Unrecognized

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Some days ago, Lars, Gjermund and I went to the Negev desert in order to learn more about the situation for the Bedouins who are living there. On our way, we crossed the checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. It was very crowded this day. It took us one hour just to get through the first lane leading into the terminal itself. As we were waiting, we met Gunnar, who is here with EAPPI, the accompaniment program of the World Council of Churches. I asked him what was going on, and he said: "Well, there are two girls sitting there, and one is just chewing gum and talking on the phone. I tell you, this has been the worst month since I got here." After a while a friend called the humanitarian number of the Israeli military. They told us to wait. Nothing happened.


In the lane at the checkpoint.

In Beer Sheva we met Abu Ali al-Sbeih from The Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages in the Negev (RCUV). "I wanted you to come, to see how people live in a democracy", he said. Most of the Bedouins in the Negev fled to the West Bank, Gaza and Sinai during the Arab-Israeli war in 1948. Those who remained were forced to move to the northern parts of the Negev, around the city of Beer Sheva. By the end of the 1950s, the Israeli state had managed to appropriate over 90 percent of all land in the Negev. In the 60s and 70s, the government planned seven townships where they wanted to "concentrate" the Bedouin population, without consulting them. Those who refuse to move to these townships, live in the so-called unrecognized villages.

While 134 agricultural communities have been developed for the exclusive use of the Jewish population of the Negev, not a single Arab community has been authorized since 1948. Consequently, you will not find the unrecognized villages in the Negev on a map, and they do not receive services or infrastrucure like water, electricity or roads. To construct permanent buildings is illegal, so Israeli authorities regularly destroy Bedouin homes. Even villages and houses that were there long before the state of Israel was established, suddenly have become illegal.

"There are 45 villages with 90,000 inhabitants", Abu Ali al-Sbeih tells us.
"They destroy our houses and take our land to make us move to densely populated areas. We want to live as Bedouins, with animals and an agriculture with low water consumption, but that's impossible when we are placed in cities. Every week they come and destroy houses, because they say that they are illegal. But we have no one to apply to for permission."
He keeps describing how difficult the situation is. Children have to travel long ways to go to school. Many don't go. If a mother needs to take her child to the clinic, she will often have to walk several kilometers before she reaches a road. The schools -there are separate schools for Jews and Bedouins- have a bad quality. And all the time they see how different their situation is from that of Israeli Jews, who have everything they need.

Al-Sbeih takes us to two unrecognized villages. One of them is called Assir. The houses have been standing here for a long time. Then Israel built a high voltage wire just over the village. Now the inhabitants live with the risk of cancer.
"Every time there's a storm, the people here are so afraid that parts of the construction will fall down," al-Sbeih comments.


Assir.

In the other village, Khashm Zanna, 600 children are picked up by 12 buses every day to go to school.
"It costs more to drive these children back and forth than to have a school here. Why do they do it? Because they don't want us to live here".
Al-Sbeih tells us about the Regional Council, which represents the unrecognized villages to the state and the international society. They also arrange courses, where people learn to communicate about their own situation.


Sitting down for tea in Khashem Zana.

Abu Ali Al-Sbeih describes the beauty of the traditional Bedouin life: the music, the fellowship, the handicrafts and the love for the desert.
"Every type of nature has its special characteristics. The life of the Bedouins is tied to what is natural in the desert. We know how to live in harmony with it. And we appreciate it, the silence, for instance. I don't mind young people moving to the city. But those who want to live in the desert, are not allowed."
We ask Al-Sbeih how the Israeli government defends it policies towards the Bedouins.
"They listen to us, and they know what is going on, but they don't want to do as we say, because they want our land. They want to pressure and pressure and pressure us, so that we move.", he answers.
"When I open my door and go out, I meet limitations and barriers. I want a free life. I want to live in a world that stretches out, like the desert."


From Assir.
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Victory in Umm Salamona

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For those of you who have been reading my blog regularly, you might have been wondering what has happened to the hilltop in Umm Salamona, where we planted trees in November and December to avoid it being taken for settlement expansion. For those of you who haven't read about Umm Salamona, the matter in short was that the supreme court has ruled that the hilltop has to be cultivated before the end of 2009, or it would be confiscated (and beyond doubt, given to the neighbouring settlements). See my posts The hills are alive and Trees and threats in Umm Salamona for more background.

I contacted Awad, the initiator of the campaign, last week to hear how things were going in Umm Salamona. Awad told me that the land will not be confiscated. By planting 1250 trees there, Awad and other activists have managed to reclaim the land. Even though deer held by settlers are damaging many of the trees (there is no money for building metal fences), Awad describes the situation as good.

People, Palestinians and foreigners, have, by non-violent means, prevented a hilltop from being stolen. The people in Umm Salamona can go there, to enjoy the beautiful landscape or to harvest the trees. And they can feel that there is some kind of right and wrong in this world, and some way to pursue it. Still around half a million settlers are living on stolen land in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. But the victory in Umm Salamona is a message, to the settlers and the Israeli military that the land belongs to the Palestinians, and that it is important to them. And to the world about what is going on in the lives and land of the Palestinians.
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Checkpoint gospel

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These days there's a conference going on in Bethlehem, arranged by Bethlehem Bible College. "Christ at the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Peace and Justice", it's called. Between 200 and 25o Evangelical Christians from the US and Europe, as well as Palestinians, are gathered to work with theology in the Palestinian context. Christ is at the checkpoint. What does he have to say to people there?

Gjermund and I attended a lecture yesterday by Gary M. Burge, who is a professor in the New Testament at Wheaton College in Chicaco. He talked about the New Testament and the Land, a topic that he has just finished a book about. I'm sure I didn't catch everything that Dr. Burge said, but I'd like to render a few points he made.


