Rediscovering Palestine

By The Rev. Phineas Washer

My trip to the occupied West Bank and Gaza opened up a New World for me!

In July 1985, under the auspices of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign, I traveled to the occupied territories with 13 academics and one other cleric. Our group investigated academic freedom on the West Bank.

That inquiry propelled me into a New World, a world where teachers are not allowed to teach. West Bank educators were consistently harassed and obstructed by Israeli occupation forces: teachers were detained frequently, soldiers patrolled university campuses, equipment requisitions were snarled in red tape for months, instructors' homes were raided. Professors wanted to teach; students wanted to learn. But Israeli officials made that very difficult to do.

However, I did learn something about Palestinians. Before my trip I had never heard the word "Palestinian" used except when modified by the adjective "terrorist." But that's not what I found when I met West Bankers. I met a wide cross-section of the population, including attorneys, university people, an ex-employee of the Mennonite Church, librarians, bus drivers, hotel clerks, scientists, physicians, refugees—people wanting to do their jobs, people wanting to live in peace. Brilliant people and average people. People deeply hurt and people decidedly determined. People who love their homes, their land, their families. Palestinians—people like everyone else, like you and me.

We met an attorney from Law in the Service of Man, the West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. Our group of 15 gathered in a small meeting room to hear his story. As coolly, as detached as a professional could be under such circumstances, he told of the frustrations and harassments he encounters every day in dealing with the Israeli military courts.

Struggling to work through the courts to redress the grievances of his people, he reported how slowly the justice moved, how over and over again every legitimate effort of his was blocked. The military authorities dug up Israeli laws, Jordanian laws, British Mandate laws, Ottoman laws—whenever a law was needed to stifle his inquiries, the military authorities found such a law.

"Since the legal system moves so slowly, will you ever resort to violence to further your cause?" one of our members asked him. The lawyer though a moment, and when he spoke his voice had a quiet, determined resolution that suggested he had asked himself this question many times. "No, I will never resort to violence," he said.

I remember meeting a professor from An-Najah University in Nablus. There must be some way, he said, to break the impasse that keeps apart the two societies, Palestinian and Jewish. Looking for that break, he brought together a handful of students from his university and a similar number from Tel Aviv University for a "let's-get-acquainted-and-get-to-know-each-other-as-human-beings" meeting. This was a pilgrimage for peace, but an Israeli military official told the professor that these meetings would have to stop. "I don't want my people to get confused," said the official.

Neither shall I forget the Palestinian brother who spent a morning showing us the Jewish settlements surrounding Arab East Jerusalem, a perspective not offered your average tourist. The settlements looked like fortresses, and their groupings suggested that their purpose was to isolate, seal off, and intimidate the Palestinians under Israeli occupation in Jerusalem's Old City.

In the United States I think we are overdue for a more realistic picture of the Palestinians and what they are up against. When I hear the word "Palestinian" I no longer see a terrorist. Instead, I have images of warm, caring human beings who love their land and their families, and who wish to live in peace.

Previously I had only known the Holy Land through Biblical studies, slide shows, reports of others, and books. What New Worlds of understanding have opened up to me in the study of Scripture as a result of riding over the terrain, observing the shepherds, visiting the holy places. The Good Samaritan did hike down from Jerusalem to Jericho, like the story says. Standing in the Carmel mountain range, I realized why fiery Elijah must have attracted so much attention. He ministered in lands and on mountainsides as dramatic as his personality.

Another New World I had not anticipated is a New World of friends, friends made in the Holy Land as well as friends here in my city of Houston who are interested in the Palestinian issue. Friends with roots and ties to the land I visited. Friends long interested in the cause of freedom, justice, and human rights.

As a result of my trip and since my trip, many New Worlds have opened up to me. Eat your heart out, Christopher Columbus, you're not the only one who discovered a New World!

The Reverend Phineas Washer is minister of the John Knox Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas.