Where to find Christ in the Holy Land

Evangelicals Now, October 1996

 

Stephen Sizer and Garth Hewitt are just back from a visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories where they introduced a group of 35 British and German Christians to the local Christians - the "Living Stones" as they like to be called. They visited a number of hospitals, schools and humanitarian projects in refugee camps run by Christians in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Their journey coincided with the Israeli elections.

Underneath the beautiful Sea of Galilee, the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea lies a hidden fault line that runs down through the Red Sea, the Arabian Peninsula on to the heart of East Africa. Over thousands of years, earthquakes along that fault line have devastated many civilisations. The Israeli elections a few weeks ago may lead to similar catastrophic consequences radiating out well beyond the Middle East.

"Peres is good for the Palestinians, Netanyahu is good for the Jews" That was the text of one of the Likud banners plastered all over Israel in the days leading up to the Israeli elections. The future of Israel and the fate of Middle East peace process was decided essentially on the issue of race. 95% of Palestinians, desperate for autonomy and justice, voted for Peres out of hope. The majority of Jews, disenchanted with the cost of the peace measured in terms of land, voted for Netanyahu out of fear.

Peacemakers we spoke with, both Jewish and Palestinian, are very despondent, convinced that the election result is a disaster, and that under "Bibi" Netanyahu, Israel will become a more belligerent and divided apartheid state than it already is. Some are actually relieved that Netanyahu was elected since they believe the Oslo Peace Settlement was a farce, a worthless piece of paper that has merely bought Israel time to steal yet more of their land while the rest of the world washes its hands over what they now regard as an "internal" matter between Jews and Palestinians. It is a fact that something in the region of 30% of all land confiscated on the West Bank since 1967 was taken in the last eighteen months after the Peace Accord was signed.

It is hardly surprising that some Palestinian leaders anticipate a rise in the influence of Hamas and a new Intifada that will make the last one look like a schoolboy playground brawl. Netanyahu, as part of his election campaign, promised that he would "definitely" order Israeli security forces to re-enter Arab-run areas of the West Bank and Gaza strip. Insisting Jerusalem will remain the eternal and undivided city of the Jews will not bring peace to either community.

Netanyahu's pledge that he will continue the peace process with neighbouring countries sounds hollow, since he is adamant that Israel will "never" give up the Golan Heights. What is there left to negotiate? Ironically an exodus of moderate Jews from Israel is likely to exacerbate the increasingly polarised demography of Israel. Rabin's wife, for example, made no secret of the fact that she would pack her bags if Netanyahu won the election.

In a speech made just a few days before the election, to an audience of supporters for Medical Aid for Palestinians, and widely distributed in Israel by the British Consulate-General in Jerusalem, the Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind made an impassioned plea that the peace process not be impeded, giving implicit support for Shimon Peres.

Malcolm Rifkind reminded his audience, including the Israeli electorate and government, that UN resolution 242 had been drafted by Britain at the end of the Six Day War in 1967. He insisted that a basic ingredient in any future peace settlement involved the recognition of the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war, and respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries free from threats or acts of force."

Rifkind went on to apply that resolution specifically by emphasising that for Israel to ignore Palestinian rights to self-determination and their legitimate claims to a sovereign state "would be in my view a mistake of the first magnitude." He reiterated the fact that the British government continues to regard, as does the wider international community, Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories as "illegal", and the return of the Golan to Syria and the removal of Israeli troops from Lebanon as indispensable to any lasting peace. Sadly, British and American attempts to keep Peres in office have failed and the map of the Middle East will therefore remain as volatile as it has for the last fifty years.

Some Christians will however see the election result as an answer to prayer. Fundamentalist Christians, for example, have traditionally encouraged Israel to appropriate land owned by Palestinians on the West Bank, and to enlarge the borders of Israel in the belief that this is their divinely ordained inheritance and will lead to the return to the Lord. To do so however, they have had to demonise the Palestinians and ignore the flagrant disregard of basic human rights by Israel with their "Armageddon theology" Worse, they genuinely believe that God will bless the Church as long as it supports Israel. "If the Israel's vote for Peres God will judge them, if they vote for Netanyahu God will continue to bless them" That was how one so-called Christian group assessed the choice facing Israeli's before the election. Yes, Jesus did say, his followers would have to give up their homes and families to follow him, but I don't think he intended other Christians to be the cause of it.

How Christians can justify the theft of land and homes and the expulsion of an entire indigenous people, many forced to live in refugee camps and all denied the right to return to their place of birth, to the land where their forefathers have lived for generations, I cannot comprehend. Israel has no more divine right to steal Palestinian land, than White South Africans had under the apartheid regime.

The presence of tens of thousands of Western Christian tourists and pilgrims in the Holy Land at any one time has great potential for good, after all as children of God, the Lord assumes we will be peacemakers. Ironically, I believe for the most part, the Christian presence does great harm. That is because most Christians visiting the Holy Land follow a predetermined itinerary purposely designed or encouraged by the Israeli Government Ministry of Tourism to bring them into contact with a Jewish Israel perpetuating a myth of how the Zionist dream is being fulfilled. There will invariably be visits to the Knesset, Yad Vashem, Masada, the Dead Sea and Kibbutz's, etc, all under the watchful influence of a licensed Jewish guide, while ignoring or avoiding Palestinian Israel and the Occupied Territories as much as possible. Based on research, something like 95% of pilgrims who visit the Holy Land have no contact with the indigenous Church which is 99% Palestinian.

