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At the end of 2005, Katrin and I visited friends living in East Jerusalem – the Palestinian side regarded as part of the West Bank. During our stay we traveled primarily within the occupied territory, visiting the towns of Hebron, Bethlehem, Jericho, Ramallah, Taybeh, Nablus and Zababdeh. I took a lot of notes on our trip, which I hoped to flesh out later. That never happened, but I recently found something I’d written about the day we spent with a family in Zababdeh, in the north of the West Bank. Zababdeh is one of the few Palestinian towns with a Christian majority. I was surprised to learn through anecdotal and physical evidence that, although most of the citizens are not Muslim, the Israeli government treats them with the same brand of contempt as we saw in other towns like Hebron and Bethlehem, leading me to conclude that, as much as religion, race plays a significant role in Israeli-Palestinian relations. |
We visit Reverend F. and his wife R., a young, Christian couple with a little son living in the small West Bank town of Zababdeh. Their house looks new. It is spacious; the walls filled with pictures and religious plaques, the rooms filled with tastefully modest furniture. A piano stands in one corner. The TV is on and equipped with satellite reception. As their young son, P., watches a Jackie Chan movie, the six of us engage in a polite chat about the church as well as current politics. Reverend F. has to leave for an appointment. He says goodbye and takes his son with him.
R. has prepared an enormous and delicious dinner for us. She tells us more about her church, we talk about where we all come from, we laugh hard at jokes. It feels all very suburban, very middle-class.
But it’s far from it.
Reverend F. is a Palestinian. R. is Jordanian. Their house is only rented. In three months she will have to re-apply for her temporary residence visa, something she has to do every few months for permission to stay with her husband and two-year-old son. “Jordan, Palestine, I don’t care where I live, as long as I’m with my family,” she says, her emerald-green eyes betraying concern. For this is not the remark of someone content with the luxury of living here or there but rather of someone for whom neither may be a possibility. Her applications to reside in Zababdeh, in the Palestinian area, have been denied before, not by the Palestinian National Authority, but by the Israeli government. In those previous times, she has had to move back to Jordan, without her husband and son, until the Israeli government decided to let here return – a wait that has taken as long as eight months.
Moving the family to Jordan is not easy either. Reverend F., a minister of the Episcopal Church, can not choose where to serve; that is decided by the local bishop sitting in East Jerusalem, who has shown no indication of moving him anywhere. And if he is moved, there’s no guarantee it would be a place where R. could join him. “We can’t live like this forever,” she says while sipping tea from the comfort of an oversized armchair. The striking contrast between the gravity of her words and the simple luxury of her surroundings is in this moment as incomprehensible for me as any real-world situation is for the student of its theory. The reality of R.’s life is made all the more unfathomable as we sit around a large, round table eating a wonderfully cooked meal in a dining room that could be found in any American home. The conversation is light; we share stories, compliment the cooking and laugh.
The reality, however, is never far away – right outside of their front door, in fact. A day-long rain has made the front yard a muddy swamp. The car struggles and slides its way onto an equally muddy road lined with decrepit houses and shops. Villagers step carefully among the holes and deep tire tracks, trying to avoid getting wet as much as possible. Zababdeh’s largest, and seemingly sole, industry is olive oil. Groves of olive trees can be seen everywhere. Palestinians, however, are not permitted to sell their goods to Israeli businesses, so there are no prospects of supporting, much less expanding, their meager economies.
R. takes us to the church Pastor F. serves. It is a simple building in the middle of town. Next to it is a smaller building used as a community and education center. The church is very active in the community. The backside of it serves as a clinic, which provides medical services for the locals as inexpensively as possible. As we walk into the church, Katrin and I notice it is in complete disarray. The pews are askew, chips of paint and stone litter the floor, even the small organ sits at an awkward angle to the wall. “The Israeli army,” R. says, seeing our confused looks. “They did this to our church.” She tells us about a day not long ago when soldiers appeared here with weapons and bulldozers. With few words – more orders than explanations – they commandeered the church to use as a lookout post from which they could observe a dormitory building not far away. “The dorm was empty,” R. explained. “There was no one to watch.” The soldiers rearranged the pews and moved the organ “to have something to lean against.” A bulldozer was called in to enter the recently built dorm. As it passed the church, it dislodged some of the bricks, leaving minor but considerably expensive structural damage. “We have no means to repair this,” she says, pointing to a corner missing several bricks.
She then takes us down to the dormitory, a five-story building recently constructed to house students of the local college. It is completely unusable. Where balconies once jutted out are now only crude holes and jagged metal beams. The rooms are exposed to the elements; bullet holes mark the walls of several rooms. “They found no one,” R. explains. “They simply shot to destroy our property.” Neither the small college nor the village have the money to repair the structures. Is there any chance of receiving compensation from the Israeli government? R. looks at the remains of the dorm and pile of rubble before it. “They never pay,” she says. “They only destroy and leave.”