From the lecture. Thank you to Gjermund for letting me use his picture.

First of all, he pointed out that Holy Land theologies was a highly debated issue among Jews in Jesus' time. Jews were under Roman occupation. Should they fight to get their sovereignty back? What about Jews living in diaspora, who were actually the majority? Could you really be a good Jew living outside the Holy Land? Considering this debate, Jesus' silence about this issue is a loud silence, Dr. Burke argued. Still the question is touched upon in some passages in the gospels, for instance in the Beatitudes: "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." (Matthew 5:5). According to Dr. Burke, the word in Greek for "earth" can also be translated "land", as in the Greek version of the strikingly similar verse in Psalm 37: "But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy great peace." "Land" and "inheritance" were conceptions tightly linked to the promise to the Jews. But here Jesus does not say that the land belongs to a certain people, but to those who are meek. Does this mean that Jesus gave the land to his followers? No, says Dr. Burke. The rest of the New Testament interprets "the land" in relation to the Kingdom of God.

This is reaffirmed by the practice and writings of the early Christian church. The gospel is preached to Diaspora Jews. But Jews or non-Jews who receives the new faith, are they asked to move to the Holy Land? Never. They can stay where they are. There is no territorial theology in early Christianity. Paul is in his writings strikingly uninterested in geography. Terms connected to Holy Land theology are reinterpreted. For instance, Abraham's seed, that the promises were spoken to, is not the Jewish people, but Jesus (Gal, 3:16). And what was Abraham promised? According to Paul's letter to the Romans 4:13, not today's Israel, but "the world"! Also in the other texts in the New Testament, "land" is not connected to territory. For instance, in the Book of Revelation, Jerusalem is a city newly built by God, not the city in Judea. The country the Christians are longing for, is not Israel, it's heaven or the heavenly renewal of the world.

For those who have an idea about the support Evangelical Christians have given to the Zionist cause especially in the USA, this message and this conference is potentially revolutionary stuff. Of course the people present at that lecture do not make up a big percentage of Evangelical Christians. Some of them are still traveling around Israel in buses with slogans like: "I will not keep silent for Zion's sake. Christians united for Israel." But the change in many churches around the world is noticed and even warned about by those in Israel who support their country's policies, as can be seen in this article in Jerusalem Post. The Kairos document might, with it's urge for churches to revisit theologies that are justifying the occupation and to stand up in support for the oppressed, add momentum to this change. It might actually mean a difference. It might be good news at the checkpoint.


From the wall. Thank you to Gjermund's father, who took the photo.
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Tourists taken, tourists missed

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Earlier I have written about how land and water is being taken from Palestinians. During the last two weeks I have traveled through Israel and the Palestinian territories together with friends and family of Gjermund, and it seems to me that another resource, namely the tourists, is also to a large extent being controlled by Israel.

An example of this is to be found just outside Beit Sahour, the Herodium mountain. Constructed as a fortress and a palace by king Herod the Great, the site is now controlled by Israeli authorities, as it lies in area C. A poster at the entrance promised that the "Israeli nature and historical heritage" was in the best hands. The man who collected the fee was an Israeli, and it is hard to believe that any Palestinian will ever see that money.


The Israeli flag at Herodium, tied up that day because of the wind. Thank you to Gjermund, who has taken the photos in this post.

Further to the east the Jordan valley and the land west of the Dead Sea, except for Jericho, is under complete Israeli control (see this article by the Israeli human rights group BTselem to learn more about what this means for the Palestinians who are living there). A good proportion of the Dead Sea shore is within Israel. This apparently isn't enough. On the West Bank side, there are Israeli-run tourist resorts waving the Israeli flag, settlements and a factory producing cosmetic products for Ahava, using stolen minerals from the Dead Sea. Palestinians who want to be tourists in their own land, on the other hand, can have a difficult time getting to the Dead Sea, according to this article in the Independent.

Occupation seems to be good business.

Not for the Palestinians, though. While tourists are crowding the shores of the Dead Sea and streaming to Jerusalem and the many churches around the Sea of Galilee, there are strangely few visitors at many holy sites in the West Bank. One of them is Jacob's Well in Nablus, where Jesus sat down to talk to the Samaritan woman. The well is still there inside a beautiful church full of icons and chandeliers. When we visited the place this week, Gjermund, his parents and I were the only people there.


In the church of Jacob's well.

People don't come to the place where Jesus was baptized, which is inside the West Bank. Instead they come to Yardenit, a place on the Israeli side of the Jordan river bank. The center is run by a kibbutz and in the year 2000 they received a million visitors.


People being baptized at Yardenit.

Bethlehem and Beit Sahour have many tourists. But most of them only stay for a few hours, leaving little income for people here. Driving through the checkpoint in their bus, they don't see the long rows of Palestinians waiting to cross or Israeli soldiers with machine guns. Lately it has also become more difficult for tourist to travel to and from the West Bank on their own. Foreigners are not allowed to take the 21-bus driving through a checkpoint to get from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, they are only allowed to go via the big Gilo checkpoint, where you never know whether crossing will take ten minutes, one hour or two (which is why I have to leave home 7.10 on Sunday mornings in order to get to church).

I don't know enough about tourism to explain thoroughly why most pilgrims only see Israel or what they think is Israel when they come to the Holy Land. I'm sure it's not fair to blame Israel alone.

But I think the occupation is part of the explanation, though, realities like how Nablus and Jacob's well is surrounded by seven checkpoints, and how Israel controls the border and does not allow Palestinians to have their own airport, let alone move freely in their own land.
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