Oh love, aren`t you tired yet?

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What has kept me so busy the last weeks is the Witness Visit, a delegation from different YMCAs and YWCAs all over the world who visited the West Bank and their brother and sister organizations here. I had so many impressions during those days.

Some were impressions of brutality. In Hebron, we walked under metal nets that the Palestinian inhabitants of the old city have put up to protect themselves from stones and rubbish thrown at them by the Israeli settlers living in the floors above. In Jalazone refugee camp outside Ramallah a woman told us about her seventeen year old son who had been shot by Israeli soldiers. They kept the ambulance away until they knew he was dead. Another of her sons had been put in jail for walking too close to a settlement. In a checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem a child was crying because he had to walk through the security check without his mother. He was maybe five years old.

And still the greatest impression from the witness visit was the love. In Beit Sahour Nidal, my boss, gave a beautiful speech where he asked the international community to support Palestinians. I thought it was beautiful because I know that he has been committed to this cause for more than thirty years. What a faithfulness! In Jerusalem we met a young man from Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He wasn`t advocating his own rights, but the rights of his neighbours. Do I have the awareness and courage to see the wrongs of my own government like he does? Nyaradzay, the general secretary of the World YWCA, wanted to talk to each and everyone we met, the women at the food production centre, the young people at the vocational training centre. Everywhere she praised people for their hospitality, their good work and the care they showed for others. And she was right. In the middle of brutality and dire outlooks, mothers were still loving, young people still learning and hoping for the future, and children still trusting, smiling and playing. In his song "The Faith" Leonard Cohen sings: "Oh love, aren`t you tired yet?" It is not.



Nyaradzay and women working at the food production centre at YWCA, Jericho.



Children in the YWCA kindergarden in Jalazone.