Holding a Space

I have not written anything here in my blog for some time. I recently read in someone else’s blog something like this:

‘When I’d been here (in Israel) a couple of days I had pages to write. After a week or so, I could write one page. Now I understand how complicated everything is and I can hardly write a word.’ (If you wrote this and are reading it, I’m sorry I can’t credit you: I can’t remember where I read it!)

But I identify with the truth of it.

I have been here in the Holy Land for more than nine months as Mission Partner for the Church of Scotland and Associate Minister for St Andrew’s Jerusalem and Tiberias. ‘Hmm,’ said one wisecracker,’ long enough to give birth!’

Well, long enough to be thoroughly confused about what it means to be Mission Partner here and how to live faithfully here and be useful.

I represent a very small denomination in a land where the Christian population is tiny and diminishing. I see and hear about the suffering of the Palestinian people, but I also see and hear the fear of the Jewish population who are not all the same and not all treated the same by the State and by their neighbours. I have heard the pride and the anguish of mothers about their children serving in the IDF. I have seen and heard of the violence and humiliation meted out to Palestinians on a daily basis.

I heard the other day of a Palestinian Christian who was walking to work in the Old City of Jerusalem. He came across some Police intimidating and beating up some Palestinian youth aged 13 or 14. He began filming on his phone. And then he became the target. They took his ID and now he is afraid that every time he goes to the old City he will be targeted again. Like many before him he thinks of his family and what kind of future they can have in the face of such injustice.

In recent days both President Herzog and Tor Wennesland, Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and leader of the UN Mission, have warned that in the light of proposed changes to the powers of the judiciary, the announced development of more settlements in the West Bank and the danger of collapse of the Palestinian Authority, the State of Israel finds itself in perilous days. In the occupied Palestinian territories, there is the prospect of economic collapse following the pandemic years and systemic failure of government, little possibility for family life, weariness with repeating the same stories of injustice and the world apparently doing nothing.

Every day, it seems, there are deaths and arrests. Every day desperate and suicidal Palestinians, often grieving multiple family members, bring more murder and grief and unleash harsh collective punishment.

Is another bloodbath inevitable? And what can I do in the face of such overwhelming darkness?

In some ways the answer is simple (simplistic?) As the church year turns into the season of Lent I am called to follow Jesus on the Way of the Cross. I am called to befriend, accompany, provide hospitality, witness and report.

And while the Israel/Palestine conflict is not an equal one, and hugely unjust, I am still called to hold a space: for refusing polarization, for conversation, for prayer, for dialogue, and holding the whole region in prayer. Amen. So be it.