. Instead, he wanted to make sure he had time to take us out for a Palestinian beer before we had to head back to Jerusalem.

Life goes on

Despite the harsh realities of many aspects of life in the West Bank, life does go on. Palestinians are able to live some semblance of normal lives -- within the narrow confines of the spaces they are allowed to inhabit. Yamen took us out for a beer at a local bar after our tour was over, proudly telling us that this beer was locally brewed in Tabeh in the West Bank. I was amazed by what an optimistic and positive and friendly attitude Yamen had, even after spending his time showing people the depressing realities of his city week after week.

At the bar with Yamen (center). British girls in the middle, Belgian woman on the right

As we wrapped things up at the pub, Yamen took a call on his cell phone and then announced with a grin, "Good news. The driver from Jerusalem is going to pick you up here so you don't have to go back through the checkpoint."

In a short white, another yellow taxi pulled up outside the bar, similar to the one that had driven us to the Bethlehem checkpoint that morning. The Israeli driver got out and greeted Yamen warmly with a big hug and a pat on the back. I can't remember whether they spoke in English, Arabic, or Hebrew, but it was the equivalent of a "Hey, what's up, man?" kind of friendly guys greeting. It was nice to see the way Green Olive Tours (the company who organized our tour) -- run by an Israeli Jew -- is bringing together people from both sides of the Wall and building friendship through a shared desire to expose people to the injustices happening in the West Bank.

As we drove away, I couldn't help but feel a bit strange knowing that we, with our American and British passports, could breeze freely between the West Bank and Jerusalem, but Yamen hadn't been able to go there for years and probably wouldn't be able to go back anytime soon. The image of Yamen standing on that sidewalk and waving to us as we left will stay with me for a long time.

Interfaith dialogue in "No-Man's Land"

On Sunday evening, I went to a meeting of the "Circle of Light and Hope," an interfaith dialogue group that is part of the Interfaith Encounter Association, an organization "dedicated to promoting peace in the Middle East through interfaith dialogue and cross-cultural study." I was put in touch with Bob, a rabbi who was one of the chairs of the group, through the Elijah Interfaith Institute, my primary point of contact for the interfaith connections I made while on this trip. 

Bob is an American rabbi from Ohio who had moved to Israel in the early part of the 21st century, just before the second intifada. He has a fondness for geology, and this interfaith group of Israeli Jews and Arab Muslims spawned out of his friendship with Taleb, an Arab Muslim man who was also a geologist. (After buying a sampler of geological specimens from the Holy Land from Taleb at the meeting that night, saying I would give it to my husband since he loves rocks, Bob invited me to come up to his apartment after the meeting to "see my rocks," showing off several lighted cases of geologic specimens from around the world.)

As we corresponded about meeting logistics beforehand, Bob told me that the group's discussion topic for that night would be "Jesus: What each religion teaches about him, and what each religion believes about a Messiah." He swore to me that they did not pick this topic because an American Christian seminary student would be with them, but that Taleb had suggested it at their last meeting before they even knew I'd be coming. But he did ask me to speak on this topic "from a Christian perspective," since he said it was often difficult to find Christians to participate in their interfaith dialogue group. This was fascinating to me given the over-population of Christians in most interfaith groups in the U.S., but again I was reminded of the very different demographics of this land -- Christians are not the dominant majority here the way they are in the U.S.

On Sunday afternoon I walked to Bob's apartment in Jerusalem to meet up with the group that was going to the meeting. We piled into a car with three other Israeli Jews and headed off to a restaurant just past the border between Israel and the West Bank. Bob explained to me that the group had chosen this particular spot to meet since it was in a sort of "no-man's land" between Israel and the West Bank -- it was an area to which both Israeli citizens and Palestinians could travel freely. Since Israeli citizens are not allowed in the Palestinian territories and Palestinians are not allowed into Jerusalem without a serious vetting process and a permit, this was a compromise zone where all parties would be able to meet together. I thought of Ghassan Manasra in Nazareth and the physical danger that interfaith work had brought to him and his family, and the military metaphor of an interfaith dialogue in "no-man's land" seemed rather appropriate.

As we drove down the highway toward our destination, my Israeli hosts pointed out various landmarks to me -- there's such-and-such monastery, there's so-and-so church. As we got further outside of Jerusalem, I noticed what appeared to be a large sound barrier wall beside the interstate. 

"Is that 'The Wall?'" I asked, referring to the infamous separation barrier between Israel and the West Bank. 

"Um... hmm... no, I don't think so," was the consensus from my Israeli travel mates. "No, that's not it. You'll see it when we get to the restaurant, you can see it from there."

