NEW ENGLAND CONFERENCE ~~~~ PEACEMAKING IN PALESTINE
Newsletter No. 41
November 14, 2002
Mary is still reporting from the Christian Peacemaker Team in Jerusalem. This week we touch on the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting and prayer. During Ramadan, Muslims fast all day and have a “feast” at sundown. Their tradition is to invite strangers to the hospitality of their feasts, in God’s name, despite the fact that they are scrimping to get enough food together to feed their own families.
And, I go a bit “off message” to report Mary’s conversation with a
woman just back from Iraq.
I thought it relevant.
I have been concerned about Mary’s safety should we (the USA) decide to attack Iraq. Iraq would most likely respond by attacking Israel, possibly with chemical and biological weapons. Iraq’s SCUDs are not very accurate and could go anywhere in mid-Israel. I have been pressing Christian Peacemaker Teams to prepare plans to deal with such an emergency.
Extracts from Mary’s e-mails:
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Saturday, November 9:
Today’s Ha’aretz newspaper says a great number of Muslims worshipped in Jerusalem yesterday for the first Friday of Ramadan, and there were no incidents of violence.
When we went out yesterday we noticed there were Israeli Defense Force soldiers everywhere. On the corner there was a group of seven, most of whom hardly looked eighteen. When I got to the left turn that leads to the Haram al Sharif (Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque) I counted 25 soldiers on that corner.
As I walked back to the market there were two young men inside a grocery store wearing civilian clothes and khaki bullet-proof vests, carrying side arms. They walked behind me all the way home and unlocked a big metal door into the building across from ours.
When I got inside I mentioned them to Greg and Anne. “They are private
security people,” said Anne. “They’re hired to take the Jewish children to
school.”
“I didn’t realize the Jewish children needed protection on the way to school,” I
replied. “This is quite a tame neighborhood, really. The Palestinian children in
Hebron get attacked all the time. They have to walk past neighborhoods where
they need protection.”
“Well,” said Greg, “they have us!” and we all burst out laughing.
It is quite alarming to think that not only do we have the army and the police, we also have armed “private security” people. The amount of weaponry around is astonishing. I can’t see how peace is possible while people are arming themselves to the teeth.
Another thing that adds to the craziness is that while it is Ramadan, the children let off fireworks all through the afternoon and evening, so there are lots of explosive noises.
This evening, when I had cooked a big pot of soup and Christine and I
were waiting for Anne and Greg to get in from olive picking, there
was a huge booming explosion. “What was that?” asked Christine. I
thought for a second and then I knew. “It’s the cannon that they fire
at sundown so that everyone will know that it’s time to eat,” I said.
A good explosion, that one.
Very shortly afterwards our landlady knocked at the door bringing us
two plates of atayef, pancakes filled with nuts and honey.
Sunday, November 10:
I spent lunch time sitting next to Farah, a young woman who has just come back from a month in Iraq. According to her (and many others) sanctions have wrecked Iraq. The infrastructure is all but gone. In Basra, the sewage system has broken down, leaving sewage running through the streets. In another city the water system is failing. The Iraqis cannot make the repairs that need to be done because they may not manufacture the necessary parts and must have then made by foreign firms, which costs a lot more and takes a lot longer.
Farah talked a lot about the preparations for war that are going on in Qatar and Kuwait and other Arab countries. The idea that is talked about where the USA would “occupy” Iraq for five years is alarming. That way, apparently, we get to take over the oilfields, which are nationalized and produce far more than Saudi Arabia ever will.
(Incidentally, a Palestinian shopkeeper called out to me yesterday: “Are you American?” and when I said I was, he said “Then you will soon have all the oil in the world. After the war you will have everything.” I know many Palestinians are convinced that the US is in it for the oil, but somehow I had not thought of Halliburton getting in there and “owning” Iraqi oil.)
Farah was silent for a long time and then she started talking about Iraqi children who have been dying of malnutrition and of curable diseases for the last 11 years, since sanctions. One man says that this is why the USA has to have a war with Iraq. They cannot just lift sanctions as it would look as if they were capitulating, so they need the war first, and then they can lift the sanctions. Scary rationale, but then so is the “occupy the place and get all the oil” one.
Farah is solemn and serious and has obviously been changed by her
experiences. It is sobering to hear from a first-hand observer what we
have done to the population of Iraq. If we bomb the dickens out of the
country now because of the oil thing we will really have to be classed
as evil. So I am hoping that sanity prevails somehow.
Tuesday, November 12:
Olive picking went well today after initial settler shooting overhead. Anne, Greg, and I were named as the negotiating team. We went up the side of the hill to talk to settler security, the IDF, and later to the Civil Administration. We told them that we wanted to pick the trees with the biggest olives next to the settlement. The officer refused to allow that and accused us of inciting trouble with the settlers. He said the orchard was a closed military zone and the only people allowed there were the army and the Palestinian farmer and his family.
The officer agreed with the farmer that the Palestinians could pick the upper side of the orchard, and we CPTers could pick the trees at the bottom of the valley. He stationed four soldiers at the settlement fence for protection. There were no further problems.
On another occasion when we went olive picking with Rabbis for Human Rights, a rather kind and gentle Israeli called Hillel was the leader of our group. He told us that the army and the police had been informed that we were coming, and that they did not expect any trouble. “It seems that because there have been more and more Internationals and Israelis coming to protect the Palestinian farmers in their fields and olive groves, the settlers have been less aggressive, less eager to cause trouble. So we must keep on doing this until all the harvest is brought in.”
[Ed: Could it be that the accompaniment and suffering of the early
groups -- Getting in the Way -- really does make a difference?]
Wednesday, November 13 - A Neat Little Serendipity:
This morning LeAnne and two other CPTers bumped into a group of French “peace volunteers” in the market lanes. LeAnne called me and asked me to come down and spend some time talking to them about CPT, which I did. [Ed: Mary speaks French.] They were wonderfully kind and encouraging after I had told them who we were and what we do. They asked me to answer a few questions on video. So, before we started, I checked out some vocabulary with one woman who spoke some English, so that I did not get stuck. I asked her the French word for “settlers.” She replied, “colonistes.” How accurate, I thought (and, of course, the settlements are “colonies”!)
I am going to work on my hand (getting thorns out) with a needle for a while. I slid down the hillside a bit at one point yesterday and stopped myself by putting my hand down on a pricklesome plant. It has left half a dozen little spiny bits in my palm. I got some of them out yesterday, so I’ll finish the job today.
Rev. Mary Lawrence, an Elder of the United Methodist Church, reports from the Christian Peacemaker Team in the Occupied West Bank.
Visit our web site at www.neumc.org and look under
“Ministry &
Outreach” for “Peacemaking in Palestine.”
For more information about Christian Peacemaker Teams you can
also see www.cpt.org.
Editor: Tony Lawrence, Lunenburg, MA.