Bethlehem!

Last Thursday I met the Palestine Summer Encounter group and we came south to Bethlehem area. It has been an intense and busy week!

Each of the 15 participants is living with a Palestinian family, volunteering at a local organization and studying Arabic. Combined with local events and meetings plus travelling by foot or bus it all adds up to a busy time.

The group is diverse and very interesting with people from Switzerland, Norway, Bulgaria, UK and Canada in addition to the USA. There is an Iraq War veteran who is now in medical school, numerous university students (Phd and undergraduate), one retiree, and others who had the interest and time like myself.

It is very interesting talking with people in the group and how they came to be here. For example there is an exuberant 21 year old female who grew up in a Evangelical Christian church in Arkansas. She talks about how normal it is for the Baptist and Evangelical churches there to be Christian Zionist - very pro-Israel and blind to the Palestinian perspective. She read the influential 'Left Behind' series of books and came to Israel last year with a group from her church. But after reading the book "Whose Land? Whose Promise?" she started to see things differently. She describes how she became angry when she realized the distortions and falsehoods. Now, her goal is to return and live in the Palestinian Territory after she graduates university. As a music major she looks forward to working with a school choir here!

Each of us is volunteering at a local organizations - hospital, kids' summer camp, media outlet, etc.. I am volunteering at Radio Isis - a local radio station - and helping prepare a proposal for expansion of their tower and transmitter. My house-mate is Norwegian and here partly because his girl-friend is a psychologist working with Doctors Without Borders in the nearby Palestinian city of Hebron. He is helping to build a climbing wall and other equipment that will be used in an upcoming summer adventure camp for kids.

In the afternoons we have two to three hours of Arabic instruction. The teacher is excellent. She combines presentation with classroom practice and the time passes quickly. We are learning the Arabic alphabet and have covered 6 of the 28 letters so far. Unfortunately there are a few important sounds/letters which have no English equivalent so we just have to constrict the throat and stomach and utter 'gghhh' or something like that.

Friends and family have all advised me to BE SAFE! It seems very safe here in the Bethlehem area. This is partly because it is a small city. However it is also because the population is friendly to visitors and foreigners. It is nothing like many third world cities where there are thieves looking for a chance to take advantage of a foreigner. Especially after coming here from East Jerusalem - where there are machine gun carrying soldiers everywhere - it is striking how FEW soldiers or police there are. My host family says the Palestinian community polices itself.

While it is quiet and relatively peaceful now, a few years ago it was not. Our host told us how Apache attack helicopters fired missiles at cars and houses in this area during the Intifada (uprising) a few years ago. Roads were blocked and the Israeli military imposed a siege and curfew for months. Many people died. Looking at the tranquil (and economically depressed) Bethelehem now, it seems strange to imagine.