As we drove up to the restaurant area, we passed a turn-off for a road into Beit Jala, an area in the West Bank. "You see that road there?" Bob asked. "That goes to Beit Jala and the West Bank. We're not allowed to go down that road."

"Yeah, but I was in Bethlehem the other day," a Jewish Israeli woman with a strong New York accent piped up from the back seat. "I was with some people and we went to the church. I know we're not supposed to be there, but I went anyway. They can't stop me from going there."

We pulled in to the restaurant parking lot and a minor quarrel ensued as all of my travel mates argued amongst themselves as to where "The Wall" was, trying to find a place where it was visible to point it out to me. "It's over there!" "No, it's right here!" "No, that's it... you can see it there." "No, that's not it." Finally it was determined that it was actually about 600 feet from where we stood. "Oh, there it is" -- right above our heads.

We walked in to the restaurant and found our Palestinian dialogue partners already seated and waiting for us. I was introduced around, and a few other people who hadn't been to the group before were introduced, including a young Palestinian college student who was studying in Jerusalem. As we talked, Taleb, the other co-chair, translated what we were saying into Arabic for the few Palestinian folks who did not speak English.

After our dialogue, we heard a brief presentation from a young Jewish Israeli man who was working with young adults in Jerusalem on a project called "Oil for Peace," which was about bringing "Jews and Arabs, both religious and secular" together to cultivate olive oil. (The organization has a website at www.oil4peace.org, but unfortunately for me and my English-speaking readers, seems to be only in Hebrew at the moment.)

At the end of the day, we drove back toward Jerusalem and encountered an amazingly beautiful sunset over the mountainous landscape of the West Bank. I pulled out my camera and took pictures, to the "oohs" and "aahs" of my fellow travelers, and stern instructions for me to send them a copy of these pictures!!! 

As we re-entered the Jerusalem area, we came to a checkpoint on the road, where several soldiers were pacing about and checking cars on their way through. A car a few spaces in front of us was being searched thoroughly; the soldiers opening the trunk and sifting through the stuff inside. I started to fumble for my passport in my bag, to be ready and prepared. 

"So, are these Israeli soldiers or Palestinian soldiers?" I asked naively.

"Oh, they're Israeli, of course," Bob replied. "All soldiers at the checkpoints are Israeli."

I pondered this for a minute, feeling somewhat confused that the Palestinians would not be involved in patrolling the borders of their own land, if this land was indeed the "Palestinian territories."

Finally it was our turn. We drove up and Bob rolled down the window on my (passenger) side and waved at the guard who approached our window. "Shalom!" he said cheerfully, and the soldier waved us on through. No asking to see ID, no searching the car, nothing. I awkwardly shoved my passport back into my bag. 

Bob had mentioned to me in an email as we were coordinating our trip that he is also a soldier in the anti-terror unit of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Perhaps these guards knew him? I was surprised by the ease with which we passed, compared to the cars in front of us. Was it our Israeli license tags? I couldn't make heads or tails of any of it.

After we got back to Jerusalem and Bob showed me his rocks, he called me a cab and walked downstairs to wait for it with me. As we stood there, I started to ask him about his experience in Israel, how long he'd lived here, etc. Given that he was a solider with the IDF, I was curious as to his perspective on the murmurings in the news about the recognition of a Palestinian state by the U.N. in September. (I had arrived in Israel on the same day that Obama made his speech about the Middle East advocating for the creation of a Palestinian state.)

"So what do you think will happen in September?" I asked him.

"Bah," he said, shrugging it off with a rather indifferent look. "Nothing will happen. Nothing will really change."

"Do you think it will start another wave of violence, maybe a third intifada?" I asked.

"Eh," he said, again sounding nonchalant. "Maybe. I hope not. Who knows what will happen." 

He got quiet for a minute, then volunteered without any prompting, "People can say whatever they want about the Wall. But you have to understand where it's coming from. A bunch of extremists had holed up in Beit Jala -- that neighborhood we drove by today on the way to our meeting -- and they were shooting at us. Most of the people over there are really wonderful people, like the folks we met with tonight. The problem is when these extremists come in and start creating violence. You can say whatever you want about the Wall. But what else were we going to do? They were shooting at us."

I found myself wishing I had a lot more time to talk with Bob and to meet other Israeli soldiers to get their perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I had a feeling, as with the military in my own country, that they were a more diverse and complex group than anti-war activists often made them out to be. But perhaps that's for another trip. 

On memoirs, old friends, and parenting

I spent most of the flight over to Israel reading the memoir Bread of Angels, written by my former colleague Stephanie Saldaña, about a year she spent in Syria from 2004-05. Stephanie and I worked together at the Pluralism Project at Harvard in the 2003-04 academic year -- my first year of three at Harvard Divinity School and her second of two.

