OPPRESSION
AND RESISTANCE
The wall: the reality
The
first day in Bethlehem, Omar took me to see several
portions of the wall that may soon isolate Bethlehem.
The wall is a twenty-six foot high wall of concrete
slabs. Where we first stopped, there is a small opening
which may become one of only three entrances into
Bethlehem, and the only one direct from Jerusalem.
Israel started erecting the wall about two years ago for
the stated purpose of providing security for Israel from
suicide bombers and others. But it is serving to isolate
Palestinian communities. It is not set up on the borders
between Palestine and Israel, the so-called Green Line,
but at times it goes right through villages and towns,
separating people from their fields and flocks.
The wall in Bethlehem is not completed and so there are
gaps. But on some of my other trips I saw the wall that
cuts right through Abu Dis in Jerusalem.
I only realized how ominous the wall is a week later when
a bus I was on passed by Al Quds University. As the bus
stopped to pick up students, I looked at the valley and
saw the wall that seemed to go on forever. That wall was
ominous.
The wall makes real what might not be easily seen –
the effort of some in Israel to isolate the Palestinians.
Though Israel hopes for security, this wall is a sign of
oppression to the Palestinians. For some the wall makes
them feel as if they are on a reservation, in a
Bantustan. Some even call it the Apartheid Wall.
“Something there is that doesn’t love a
wall,“ Robert Frost reflected in a poem. Even more
the Christian scriptures talk about Christ breaking down
the dividing wall of hostility.
Walls do not bring security; in this case they may
provoke insecurity for Israel as Palestinians see this
blatant sign of what they feel as oppression. Even the
International Court of Justice has ruled that the wall
should stop. But Israel continues to expand it.
The Berlin Wall fell when it was least expected. We must
pray, hope, and work that this dividing wall will fall. .
But in Bethlehem there were signs of resistance. Earlier
in the fall a group of Mexican muralists had been invited
to Palestine by a church center. They proceeded to go to
various places throughout the West Bank and to paint
murals on the Wall.
In some places there were already some graffiti
denouncing the wall. But the Mexican muralists painted
large and colorful murals. Some portrayed the horror of
the wall – with images of serpents and bombs. Bu
one mural in Bethlehem portrayed a woman in a kefiyeh
– the headscarf made famous by Yassir Arafat. At
the bottom left of that mural were these words, in
English, “To exist is to resist.”
Murals on the
wall in Bethlehem
To exist is
to resist: the old city of Hebron
The
next day we left for Hebron, Al Khalib, a large
Palestinian city where there is a shrine sacred to
Muslims and Jews, the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
In 1968 a small group of Jewish settlers moved into the
old city of Hebron, the site of the tomb of the
Patriarchs. Now there are about 400 settlers, 2000
Israeli soldiers, and 125,000 Palestinians in Hebron.
In the West Bank I had seen a number of Israeli
settlements – most notably several around
Bethlehem. Most of these settlements are on the tops of
hills, some of them stretching for miles.
But in Hebron the settlements are above the streets in
the center of the old city. Below the settlers’
houses, on what we would call the ground floor, are the
houses and stores of the Palestinians.
Walking below the settlements can be hazardous. Many
objects have been through by the settlers onto people
walking in the streets below. Plastic netting has been
placed to protect the people walking below. But this has
not prevented some settlers from throwing boiling water
or concrete blocks that crash through the netting.
Yet a few Palestinian merchants stay open all day, even
though almost no one will pass and buy their wares. As we
passed by, with a member of the Hebron Christian
Peacemakers Team, they responded enthusiastically to her
“Salaam aleichem” – “peace be
with you”
In other places you can also see this desire to exist, to
remain in Palestine, despite the suffering. In Bethlehem
the shops open each day, even though the number of
tourists is low. But in Hebron, despite the dangers and
the Israeli checkpoint in the middle of Hebron, these
brave men open their shops with little hope of sales.
To exist, to open one’s business in the face of
efforts to deter them, is for these merchants, truly a
sign of nonviolent resistance, rebellion.
The Old City
of Hebron
⎯⎯⎯
A
PASTOR’S REFLECTION
Christmas has become a season for “joyful peace
talkers,” rather than “blessed
peacemakers.”
In our Palestinian context, “peace talk” is
often a good recipe for managing the conflict rather than
resolving it. It is as if there were an un-gentlemen
agreement; the world continues to talk peace; Israel
continues to build the wall. And while Christians all
over the world sing “O little town of
Bethlehem,” the Israeli occupation wants to make
sure that this town stays as little as four square miles,
surrounded by 30 mile-long walls, fences and trenches
with no future expansion possibilities whatsoever.
At a time when a wall of hostility is being built around
our little town, Christmas is an invitation to commit
ourselves anew to breaking down all walls of hatred and
hostilities, be they concrete or ideological, racial,
political, social, and economic ones. From the hometown
of Christ we have no other message this year but that of
St. Paul (Ephesians 2, 14): “For he, Christ, is our
peace; in his flesh he made both groups into one and has
broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility
between us.”
Rev. Mitri Raheb, Bethlehem
Besieged (Fortress Press, 2004)
Pastor Mitri Raheb is pastor of Christmas Lutheran
Church, Bethlehem, Palestine
The Wall
around Bethlehem