Israel Day 6: History, Business, & West Bank

World Council of Churches

We started off the day by meeting with Yusef Daher, a Palestinian Christian working for the World Council of Churches. He works for non-violent ways to wage peace. He is the Executive Secretary of the Jerusalem Inter-Church Center of the Heads of Churches of Jerusalem in association with the World Council of Churches and the Middle East Council of Churches. Also, Yusef teaches at Bethlehem University in tourism.

Yusef works within the World Council of Churches drawing together several church centered organizations and theologians striving for causes of residency, peace, current challenges for Christians. In 2009, these groups issued the Palestine Kairos document. (He told a joke: Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a theologian? The difference between a terrorist and theologian is that you can negotiate with a terrorist.) The Kairos document was based on three themes: word of hope (Palestinian Christians will survive this conflict), word of faith (how to read the Bible together), word of love (what is requested of Palestinian Christians)..

Jerusalem is a focus for the World Councils of Churches because this is the main center for much of Israel. What happens here sets the stream for the rest of the region.

Residency of Israelis is another focus of the WCC. Many who are Palestinian born Israelis and travel abroad can lose their residency because of frequent travel or staying in a country to long. Also, if Palestinians live outside Israel for longer than 7 years, you automatically lose your citizenship. Sometimes husbands and wives can only see one another on a one month visa because of this. The WCC focuses these concerns, through the Vatican, to the Israeli government.

NCC was a part of issuing the Kairos Palestinian Document, a document issuing declaring wrongs done to the Palestinians by the Israeli government and outlining how God calls people to reconciliation. Upon issuing a document of the Palestinian Kairos, the Jerusalem Post criticized the writers but not the content of the Kairos document of calling for peace. However, two local Israeli Jewish theologians opened communication by calling the document a valid concern.

Danny Seidemann tour and meeting

Later in the morning, we met with Danny Seidemann, who was born in New York and became an Israeli citizen. Danny is the founder and director of Terrestrial Jerusalem (TJ), an Israeli non-governmental organization that promotes an Israeli-Palestinian permanent status peace. He is a retired Reserve Major in the Israeli Defense Forces and is regularly provides advice to the US government agencies.

Danny started our meeting by saying that Jerusalem has glass walls where Israelis and Palestinian don’t go in certain areas. Historically, pre-1948 Palestinians were under occupation by Jordan. Danny said, “Israelis didn’t perfect occupation, they just borrowed it. Jerusalem is a bi-national city and  says that is not a sustainable reality. He truly believes that the settlements expand plan will make a two state solution impossible.

We our geo-political tour of Old City Jerusalem in a clock-wise fashion. We first stopped at the burial site of a high priest of the Second Temple, which is a site of reverence for Jews. In 1953, the Jordanian government agreed to give land for 28 homes for Jewish refugees near the site. Danny said that religion has been used to control land in order to say, “It’s mine, it’s not yours.” Integrity of religious sites needs to be kept and not used as a pretext for occupation.

I will write and share more about Danny later.

Taybeh

We left Jerusalem to travel to Taybeh, which is in the West Bank. The trip took about 45 minutes. As we traveled, we observed several Israeli settlements. Often, there would be a settlement right next to a Palestinian villages. The country side is full of rock and sloping hills and mountains. There were farms and shepherds out in the fields. It made me think of the shepherds in the birth narrative of Jesus. Poor, humble, and dirty shepherds were frighten by the visitation of the angels.

As we entered Taybeh, a church greeted us on the hill. We ate at a fantastic restaurant called “Peter’s House”. You have to walk down into the restaurant into a modern stone cave. It was pleasant. We ate outside on a patio over looking Taybey and the fields. A beautiful view.

After lunch, we went to Catholic church that has a first century house cut into the hill-side. Inside, we saw a typical first century family house. It was big and had three levels. The lower level for small animals, the middle level for sleeping and cooking, and the top level was for sleeping or served as a general room. It was truly the first split level house! It was very cool and gave a good picture of what first century life in Palestine looked like.

We stopped at the Taybeh (meaning “delicious”) Brewery, the only micro brewery in the Middle East. After the Oslo Peace Accord, a family decided to started a brewery in 1995. The father, Nadim Khoury got caught up in the Boston micro-brew craze in the 1990’s and decided to bring it to Palestine. It wasn’t easy to start a business dependent upon water in a land where it rains only 2-3 times a month – sometimes not at all. Now, Taybeh Brewery produces a great beer using 1516 German Purity Laws. Part of what makes Taybeh beer so good is that they filter the beer to take out impurities.

Last, we visited a 5^th century church in Taybeh… well, the ruins of one. The church serves the location that three churches sacrifice an animal for a huge festival. It sounds gruesome, but it is more a tradition to start the festival.

As the sunset, we drove to Ramallah. As you may know, this is the city that headquarters the Palestinian Liberation Organization and is often the center of conflict. There have been times when civilians have been order to leave their homes to hold Israeli military solders engaged in military action or ask to house solders against their will.

Sam Nahor

We ate dinner and met with Sam Bahour, Managing Partner of Applied Information Management. Sam was born in Ohio and returned to Palestine to after the Oslo peace accords because the climate was right to help get the economy going.  Sam came to Palestine because that is where his family is from. His goal was to begin a business that would build a telecommunication system. Oslo specifically gave Palestinians the ability to create a telecommunication infrastructure.  After coming, he quickly found that the Israeli government would delay equipment he needed, resist bandwidth needs, and make traveling very difficult. He gave us a clear business and political history of the challenges involved with starting businesses in the West Bank.

Sam showing all the ID’s he needs just to travel into Jerusalem. Three total!

Israel Trip Day 1 – Day 2 – Day 3 – Day 4 – Day 5 part I – Day 5 part II – Day 6 – Day 7 – Day 8