I always liked Stephanie and felt drawn to her -- she had a calming spirit about her and an amazingly sweet smile -- but we were never close friends... not even friends, really -- more like co-workers. I knew her on an acquaintance level. When graduation neared and I asked her what her plans were for the fall, she said she'd been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study Muslim understandings of Jesus in Damascus, Syria. "Wow, cool," I said, or something of the sort, and that was about it. 

Stephanie

After she graduated, I lost touch with her -- I'd hear an occasional update through the Pluralism Project staff who'd been in touch, but we were never in touch directly. Years later, I saw in a Pluralism Project newsletter that she had written a book about that year in Damascus. I found her on Facebook and discovered that she was also married and had a son. One day I noticed a comment on her Facebook status that said, "Praying for the people in this city that I love, Jerusalem." I did a quick news search and saw that a bomb had gone off in Jerusalem that day. And I noticed that she was living in East Jerusalem.

So when I started to plan this trip, I got in touch with her. I told her I would be coming to Israel this summer and I'd love to reconnect with her. I asked her for advice on renting a cell phone and other practical considerations of my trip. And I planned to get together with her when I was in Jerusalem.

I'd been meaning to read her book for some time, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. So, before I left for the trip, I ordered a copy (along with my "spiritual tour guide" books) to take with me on the trip. The fact that her book was a memoir about time spent living in the Middle East made it seem especially appropriate to read as I traveled to Israel, and plus, I wanted to have read her book before I saw her in person so I'd be able to talk with her about it.

From the minute I picked it up, I was unable to put the book down. I couldn't sleep on the flight over, but that didn't bother me too much since it meant I got to read more of Stephanie's book. Memoirs are one of my favorite genres, and I've read tons of them, but this was the first time I'd read one written by someone I actually knew in real life.

It was an interesting experience, reading about many aspects of Stephanie's life and past that were intensely personal -- things I certainly hadn't known about her through our acquaintance-level relationship. It felt almost intrusive, in a way that it hadn't to read similarly personal things about people I didn't know at all. It was a weird dynamic between reading the book as a book (as I'd done with other memoirs) and reading the book as a source of information about someone I knew. It made me think a lot about my own desire to write a memoir, and what it would be like for my friends and family to read such a book, and what it would be like for me to know they were reading it. I'd be comfortable sharing my journey with complete strangers, but those in-between people who aren't quite friends but aren't strangers either, but who might buy my book because of that "oh, I know her!" factor -- would I really want them reading the details of my personal life and journey?

After I got to Israel, Stephanie and I kept playing phone tag/email tag as we tried to get in touch and schedule a time to meet while I was in Jerusalem. On Wednesday, June 1 (the day after I arrived in Jerusalem and went out exploring, not realizing it was Jerusalem Day), I had called Stephanie to touch base and she said she'd call me back after she talked to her husband about their schedule. I didn't hear from her later that afternoon or evening, but the next morning as I was out walking to meet up with Rachel and Kevin to go to the Dead Sea, I ran into her on the street!

I had just left the Old City via the Damascus Gate and was walking up Ha Nevi'im Street when I looked up and there was Stephanie, pushing a stroller and wearing a baby carrier.

"HEY!!!" she shouted at me across the square, at almost exactly the same instant that I noticed her.

"Hey!!" I echoed, rushing up to her. She embraced me and kissed me on both cheeks. I wasn't surprised, given that she's immersed herself in Arabic culture and married a French guy. "Wow, what are the chances that I'd just run into you like this??"

She was on her way to drop her younger son off at day care and then to spend the day with her older son, who had the day off of school. We chatted for a minute or two and then went on our ways. I walked away amazed at the smallness of the world -- halfway across the world from home, I just happen to run into someone I know!

I didn't get together with Stephanie until Sunday. We touched base after church and I met up with her in the Old City and walked back to her apartment with her, just outside the Damascus Gate. (I couldn't believe how close she lived to where I was staying in the Old City -- literally a 10 minute walk or less. (And Jerusalem's not a small place!))

Sebastian

As we walked, her 9-month-old son, Sebastian, stared up at me from the baby carrier on his mom's chest with huge, inquisitive eyes. I kept asking small-talk questions like, "So how old is he?" while Stephanie was distracted by more important matters, like stopping to give some money to a woman who was sitting on the side of the street, holding her young, handicapped son. A twinge of guilt went through me when I saw her stop. I'd noticed this woman sitting there before, holding her son, whose body was twisted at an abnormal angle, but had generally been avoiding the street beggars since I assumed I wouldn't be able to communicate with them -- and if they were calling out something, asking for help, I wouldn't even know that they were talking to me or what they were saying! Stephanie spoke to her in Arabic and smiled her sweet smile, blessing the woman with her presence and her generosity. The woman smiled in gratitude and spoke back in Arabic. I thought about the spiritual journey Stephanie went through during her year in Syria that she wrote about in her book, and how I could see the fruits of her deepened faith in her compassion for this woman.