Can you imagine what it must feel like to watch countless air conditioned coaches full of Christians from around the world driving past your crumbling church and impoverished community every day to visit yet another holy site, guided by someone of another religion, and fearful of any contact with you because they have been fed the lie that you and your people are just a bunch of terrorists?

The kind of pilgrimages we organise and promote are intended to help to explode those myths and reverse that trend. Our journeys to meet the Living Stones are designed to make a constructive contribution to the life and witness of the indigenous Church there. Unlike most tour groups who worship in their hotels or at the Garden Tomb with expatriates, on Sundays we instead choose to worship with the ancient local Christian communities, in their own language, singing their hymns. The fellowship at St George's in Jerusalem and Christ Church in Nazareth is warm, appreciative and unforgettable.

Despite the closure we managed to get into Gaza for a day. Where 99% of the population are Moslem, it is the Anglican Church who run the only free hospital. Evangelicals may be critical about the liberal theology of the World Council of Churches but it is humbling to recognise that on this the most densely populated piece of land on earth, in reality one giant concentration camp, it is the Near East Council of Churches who are putting the Gospel into action, offering educational and vocational training to refugees. The local Christians were delighted to see us, insulted that we were told to take packed lunches, keen for us, next time to stay over night with them. In good times they get such a visit from a tour group about once a month.

In Jericho, while we watched tour buses hurtle past to go and photograph a two hundred year old sycamore tree that Zaccheus most certainly did not climb, and stand on the remains of the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth, we took a detour to visit the Christians of Jericho. In what looks like a deserted refugee camp from the days of 1948, today the YMCA, World Vision and Christian Aid are investing in the future of Palestine, giving young men the chance to learn vocational skill in car mechanics, carpentry and computers. It was embarrassing to discover we were the only group of English people to ever visit the camp.

In Ramle we visited "Open House", an unpretentious house on the corner of a very ordinary street where a miracle has occurred. Amidst the thousands of homes confiscated from Palestinians in 1948 and given to Jewish refugees from war-torn Europe, one family, the Landau's, on discovering they had been settled in the home of a Moslem family forced into exile in Ramallah, although forbidden to give it back, instead decided to share it. So today Open House runs a kindergarten and camps for local children from both communities. Like an oasis in a dry and barren land, Open House is a place of nourishment, where Jews, Moslems and Christians come to learn to live together through sharing instead of separation, through giving instead of taking.

Another indispensable stop on our itinerary is always Ibillin up in Galilee and the school and university built through the vision and sweat of Elias Chacour. Fighting apartheid with bricks and mortar, overcoming State opposition with stubborn tenacity and defeating racism with education, Elias has created a unique working experiment where staff from all three faith communities teach children without respect of their creed or colour. For someone who as a child saw his own community of Baram bulldozed and many of his people massacred by Jewish soldiers, Elias has repaid Israel with a lasting legacy that puts all who merely talk about peace to shame.

We sing that lovely Easter hymn, "There is a green hill far away without a city wall..." or at least there used to be before the Israeli's confiscated it. The Shepherds Fields of Beit Sahour, surround an ancient Christian village on the edge of Bethlehem, the only Christian village in the area. They are seeing their beautiful wooded hill turned into yet another illegal and exclusive Jewish settlement that will, like all the others, need defending by Israeli troops. We stood and watched as on the horizon the construction lorries desecrated another ancient holy site. We were similarly shocked at the excavations for a giant multi-million dollar tunnel being constructed complete with viaducts to take a new road over and under the hills between Beit Jala and Bethlehem to enable a handful of Israeli settlers safe access to a bolt hole in Jerusalem, avoiding any future trouble from Palestinian villages along the original road. The Occupied Territories today seem like one giant Israeli construction site, a 20th Century version of the American Wild West land grab.

One of the songs Garth was asked to sing repeatedly as we met with indigenous Christian communities right across Israel and the Occupied Territories was his song "Ten measures of beauty God gave to the World" in which he calls us all the pray for the peace of Jerusalem. The chorus is a prayer:

May the justice of God fall down like fire and bring a home for the Palestinian.

May the mercy of God pour down like rain and protect the Jewish people.

And may the beautiful eyes of a Holy God who weeps for His children

Bring the healing hope for His wounded ones

For the Jew and the Palestinian.

That peace seems less likely to come humanly in the near future, as a result of the recent elections because a majority of Israeli's spell it "piece" and think they can hang on to it by force of arms. Netanyahu's election as Israel's new Prime Minister appears to signal the end of the delicate peace negotiations initiated by Rabin and Arafat. We must pray that Netanyahu and those who support him will be brought to realise soon that acknowledging basic human rights to the Palestinians, those rights we take so much for granted for ourselves, are more likely to lead to peace and reconciliation than by any agreement of coloured lines on a map.

Stephen & Garth are organising a similar tour of the Holy Land in 1999. For more information e-mail on Sizer@Compuserve.com

Stephen is also leading a tour to the Holy Land in November 1998.  

Details of Holy Land Tour November 1998

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