This is a guest post by Penny Elsley, a friend I met in my interfaith work. She is a young Australian woman currently on a unique journey around the world that has taken her from India to Africa, the Middle East, USA, Canada, Central and South America. Her endeavor to start a revolution by discovering the possibilities for connecting young people of this generation through service and in a spirit of friendship across the globe has led to the beginnings of a non-profit called joiningthedots. Penny is also a musician and songwriter. She needs your support in building a community around the vision – view her website here: joiningthedots.org
As I composed an email today, I became slightly distracted by my friend’s status, which read, “The world is your oyster”.I was suddenly struck by the ambivalence of this statement. I have just spent the past 5 weeks in “The Holy Land”, a place of immense paradox, where amongst the ruins of ancient civilizations, an ageless aspiration for connection with God, for coexistence and diversity meets at the great junction of intolerance, mindless violence and suffering.
I have innumerable memories of powerful encounters with the local people during this time, conversations with taxi drivers, at bus stops, with people who picked me up hitchhiking, with shop-owners and just people who I met walking along the street, both in Israel and Palestine. While traveling through the Dead Sea region, I met many kind Israeli’s who made me feel welcome. I was not afraid to tell them that I had been doing volunteer work in Palestine and to my surprise, most of them did not try to convince me of why I should not be helping the ‘enemy’. On the contrary, they often expressed their feelings of hopelessness about the situation and also their fears of terrorist attacks.
I also met many wonderful people during my time in the West Bank. I remember one time when I was walking along the street in Bethlehem, I stopped to ask a young man for some directions. He was from Azzeh Camp, a refugee camp in the center of town that cramps its 2000 inhabitants into 250m2. We walked along the road together while I started asking him some questions about his life. When I enquired about what he is studying at university, he told me that he was studying Media and Communications and that he should be in his 3rd year by now but he is still completing his first year. “Why?” I asked. “Because I have been in prison for the past 2 years,” he replied. He explained that he had been falsely accused of being a member of a particular Palestinian political group and that one day, when he was at university, some Israeli military just came and arrested him. He said his mother did not even know where he was for quite some time and that he had no opportunity to have any assistance from a lawyer. I started to ask lots of questions about what it was like in the Israeli prisons. He explained that he had to share a room with 10 others and there was only 1 bathroom. He said they only got to go outside for a few hours each day. I asked if there was a gym or a place where he could exercise or play sport. “No, nothing like that,” he said. As he described the bare courtyard to me, his eyes filled with tears. “All I longed for was to see a tree, or even a car pass by. Something to remind me of normality, of the world outside…” I felt the tears gather in my own eyes as I listened to pain of the immense suffering in this young man’s life.
What if, just because of the country in which you are born, the world is not your oyster?
I distinctly recall the day when one of the coordinators of the NGO I was volunteering with in Dehieshe Refugee Camp offered to take me on a brief guided tour of the ancient Palestinian town of Hebron. On our way there, the bus drove over a grate on the road and my guide looked at me and said, “do you know what that was we just drove over?” I said it was like what we have in Australia to stop livestock crossing the road. He said, “No, that is there to set off any bombs that may be on the bus” (before we reach the city). It really hit me that you cannot escape the conflict throughout the West Bank, the reminders are literally built into the infrastructure, not only in the roads but all around you with checkpoints, military watchtowers and this gigantic separation wall, 600km of concrete. Just living in the shadow of these reminders is debilitating.
I spent much of my time in the Middle East listening to people, reading books and watching the latest news about the conflict (I even attended a conference). I wanted to understand something of the history behind the current situation as well as hear the views of Israelis and Palestinians who have lived their entire lives in this region. In doing so, what I learned is that I cannot come to a conclusion. I will never have a personal experience of the deep longings and pain that is the underlying force behind this conflict. All I can do is what the people expect of me, that is, to listen to them. To enter into their lives as much as is possible, to live amongst them and to allow myself to be transformed by what I have encountered.
One such opportunity to “enter in” was when I lived for several weeks with a Muslim family in Dehieshe Refugee Camp. The gracious hospitality they offered me can only be summed up by the words of the mother of my new Palestinian family, who on my second night there told me that I am her sister and that I am part of their family now. However, the delight I found in sampling all the fruits of a morning spent cooking with the women were soon overshadowed by the realities of the complications of daily life in the West Bank. At the announcement of the new settlements in East Jerusalem came the closure of the camps’ only school and a father unable to get through the checkpoint to his daily work in Jerusalem. As I sat in the lounge room with that family unable to go about their normal day, I felt the sting of the lack of freedom and basic human rights. A day spent at another refugee camp school just outside Bethlehem only added to this sting, as I watched small children being helped by social workers to unearth their fears drawing pictures of missiles being fired into their homes and men in military uniform arresting their fathers in front of them.
These children are the ones whom we should think about when we want to believe in a world where we are all free to make our own choices. Because it is clear that the children of Palestine do not have this basic freedom. I am not taking sides, in fact I met so many wonderful Israeli people, both Jewish and those who would consider themselves non-Jewish as well as Palestinian people, both Muslims and Christians, many of whom are giving their lives for the peace process. I believe in a God who showed us in Christ that we should always give preference to the lives of the poor. And in this case, it is clear for all to see who are the poor, the imprisoned, the outcast, the blind and the sick. The innocent children should always be our gauge. They are also the ones who taught me to smile, to play and to hold hands, even when the world is definitely not your oyster!