Just a few steps down the street, another woman ran up to Stephanie and smiled and embraced her. "Merhaba!" Stephanie said, and they exchanged a few words in Arabic.

I was struck by how comfortable Stephanie seemed here, moving among the streets and interacting with the local people. She was clearly at ease, a stark contrast to the slightly-anxious tourist vibes I'm sure I was giving off in my wanderings. I was glad I was with her -- I felt like I "blended in" more -- and found myself envious of her ability to communicate with people in their native language.

We went back to her apartment, sitting in her fabulous living room, decorated in Arabic style with a large rug on the floor and cushions against the walls to sit on -- no couches or sofas. Thomasjohn and I had talked about arranging our living room that way and had even experimented with pillows on the floor and using small coffee table as dining tables, and I found myself thinking how much he'd love this set-up.

"So, if you read my book, I don't need to tell you anything about my life," Stephanie had joked as we walked through the Old City. "So what's up with you? You're married now, I saw?" We filled in the blanks of each other's lives, fleshing out the skeletal outlines we'd been able to gather from each other's Facebook pages.

Joseph and Sebastian

Soon her husband Frédéric and her older son, Joseph (who is three), came home. They'd all been out to eat in the Old City after church, and then Frédéric had taken Joseph to get a hair cut. Joseph strutted around with pride, showing off his new "do" -- though Frédéric revealed that he'd cried the whole time, not wanting his hair cut -- until he saw the finished result, which he apparently loved.

Like my friends Naomi and Yinon in Tel Aviv, this was another bilingual family, Stephanie an American and Frédéric a Frenchman. I watched Frédéric speak to Joseph in French and Joseph respond in fluent French, and without batting an eye, turn to me and his mother and begin firing off rapid sentences in English. Joseph is a year older than Aya (Naomi and Yinon's daughter), so he was a bit further along in his bilingual language development, and it was fascinating to see.

Although when I'd first met Joseph on Thursday morning as his mom pushed him through the square in a stroller, he'd turned away and half-hidden his face when I said hi to him, today there was no trace of shyness in this kid! He was a ball of energy, jumping all over the living room and insisting that I "LOOK!!" at whatever it was he wanted to show me.

"No no, JoJo," Stephanie or Frédéric would say, using their pet name for him as they tried in vain to corral the unbridled three-year-old energy.

When I pulled out my map of Jerusalem to ask Stephanie and Frédéric about where something was, Joseph seized it and began to underline certain things and trace the various roads, very intent on showing me something. "Wow, thank you so much, Joseph," I said. "You're really helping me a lot." He smiled and continued to carefully mark out what was a mystery to any of us except him, talking to himself the whole time.

Frédéric, a young Joseph, and Stephanie (pre-Sebastian days)

With both Stephanie and Frédéric and Naomi and Yinon, I was very impressed with how gentle they were in their parenting style. They never snapped at their kids or took the "you do what I say cause I'm the parent" kind of attitude that seems to be common in Southern parenting. They were kind and gentle, even in their discipline, and it seemed to work.

Even if Aya was throwing a mini-fit over something she wanted, Naomi would just calmly say, "No, Aya, this isn't for Aya. This is for adults," as she pulled the knife away from her two-year-old who screamed because she wanted to cut her own avocado! "Ok, thank you," Naomi would say calmly, smiling and just ignoring the temper tantrum, and very quickly Aya would calm down and return to normal functioning.

Aya and Naomi

Stephanie and Frédéric were similar in the way they related to Joseph. They'd tell him "no," but they always explained the reasons why he couldn't do whatever it was he wanted to do, even though he was only three years old and even if he didn't ask why and they probably could have gotten away with simply barking "NO!" at him. Naomi did the same thing with Aya, explaining things to her as if she were an adult, not baby-talking at her and "dumbing things down."

It reminded me of the ways I'd seen my friend Jennifer Self and my sister Ashley interact with children -- treating them as people, as fellow humans, not using sub-human baby talk or voices similar to how you'd talk to a pet. I know I do the whole baby-talk, treating-them-like-a-pet thing in my interactions with children, and every time I see someone who doesn't, it makes me want to stop doing it myself. There is such a respect for children in the ways that these people approach them, and I want to be similarly respectful myself. Naomi and Yinon and Stephanie and Frédéric offered me a model of the kind of parents I hope Thomasjohn and I can be if we have children.