Nine terrorized school children under sixteen years of age lined up like criminals right outside our white van on a regular school day. The machine gun is pointing at them and the heavily armed soldier maintains his finger on the trigger while I hand over their passports to pass this fourth and final checkpoint before entering our Christian Village of Taybeh on the West Bank of the Jordan River. Never in my twenty years of travelling in and out of this region have I seen the soldiers so frightened and so intense as this current time in the Holy Land. In the back of my mind I was thinking this soldier has absolutely no common sense whatsoever or the violence has scared him so much it has stolen his logic and his common sense from him to treat a mother and children in this dehumanizing way.
Nine terrorized school children under sixteen years of age lined up like criminals right outside our white van on a regular school day. The machine gun is pointing at them and the heavily armed soldier maintains his finger on the trigger while I hand over their passports to pass this fourth and final checkpoint before entering our Christian Village of Taybeh on the West Bank of the Jordan River. Never in my twenty years of travelling in and out of this region have I seen the soldiers so frightened and so intense as this current time in the Holy Land. In the back of my mind I was thinking this soldier has absolutely no common sense whatsoever or the violence has scared him so much it has stolen his logic and his common sense from him to treat a mother and children in this dehumanizing way.
I hated to see my three children and my nieces get out of the car and line up one next to the other, shoulder to shoulder like a police line up only three minutes away from our home. We were so close after such a long and hard school day why can’t we pass? In the beginning I tried to argue with the soldier, “are you kidding, why do you want the children to get out of the car?” But my children immediately said: “Mom, we are used to this, can you please not argue, he has a gun.” The youngest one was shaking so badly she could hardly get out of the van. If this type of harsh and cruel treatment continues with civilians in the Holy Land it should not surprise the world we produce “terrorists.” We are being denied our very basic rights to move and to just go to school. Why does America’s position for Arafat get stuck at “stop the violence.” The American policy falls short of addressing the root causes of that violence: denial of Palestinian freedom.
We are so grateful the tanks went outside the center of Ramallah. People are feeling it is a blessing not to be prisoners in their own homes. But can’t they take their soldiers, armored jeeps and their checkpoints with them and leave the occupied Palestinian territories for once and for all. The ways the Palestinian towns and villages are cut off from each other are physically and psychologically strangling us. Many tanks are parked at the outskirts of Ramallah ready to reoccupy the city at any moment. That military presence is what is so nerve wrecking. The weapons and the money the United States sends Israel are not only being used for Israel’s security but to totally destroy and ethnically clean the Holy Land. The American military aid is being used to deny over three million people their human rights and to carry out a collective punishment of the worst type to the point where children can not even go to school.
Every single day is a new way to school. Every minute the situation changes in our lives. Sometimes we drive such a long way to get back home after a long and tiring school day just to find a military tank blocking the entrance to an important road that we need. We have to just turn around and drive the same way back seeking some other dirt road or valley way to make it home. I have totally destroyed all the vehicles that I own because the Israelis have closed the main roads for Palestinians since September 28, 2000. The back roads are full of rocks, holes and terrible bombs that ruin the bottom of the car. Thus, although the ride from home to school can take a ten to fifteen minutes ride during peaceful times it has taken up to four hours during the worst violence.
The situation can only improve if Israel ends the 35-year-old Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. It is not possible to have peace and occupation at the same time. The Palestinian Authority recognized Israel on 78% of historic Palestine. It is Israel that refuses to acknowledge Palestine’s right to exist on the remaining 22% of land occupied in l967.
The constant enlargement of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza will continue to be an obstacle to peace. There are about 250,000 settlers on Palestinian territories and they require the protection of the army that constantly flares up the violence. The reason I can get home every day from an Arab city to an Arab village is because the Israelis built the biggest settlement on the West Bank right next to our home. This fact alone causes more and more young people to turn into suicide bombers because the Oslo peace process stayed frozen for so many years and the Palestinians did not see a difference in their daily lives. It is clearly not just and not appropriate for Palestinians to be treated like last class citizens on the land of their birth. It is clearly wrong for the Israeli army to force us to leave our homes and immigrate because they continue to humiliate, degrade and demoralize us daily. Many people are willing to live under Israeli hardships not to leave their land and not to abandon their roots. However, we do have to pay a very high price to maintain our Christian roots.
Here in the Holy Land we have entered the first week of the Orthodox Lenten Period. We open our hearts to Christ to fill us with his love and everlasting hope so that we will not be forced to leave the land of His birth but stay and bare witness in the Name of our Lord. Christians, Muslims and Jews can live and prosper together because there are enough of us that are not fanatics and just want to raise a generation of children knowing their valuable traditions and roots. Many of us on all sides want the hate and the violence to just stop. Pray that peace will prevail in this sacred land and make your voices heard in appropriate forums urging the immediate withdrawal of all forms of Israeli military presence from the Palestinian territories. And knowing our story, glorify God for all the blessings that you have in your life and seek joy in the presence of the Lord.
