March 15, 2007

THE WALL

Read: Luke 19:41-43

I have pictures of many places we visited where Jesus walked. As I look at them I relive the emotions I felt as I was there and viewed them in person. One memory does not need pictures to help me remember – it is etched permanently in my mind.

As we drove into Bethlehem we were stopped at a tall cement wall with a check point. Later as we left Bethlehem we waited about 45 minutes at this same place while guards roughly turned back several men who apparently did not have the right papers.

With its wall and towers and barbed wire and armed guards Bethlehem looks like a prison. And to many of its residents it is!

This wall separates many Palestinian families from their land or shops; children from their schools; nursing homes from hospitals; the bereaved from the cemeteries.

And what is the reason for this wall? According to our news media it is to prevent terrorism. People who spoke to us said it is simply for land.

In 1973 Ariel Sharon said “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlement, in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlement, right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years time, neither the United Nations, nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”

And in 1998, 25 years later, he said “Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can … Everything we don’t grab will go to them.”

Several people who spoke to us told stories of coming home from work to find their property had been confiscated and they now had to live in “temporary” relocation camps. Today there are fences around Bethlehem, Hebron, Jericho, Ramalah, Nablus and dozens of other villages, separated by illegal Israeli settlements.

Later we visited the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. I saw a quotation along with a picture from a Polish ghetto which said “I spent the next three years in camps.” And another quote said “Remember only that I was innocent and, just like you, mortal on that day. I, too, had had a face marked by rage, by pity, by joy, quite simply a human face.

My scripture is from Luke 19:41-43.
As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you and hem you in on every side.”

As we drove by this wall around Bethlehem I wept. I wanted to bring back a story of peace and hope. There is no peace. Strangely I saw many examples of hope, but these walls must come down.

Ched Fine