Part 2: The Intifada and me
There are two key dates in the conflict between Jews and Palestinians that serve as fixed points for understanding the present: the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and the Six-Day War in June, 1967. The first was a culmination of events set in motion by the British Balfour Declaration (1917) of intent to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, while also promising Arabs self-rule from the Ottomans. For Jews this became Independence Day; for Palestinians it is the Nakbah, ‘Catastrophe’. The second date marks the beginning of the Occupation, following Israel’s crushing defeat of the surrounding Arab states that had launched a joint attack on them. That occupation continues to this day on the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights—54 years later.
My first visit to Israel was in early 1988 for an academic conference. I arrived into the midst of the first Intifada, the ‘uprising’, which was triggered by, among other things, the building of Jewish settlements on occupied land. It began with children and youngsters throwing stones at soldiers, and striking shopkeepers closing down their shops for days at a time in show of solidarity. While in Jerusalem I stayed in the home of a young Arab woman who had attended my church in Manchester while a student there. Now she and her husband lived on the Mount of Olives. Because there were big demonstrations in Jerusalem during Friday prayers every week, and danger of violence, they counselled me to get out of the city and go to Bethlehem for the day. A Palestinian worker from Beth Sahour (the home of Shepherd’s Field, of Luke 2 fame) who had also spent the night at their home became my host for the day. We did not escape incident, however. We arrived in Nativity Square to see Israeli soldiers (IDF) welding shut those shops that had closed for that day’s strike, as men poured out of the mosque—just opposite the Church of the Nativity—at the conclusion of mid-day prayers. The tension was, as they say, palpable. My host suggested we leave the area, and he took me to his home. That is another story.
The conference, on the 40th anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, introduced me to Jews of all stripes: religious and secular, Israeli and Diaspora. I had the privilege of being invited into the home of one of these fellow-scholars, who were sympathetic to the Palestinian people and cause. Their political party was not, however, in power.
By the end of my two weeks in Israel I had, as a freedom-loving American, seen enough of the daily ‘micro-aggressions’ (in today’s terms) Palestinians met every day to wonder why it had taken 20 years before this stone-throwing ‘uprising’ touched off. I hardly had patience after two weeks of watching!
Twenty years of military occupation bore its fruit in the creation of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance.
In January, 2004, I spent my sabbatical term at Hebrew University, arriving in the midst of the Second Intifada. The first had ended with the 1993 Oslo Accords, setting the ‘roadmap’ for a Two-State solution to the ongoing conflict. Hope of resolution was extinguished, however, when a Jewish extremist assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the Palestinian extremist party, Hamas, stepped up the level of violence. This uprising had moved from stone-throwing to ‘suicide’ bombs. The trigger for the ‘Al Aqsa’ Intifada in 2000 was a casual stroll by Likud candidate for PM, Ariel Sharon, across the Haram/Temple Mount (breaking Israeli law) as a statement of Israel’s sovereignty over the holy site. There had been nearly 100 suicide bombings since then, and there were nine bombings during my time there. On 29 January I was awakened by the detonation on the 19 bus. I learned that it killed 11. This hit home not only because it was so close to where I lived; the 19 bus route terminated on Mount Scopus, at the University. When I headed home in the evenings I watched the ordinary routine of young students getting on the 19 as they streamed out of classes at the end of their day. Ordinary students, full of life, were on the 19 that morning in January.
By day I worked among Israeli academics, some of them people I had first met in 1988, and who remain colleagues and friends after all these years, whom I value as friends (I have always felt more at home with the Jewish scholars of faith than Western scholars of little or no faith). They were no longer sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, but were not hostile to Palestinians.
The rest of the time I lived and shopped in the Old City. Here I lived among Palestinians—Christian and Muslim. I shared mint tea with shop-keepers (and, once or twice, a hookah, accepting their hospitality); there were few tourists, so at times it felt as though the whole economy of the Old City depended on me. I worshipped at the Anglican St George’s Cathedral, as part of the small English speaking expat community, and learned much about the challenges for Christians from the young, articulate, and pastoral Israeli-Palestinian Acting Dean who led us. I watched the ‘Security Wall/of Separation’ being built, snaking its way through the midst of Palestinian towns, often dividing families and separating farmers from their fields. In those few months I tensed very time I heard a siren; I felt dread every time I saw the wasp-like Apache helicopters passing overhead towards the West Bank. It was in this period that Israel withdrew completely from Gaza—the beginning of continuous low-level conflict that has escalated to war in 2008 and 2016, and again this May. Children born in during the period of my residence in Jerusalem in 2004 are now 17 years old. For perspective, 75% of Gazans are under 25. Young people.
In 2016 I was able to take another sabbatical in Jerusalem. Alongside doing research at Hebrew University I also provided pastoral oversight to the Jerusalem Church of the Nazarene while the Jordanian pastor took home leave. This time I arrived at the height of the ‘Knife’ Intifada. Violence which had been largely kept to the occupied territory now came to East Jerusalem itself (occupied, but annexed by Israel). The Damascus Gate of the Old City became the venue for ‘suicide by soldier’, in which youngsters (even children) would take a kitchen knife and launch themselves at a soldier—knowing they would be killed; succumbing to the hopelessness of those who have known only the heavy hand of occupation. In just one week, five died this way. This hit at the very heart of the place of pilgrimage, in the very neighbourhood of the church I served, and on a path I have walked dozens of times over the years. The Israeli government response is always greater force. My thoughts, then as now, were that the constant pressure-cooker suppression could only lead to the lid exploding. Among both Jewish and Palestinian friends I found hope for resolution or peace to have virtually disappeared.
And now, the storming of the Haram/Temple Mount, May 2021. Violence moves to the towns and cities of Israel where Jews and Arabs have lived together these 70 years. The clashes are, reportedly, between Israeli Jews and Israeli ‘Arabs’. The word from my friends on the ground is that the Jews were actually settlers, brought in bus-loads to these towns. This is a frightening extension of the territory of conflict.
Every circle in the perpetual spiral of violence creates a new generation of hate, both sides clasped in a death-grip from which no one knows how to escape. ‘If you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another’ (Galatians 5:15).
Ordinary Israelis and Palestinians have been failed by their leadership through decades. Whenever there was a serious move towards peace, extremists on each side would resort to renewed provocation to derail any such process; and continue to be successful in their effort. There is, in fact, one truth that has to be addressed: Israelis and Palestinians, Jews, Muslims and Christians, have to figure out how to live with each other.
End of Part 2.
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