Justice, Peace, and the Gospel

            Scripture has a lot to say about God’s desire for justice and righteousness.  In the OT, the two words – justice and righteousness --  are often paired together and used somewhat interchangeably.  To be righteous requires that one lives justly, and to be just requires that one live righteously (in the best sense of that word, not in a warped, self-righteous sense). 

God’s concern for justice continues through the NT where we read of a God who cares about those who are poor.  In that context (and in our context too?), people were poor because those with more power and wealth took advantage of them, treated them unjustly.  Sort of like sharecroppers in the South years ago.  If a share cropper didn’t have a mule, the landlord would rent him a mule to plow with, but then the sharecropper would owe the landlord more of the crop.  Some sharecroppers maybe gradually got ahead.  But many went gradually deeper and deeper into debt so that they were essentially slaves again.  The “Haves” controlled the “Have Nots.”  That is not just.

            Christians are called to pursue God’s justice, to confront injustice both near and far, perpetrated by ourselves and perpetrated by others.  I see this as a crucial expression of the gospel.  Our words and actions should reveal the loving character of the God we serve.  Our words and deeds should proclaim the Good News.  This Good News is holistic and bridges time.  God cares about both our physical and non-physical well-being.  God cares about us here and now and in the age to come.  In fact, the age to come, the Kingdom of God, backs up into the present and begins now.  As Jesus said, “My kingdom is at hand.”

            Scripture also has some pretty specific things to say about making peace.  “Blessed are the peacemakers” for example. 

            These gospel themes of justice and peacemaking are why I’m here in the West Bank with a Christian Peacemaker Team delegation, seeking to work for God’s peace and God’s justice.  In other postings I’ve shared some stories about what we’re seeing, learning, and doing here; in this post I wanted to share some of the theological grounding that surrounds this endeavor.

Encountering soldiers on patrol again

            While we ate supper tonight, a call came in that Israeli soldiers were on patrol down the road and were stopping young men to check i.d.’s.  Several of us left the table, grabbed our red CPT caps, and followed two of the longer-term CPT workers down the stairs and out into the street.  Just a couple turns away on the narrow streets of the Old City (Hebron) we came upon the soldiers.  The first thing we saw was a machine gun pointing our direction from around the corner of a building up ahead.

       

     We came upon a patrol of 4 soldiers who had stopped a truck and were checking i.d.’s.  These soldiers were a lot more up tight than the ones we came across a few nights back – probably a new rotation into the area.  After they finished checking out the driver, they let him continue on and they started down the narrow road, stealthily going from windows to entry ways, swinging their machine guns around each corner, while six of us walked casually behind them in the middle of the road.  What were they looking for?  Did they think some Palestinian teenager is really going to try to directly confront a machine gun?  Nobody has been causing trouble in the area.  It’s just the routine.

            Soon they stopped several young men and demanded identification.  This is just a normal part of life here, but it just seems crazy, humiliating, degrading.  Some of the men are put up against a wall and patted down.  We move to get a better view, and a soldier tells us we must keep a greater distance.  We ignore him.  Do they have something to hide?  If not, why do they care where we are?  If so, then it needs to be exposed. 

            Two Europeans from a monitoring group that is officially sanctioned by the Israeli government show up.  They are watching also, taking pictures.  When the soldiers take a couple more young men around a corner to search them, one of the monitors walks boldly past the rear-guard soldier who is telling her to stop.  She retorts that she is authorized to do this by the Israeli government and keeps going.  The soldiers are not happy, but they don’t act to stop her. 

            We follow the patrol for twenty minutes, during which they stop a dozen young men (15-25 yrs old probably).  This is a constant of life here for the Palestinians. 

The local people tell us that they are happy we are here. The soldiers are less likely to harass and abuse detainees with international eyes and cameras watching.  CPT has a good reputation with the locals, and this is why we received the phone call during supper from a shop keeper alerting us to the patrol.  I’m grateful for CPTers who have served here over along period of time to establish these relationships.

team blog

For stories from our team as a whole, you can check out the team blog at http://cptdelegationmay11.wordpress.com/

conversation with a farm woman near Hebron

5/29/30  near Hebron, southern West Bank/Palestine

            We sit with Zabaede in her farm house and drink tea as we listen to her stories.  She tells of their house being demolished by the Israeli military a few years ago.  The reason: they didn’t have a permit to build it.  When they came to demolish it, they gave the family ½ hour to get anything out of the house they wanted.  They beat Zabaede’s husband and bulldozed the house.

Zabaede and two CPTers visiting over tea

            The West Bank has three types of areas.  Area A (18% of the land) is under Palestinian control (though Israelis will intervene whenever they see fit).  Area B (22%) is controlled jointly by Palestinian police and the Israeli military.  Area C (60%) is controlled by Israelis.

