Jayyous
Friday, August 20, 2010
The oscillating fan fails to coax any cooling from the moisture pumping to the surface of my skin from my body which has a core temperature four degrees less than the outside air. Just as yesterday an unsolicited sense of dislike and judgment surfaced from within me that neither reason nor will could brush away.

I was walking through a section of the Jewish quarter in the old city of Jerusalem. The street was wide, brightly lit and the shops were spacious and inviting. An abundance of expensive items were displayed to please the eye and include the shopper in the circle of their elegance. The stores were attended by women and men in stylish western clothes speaking impeccable English. The men wore dark immaculate suits accompanied with accessories coordinated in every detail. The women were equally immaculate but in revealing dresses tight enough to also show those little extra bulges that betray middle age.

The more I looked the more I saw in their welcoming flashy smiles a mocking parody of my U.S home. I looked for a way out, dragging my eyes from the store fronts to anxiously scan each intersection of the street for signs of a path leading back to the place where I’d been living for the past three weeks: as a stranger in a strange land with strange people speaking a strange language. I was angry at being enticed by a corrupt reminder of home. Judgment rose up against these people who were offering me privilege on the backs of the oppressed. The unspeakable, unthinkable flashed through my consciousness: “bad Jew, good Palestinian!”

That fleeting thought clings to me like my drenched clothes in today’s oppressive heat. It suffocates me. It frightens me.

Is this what happens to us when we isolate ourselves in one particular community? Is this what the separation barriers are doing to the people of Israel and Palestine? Is this what happens in the gap between the powerful and the powerless? Is this what happens when the neighbor becomes the alien?

In my rational moments I recognize that the Palestinians and the Israelis have been neighbors in a common land for many generations. It would seem that there cannot be more that a three or four degrees of separation between them. They have a common grounding in the land, common religious sites, common experiences of being invaded and oppressed; perhaps even common ancestry to some degree. I have close friends who are Jewish and an ongoing relationship with a Lebanese family. What happened that I found myself choosing sides and casting judgments?

I can’t deny my feelings. But I do know that they reveal things that matter to me. It matters to me that I keep my balance here in this land of separated people. When I begin to tip over, it’s more about me than about the people around me. It’s about the unfair expectations that I project onto others and onto myself. However, high expectations mean I still care and carry within me hope for the two Peoples and the three Faiths of this land. That means more than a flash of feeling in a moment of confusion. There are no bad Jews and good Palestinians, nor bad Palestinians and good Jews. We are all people here for whom Jesus prayed, “Jerusalem, if only you knew the way of Peace!”

It’s almost sun set now. Soon I will lie on my mat on the roof of our house. The cool light of the moon and the stars will draw the heat of the day into the darkness and give relief to my overheated body. I may be lucky enough to see a meteor flash across the sky proclaiming the birth of an unexpected expectation for humankind. And when the baby cries out in the night, its universal voice will not be distinguishable as either Arab or Jew, slave or free. As I drift into sleep, my unthinkable unspeakable suffocating feeling may follow the fading meteor trail into the infinite darkness.


EAPPI-US and Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) have sent me as an Ecumenical Accompanier serving the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The views contained herein are personal to me and do not necessarily reflect those of EAPPI-US and Global Ministries or the WCC.