WEDNESDAY, 3/12/14 11:15 p.m., Lutheran Guesthouse, Jerusalem What is it in human nature that the things we hold most sacred are the things we most deeply desecrate? This is true on a personal level. The people closest to us, who matter most, whom we most love, are often also the ones who bear the brunt of our anger or bitterness or abuse. If there is an original sin, a stain on our very nature, surely this is one symptom of it. And its also true on a cultural level. Take, for example, this: the Holy Land. Every major religion teaches, in no uncertain terms, compassion, service, sharing, love. And the one city that is central to three of those major religions is a city of defended boundaries, high tensions, and lines in the sand. From the Jewish Revolts against Greece and Rome to the Muslim conquest, the Crusades, the Ottoman conquest, and right on down to today, the ownership of Jerusalem may have spilled as much blood per square foot as any place in the world. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! (Matthew 23:37) It is a little known fact that Palestinians have the highest education rates of any people in the Arab world, but the unemployment rate is also very high (40% among youth from age 18-24). So by-and-large, Palestinians are overqualified for the opportunities available to them. However, according to Yousef Shalian, the director of the Lutheran World Federation Vocational Training Center in Beit Hanina (just outside of Jerusalem), there is not enough vocational education. We visited his training center this morning, and took a very impressive tour. Young people were hammering at pipes in mock basements in the plumbing program, crouching under cars in the auto-mechanic program, welding, building windows, doing carpentry, pottery, etc. The school often contracts its own students to frame and hang the doors in the dorms, or install the windows in the shop classrooms, or cater a meal. (We were treated by the catering students to a delicious lunch of savory lentil soup, cumin chicken with pasta, several fresh salads, fresh lemonade, and light cupcakes for dessert.) After our visit with Shalian, we went to the Shufat Refugee Camp. Now when I heard we were visiting a refugee camp, I pictured tents and maybe some corrugated tin--a shantytown with a distinctly temporary feel. Not so at Shufat. It looked more like a well-established city slum--muddy, trash-strewn roads so narrow you can barely fit two cars past each other, graffiti, drab stone buildings, the smell of rot. Children were coming home from school and shouting Hello! and How are you? to us. The shell of a small bus squatted at the bottom of a hill, its windows all blown out and its insides charred. A local explained that in about 2006 Jewish settlers had come into the camp to vandalize things with the protection of an IDF escort. They had bashed in the buss windows, lit the inside on fire, and left its blackened hull behind. The bus has since flowered with colorful graffiti, but otherwise remains as it was eight years ago. Palestinians cannot pay much in taxes to the Palestinian Authority, and they get very little in the way of services. Trash pickup, for example, is a huge problem which results in health issues. Even more crucial is access to water because the population of the camp is growing and because Israel controls the spigot. One person told us they sometimes dont get water for 2-3 months at a time. (Palestinians are not allowed to dig wells without permits, which Israel rarely grants them, even on Palestinian land. Jewish settlements in Palestine, on the other hand, receive and use 7 times more water per capita.) We took a service (a small, public bus) back to Jerusalem where we will now stay for three nights. The chairs were old and lumpy. When we got to the checkpoint a couple of Israeli soldiers, one holding some kind of assault rifle, asked everyone to show their IDs. Three young Palestinian men in the back hopped up and went to stand outside while the rest of us showed our passports or permits. Then they showed theirs to the soldiers, and came back on like it was part of the routine. Because many of the Palestinian territories are now surrounded by the wall, they must go through this ritual every time they want to go anywhere. I am told by many people that being detained or turned back seems to occur randomly and without logic, according to the whim of the soldier on duty at the moment. We had an amazing dinner at an Armenian restaurant near the Jaffa gate. The little grotto was filled with exquisite furnishings. Behind our table a huge, wooden display cabinet studded with mother-of-pearl showed off its shelves of glass earrings and intricately painted pottery. In another corner, a seven-foot-tall, teapot with a dragons mouth bowed its neck over diners. Everywhere you looked there were ornate furnishings, brilliant lamps, strange and exotic items. The food was fabulous and unlike any cuisine Ive ever had--my entree consisted of a kind of creamy stew with beef and potatoes and tahini. A strange day to go from a third-world slum to a sumptuous environment like that.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 16:20:48 +0000
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