            Zabaede’s house is in Area C, which means that to get a building permit she must apply to the Israeli authorities.  Most Palestinians don’t bother, because it is almost impossible to get such a permit.  There are 150,000 Palestinians living in Area C; over the last 10 years, 150 building permits have been issued to Palestinians in Area C.

The re-built house of Zabaede and her husband

A well on the farm -- destroyed by the military

            We are in the house she and her husband re-built.  She points to things they haven’t bothered to finish properly because the house could be demolished again at any time, and they don’t want to lose all the money it would take to fix things up more.  The house is a combination of stone and cement block.  A demolition permit has been issued for it, but the permit has not been acted on.

            This is a common pattern here.  The Israeli military uses demolition permits as threats – do what we say, don’t protest, don’t stand up to us, or we’ll act on that demolition permit.

            Just for background: the West Bank is part of Palestinian territory taken by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 war.  It is considered occupied territory by the U.N.  Israel doesn’t seem to see it as completely a part of the state of Israel, but it doesn’t see Palestine as in independent state, either.  As an occupying force, Israel has legal obligations to care for the welfare of the people in the occupied territory and it is against international law to re-settle outsiders in occupied territory.  Nevertheless, about 300,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank. 

  

          While we are sitting in Zabaede’s house, Hami, the Palestinian man (in picture above) who is our host for the afternoon gets a phone call.  His olive trees have been set on fire by settlers – for the seventh time.  We ask if he needs to go.   No, he says.  Because of all the checkpoints and closed roads, by the time he could get back to his farm there would not be much he could do.  He calls the fire dept., and later in the afternoon we hear that they thankfully were able to get the fire out with minimal damage to his trees.

Israeli soldiers are never far from sight

      

      I don’t quite know how to communicate to you the amount of control under which the Palestinians live.  Every aspect of their lives is under Israeli control – where they can go, when they can go, what they can build, etc.  The Israeli military makes its presence felt throughout each day.

A day in Hebron's Old City

Friday, May 27 

We went out on patrol tonight.  Christian Peacemaker Teams here in the Old City of Hebron goes out on patrols three times a day.  CPTers looks for Israeli military soldiers who are also out on patrol and then follow them to watch how they treat Palestinians and to try to intervene when possible.

First we came across some Palestinian kids with a soccer ball and we kicked it around with them a bit.  These are ancient streets of cobblestone.  The solid metal doors on the shops on both sides of the narrow streets are closed at this time of the night.

We moved on, moving through these narrow, windy streets, and almost immediately encountered an Israeli patrol – 6 soldiers – coming our way.  Three of us who are on this delegation were out with Paulette, a Franciscan nun, who is on the longer-term CPT team here in Hebron.  We followed her lead, which meant turning around and following the soldiers.  Almost immediately they stopped two young Palestinian men and detained them.

These soldiers are young and armed.  Most of them are probably around 20 years old, the age of my nephews, Josh and Jordan.  Except I’ve never seen Josh and Jordan walking around in military fatigues with loaded machine guns at their shoulders.

The soldiers are harassing these young men and examining their i.d.’s because one of them is dressed in the black uniform of the local Palestinian police, and he is not supposed to wear that uniform in this part of the city.  Paulette starts talking to the two young soldiers nearest us, one of whom speaks good English.  She’s fairly confrontational, asking why they are harassing the Palestinian young men, and telling the soldiers that this only makes matters worse.

An hour later, the two Palestinian men are sent on their way and our CPT group goes home.

This was not a comfortable evening for me.  Being in that tense situation with 20-year-olds carrying loaded machine guns whose barrels pointed at us and others as the soldiers turned this way and that was not comfortable.  It never felt like they were on edge and were going to fire.  I don’t think the Palestinians felt like they were in danger, but the harassment and hassle is huge. 

Why does CPT do this?  Well, having an international presence watching these incidents can help keep soldiers on their toes and can help detainees get better treatment.  You never really know, but it seems to help reduce harsh treatment, and the Palestinians here are very happy to have CPT here.

That wasn’t always the case.  When CPT started here some 16 years ago, the Palestinians didn’t trust them.  Who were these people trying to rent an apartment?  Israeli settlers trying to sneak in?  Israeli secret service of some sort?  The Palestinians were very suspicious, said Hami, a Palestinian man with whom we spent the afternoon.  But when the Palestinians saw that the CPTers were willing to stand by them when settlers threw stones and when soldiers harassed the Palestinians, trust began to form.  Today everybody in this area knows those people who walk around with the red hats – the CPTers – and Hami went on and on about how helpful it has been to have CPT here.

This all ties into one of the purposes of a CPT delegation like ours.  We work with the long-term CPTers to try to reduce abuse and harassment, to get in the way, to document human rights abuses.  

