Tag Archives: Israel

West Bank August 2001

A clipping I cut out of a newspaper shows a little boy about five or so, his face scowling, waving a toy rifle. He is dressed in a children’s set of army fatigues. The caption states:

“A Palestinian boy holds a plastic gun as he steps on an Israeli flag with ‘Death to Israel’ written on it in Arabic during a demonstration against the Israeli blockade of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank town of Ramallah Friday . . .”

The date of the newspaper is August, 2001. Almost a quarter of a century ago, as the picture evidences, places in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank showcased similar problems besetting those areas as today. I wonder what that young boy is like now, at about 28 years old, perhaps, if he’s still alive.

What kind of adults will the children of the West Bank, Israel, and Gaza have become twenty years from now? To pick one side or the other in this part of the world as either the guilty perpetrator or the innocent victim is a futile exercise. You can, if you want, place blame on Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, Europeans, and, no doubt, others. We could certainly go back to the Nazi’s, or the pogroms for centuries against Jews, or the European conquest of lands in the Near East in the past century or two. Add others, then take your pick. Finding villains is easy.

Should we despair? Listen to Desmond Tutu, leader of South Africa’s struggle to free itself from European control: “Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate.” (The Atlantic, 2009.)

Exiting Gaza

“After decades of failed international engagement in Gaza, we owe it this time to the Palestinians, Israelis and Egyptians—and to ourselves—to get this right.” (Yair Lapid, speech to Israeli Knesset, October 16, 2023, as reported in “A Positive Exit Strategy From Gaza,” The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, by Robert Silverman, October 2023.)

In his speech, Mr. Lapid outlines steps for achieving a real victory. “The real victory comes not from defeating our enemy but from achieving a better place for Israel and our Palestinian neighbors.”

Further, “Instead of taking the easy way out of town by dumping Gaza on some set of beguiling expatriates, the multinational governance team should be prepared to work with the local Gazans to build governance capacity—over the course of years.”

Mr. Lapid calls for withdrawing the Israeli Defense Forces as soon as possible. They would be replaced by a multinational force “with two separate missions . . . under a single head.”

One mission would be a multinational force “to maintain order and begin training a new Gazan police force . . .”

The other mission would be “a multinational civilian governance to help the Gazans rebuild economically and begin the process of governing themselves politically.”

Israeli-Palestinian issues became a tangled web due to the interests of numerous groups, nations, and historic events over centuries.

Mr. Lapid’s suggestions would seem a fair start toward a practical solution.

Palestinian Christians in the Middle East

 

As the first Gulf War (early 1990’s) against Saddam Hussein threatened, I worked at the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. One of our tasks was aiding Americans who lived and worked in Saudi Arabia but who now wanted to leave before the war began.

Our consular unit included three U.S. Foreign Service officers and six locally hired employees. Two were Palestinians. Both had served at the Consulate many years, using their long term contact with Saudi Arabian officialdom to help us in our tasks. Without them, our work would have been more difficult: checking on Americans in prison, for example, or setting up visits with foreign parents of American children involved in custody cases.

One of the American women we helped to evacuate expressed unease at riding to the airport with one of the Palestinians, despite the fact that he was aiding her in getting home to the U.S. Perhaps she thought all Palestinians were terrorists, a laughable view considering the dedication of our hardworking employees.

I thought of this incident recently when I listened to Elias Chacour, Archbishop of Galilee in Israel for the Melkite Greek Catholic Church. Melkite Christians trace their origins back to Syrian Christians in the early days of Christianity. They have endured centuries of conquests, persecutions, and minority status in the tumultuous Middle East. Archbishop Chacour was born in Palestine in 1939 in a Christian village. He is an Israeli citizen, a Palestinian, and a Christian.

In the 1980’s, he began a school which today is one of the top schools in Israel. Its students include Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Archbishop Chacour is a committed Christian who works for peace in a conflicted land.

He tells his story in several books, including Blood Brothers: The Dramatic Story of a Palestinian Christian Working for Peace in Israel. It is available online in digital and print editions.

Perhaps his story and that of others like him will give us a more balanced view of the inhabitants of that stretch of the Middle East known to Christians as the Holy Land.