Another major purpose of this delegation is to hear stories and to learn, to hear the stories of suffering told by the local people, to hear the stories of Israeli soldiers who have bravely stepped forward to tell the truth to the public about what happens in the West Bank, to hear the stories people like Hami who have decided that the best way to pursue their cause is through non-violent resistence.

I heard so many stories today that I want to share, but I’m tired, and if you’ve read this far you are probably tired to!

Day one in the West Bank

5/26/11 Hebron/Al-Kalil, West Bank

Today we went on a tour of the south Hebron hills with a group called Breaking the Silence. The south Hebron hills are the lower part of the West Bank. Breaking the Silence is a group made up of former Israeli soldiers who are speaking out about what they did and saw while they served in the Occupied Territory. Our guide for the day, Benjamin (I can't remember his real name!), is an observant Orthodox Jew who trained and served in the very area we toured today.

The area is rural hills – farm country – with some villages and cities. I need to explain a few things before telling some of the stories we heard today.

This area, as with all of the West Bank, was captured from Jordan in the 1967 war. It is now part of Palestine, but controlled by Israel (the level/type of control varies by area). By international law, this land is considered occupied territory, and according to international law, the occupying forces may not re-settle outsiders in the area and are responsible for the well-being of the people in the occupied area.

Now about settlers. Settlers are Jews who have moved from Israel into the Occupied Territory and have set up settlements. They do this for varying reasons. The majority do it for economic reasons – there are government incentives for doing so, and they can live more cheaply than in a place like Jerusalem. A minority move into settlements for ideological reasons – they believe that all this land belongs to the Jews and they want to get it back. Some of these ideological settlers carry out violence and abuse against the Palestinians in the area. Today we saw a couple of the settlements that are among the most violent in the West Bank.

Some settlements have been approved by the Israeli government, while others have not (the unapproved ones are called “outposts”). Here’s a common way an outpost starts: Israelis come in and set up an encampment on a hilltop on land owned/farmed by Palestinians. The Palestinians come to protest and to farm the land. The Israelis call in the security forces, who are charged by law with protecting the Israelis. And then the encampment expands and buildings are built and things become permanent. The government runs water and electricity to these settlements – even the illegal ones. The Palestinian farmers around the settlement do not have access to this water and electricity.

In the U.S., we would say, “This can’t be! We’ll get the courts and the authorities to set this straight!” Things work differently here. Palestinians have taken these situations to court many times, with very little success. Regardless of what the laws say, and there are laws about these things, the military takes the side of the settlers. In many cases, even when the courts have ruled against the settlers, the military has simply not responded to the court rulings, so the reality on the ground stays the same.

Our guide, Benjamin, told us stories about being a soldier in this area. The military has checkpoints on the highways, and Palestinians are not allowed to use the main highways. On the smaller roads, the military sets up rolling check points. When a Palestinian gets to a check point, he may get through quickly, or he may be held up for hours. Benjamin said that the policy of the military is to make its presence known so that the Palestinians will feel it at all times. Benjamin said he himself was part of holding up both wedding parties and funerals at checkpoints, not for real security reasons, but because he and his soldiers simply could.

The farmers in this region lived in caves until recently. Benjamin took us to a Palestinian family’s farm and we sat in a big tent and talked with two brothers about their lives and experiences. They live in tents now, but they used to live in a cave. We saw the ruins of it. A few years ago the military came in, ran them off the land, and destroyed the cave. (There is a Jewish settlement just up the hill, and they are always trying to expand the “security zone” around them.) The courts ruled that the demolition was illegal. The family put up permanent tents (sort of like the Bedouins live in). The military demolished them because the family had no building permit. The planner for the municipality is the one who issues permits. He lives nearby in an unpermitted house in an unpermitted Jewish outpost. There are 150,000 Palestinians who live in the area of the West Bank under Israeli military control; in the last 10 years, they have been issued 150 building permits. This family won’t get a permit.

                                   Some of the tents of this extended Palestinian farming family

This family’s tents have been demolished three times in the last four months. But they are determined to stay on the land that their family has farmed for generations.

                                        Talking with two of the brothers in the family

We heard that sometimes once people rebuild, the military might issue a demolition permit, but does not carry out the demolition at that point. They simply hold it over the heads of the Palestinians as a threat – “one wrong word from you and your house will be demolished.”

That is a disturbing thing to end on, but it’s fitting, since it was a disturbing day. As the week goes on, I’ll talk about how what we’re doing here relates to this.

This area needs our continues prayers.

Meeting up in Jerusalem

After a week in Jordan, today (5/25) Scott drove me to the border crossing and from there I caught a shuttle bus to Jerusalem.  The team met up at the Golden Gate Hostel and went for a light dinner that night.  One of our team members was held up by security at the airport for 4 hours for questioning.  She's a U.S. citizen, but was born in Iran -- that's probably why she was pulled aside.