By Maggy Clarke, Grahamstown, South Africa

The text and photos below are substantially the same as a talk with Power-Point slides, first delivered at a meeting of the Anglican Women's Fellowship of St Michael & St George Cathedral, Grahamstown, on 26 August 2010. They may be quoted, with acknowledgement.

I remember some years ago at a Bible study, one of our members asked a question that was puzzling her. We had been looking at maps of the journeys of St Paul. She asked: “Where is Palestine?” She knew where Israel was, but where was Palestine? In the course of reading before, during and since the pilgrimage, as well as the experience of the pilgrimage itself, I have learned that the answer to Mary’s question (as I suspected at the time she asked it) is that Israel and Palestine are the same geographical area. And thereby hangs a tragic tale.
 

It’s all about the land. Or religion. Or history. Once upon a time the Jews were scattered around the world and had no place to call their own. Then in 1948, aghast at the horror of 6 million Jews being slaughtered under Hitler, the great powers agreed that Palestine, currently occupied by Britain, should be “given back” to the Jews as their very own home-land. Unfortunately this arrangement overlooked the fact that Palestine was not empty of people. There was a population of Arabs living there who did not just consider themselves “Arabs”, (as if it didn’t matter them whether they were living there, or in neighbouring Egypt, Jordan or Syria). They considered themselves Palestinians. And still do. Since the inception of the State, Israel has acquired during the course of a couple of wars against her Arab neighbours, some more territory, and as a result more Palestinians. To be fair, history recalls that Israel didn’t actually set out to acquire more territory, just to teach her neighbours a lesson. But having got the land, in most cases Israel has been reluctant to let go of it. (The Sinai Peninsula was an exception). So there are now three “occupied territories”: the Golan Heights, where many Syrians still live and hold Syrian passports, the West Bank of the Jordan (formerly Jordanian) and the Gaza Strip. You will not be surprised to hear that we didn’t go to Gaza. Within these occupied territories Jews have been allowed to settle, with the tacit or active approval of the Tel Aviv government. They live grouped together in separate areas, the “Settlements”, of which more below.

This series of maps, on display in Manger Square Bethlehem, shows how the land available for Palestinians to live in (coloured green) dwindled over the second half of the 20th century.

Bob had been to the Holy Land twice, in the 1960s before the Six-Day War, and in 1997. I had never been, so from time to time he would ask me if I wouldn’t like the chance of a pilgrimage. Then, towards the end of 2009 we saw an advertisement for a tour the following May, led by the Missionary Society USPG. This promised the opportunity not only to see the Holy Sites, but also to meet people living in Israel now, in particular Palestinian Christians. This, we felt, was the tour for us. We signed up, even though it meant travelling via London in each direction rather than going ex-Johannesburg as many other tours do. We joined our fellow pilgrims at Heathrow Airport early on the morning of 3 May and flew to Tel Aviv.
 

On landing at Tel Aviv airport we met our tour guide, a Palestinian Christian married to a Jewish Israeli, Claudia, who proved to be extremely good at her job and knowledgeable of the local scene (seen with Bishop Richard Llewellin).

Our driver Abu Jamal, also Palestinian, was highly skilled at his job, which he needed to be. He also never seemed to stop eating - and his figure bore testimony to this!

There were 24 of us, including the tour leaders, Canon Edgar Ruddock who is Deputy General Secretary of USPG, and retired Bishop Richard Llewellin, who was in charge of the devotional side of the pilgrimage.

Out of the 24 of us there were 10 clergy including two bishops, plus a Lay Canon of York Minster, an ordinand and one man who was testing his vocation, and of course a few clergy spouses - so not entirely representative of the population at large! All of us were Anglican except one, a Presbyterian woman.

The nine nights of the tour were divided into

three nights on Lake Galilee at Tabgha,

two in Manger Square, Bethlehem and

four in Jerusalem at the Knights’ Palace (genuine, Crusader). All the accommodation was Roman Catholic, Palestinian-run.

It was from Claudia that we learned that there are various categories of Israeli citizen: Jewish Israelis are said to be Israeli Nationals, while those of Arab descent, who call themselves Palestinians, have Israeli citizenship, but are not Nationals. In effect, first- and second-class citizenship. The implications of this became apparent as we went along. The statistics we were quoted agreed that the current population of Israel is 80% Jewish, and 20% Palestinian. Or to put it another way, 80% Jewish, 18% Muslim and less than 2% Christian, most of the Christians being Palestinians. We found this notice next to one of the hundreds of check-points which mark the boundaries between Palestinian areas and Jewish areas. An “A” area is under Palestinian administration and Jews may not enter. An area designated “B” is a Palestinian town under Israeli authority. And the rest of Israel plus the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza are “C”, under Israeli authority. Palestinians may enter, only after having had their documents checked at a point like this. It often takes a long time to go through, even if you do it every day to get to work and back.

To make it easier for the police to distinguish between people, Jews drive cars with yellow number plates, and Palestinians have white and green number plates. It is of course illegal to drive a car which does not match the identity on your ID card. These cars are in Bethlehem, which is a West Bank Palestinian town.

Did we see the Holy Sites?

Yes indeed. In many cases I found it particularly moving to see places and sights which were like those of Jesus’ time, like this 1st century rock-hewn tomb, complete with round stone to cover the inner doorway. The hole is very small, only just big enough to crawl into.

The alleged “actual” sites of New Testament events, like the Holy Sepulchre Church, did not move me in the same way. They have been built over, and even fought over, for centuries by Christians and others. Our leaders were careful where possible to keep us away from great crowds of other pilgrims.

For each site Richard had prepared a little liturgy of two pages, just the relevant New Testament reading, a couple of paragraphs of mediation and a hymn which we sang heartily together. As we sang at the traditional site of Jesus’ Transfiguration, Mount Tabor, “Tis good, Lord, to be here”.
 

At Cana in Galilee there’s a church commemorating the water being turned into wine, a Franciscan one as so many are. Apparently they paid high prices for Holy Sites to the Ottoman Turks, and many of the Catholic churches which have been built on these sites are beautiful, mostly built in the 19th or 20th centuries although a few survive from Crusader times.
 

Sellers of “Cana Wine” cash in on the Gospel story!
 

A feature of the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth is the collection of pictures of the Annunciation donated by Catholic communities all over the world. I was intrigued to learn that Mary’s family would have lived in a cave dwelling, people, animals and all. When the family outgrew the cave, they often built an extension in front for the people, leaving the animals’ quarters in the cave at the back. The word translated “inn” in the account of Jesus’ birth refers to the bit at the front.

The Holy Family were put in the cave at the back with the livestock because there was no room in the family extension. And the manger, in that land where wood was scarce and stone plentiful, would have been made of stone, like this one.

While in Galilee we were invited to meet with an Anglican priest, Fr Fouad Doghter, at his church in Shefr Amr. He and some of his church ladies, maybe the equivalent of the AWF, all Palestinians, welcomed us in his church. Most of the women could only speak Arabic, but Fr Fouad went to an American university in Lebanon, and was a welcoming and eloquent host, who made a point of saying that Palestinians do not want to drive the Jews into the sea. One of his older male parishioners also spoke. He had left his property many years ago, as a refugee in time of war. Like so many others, because he was “absent” his property was confiscated. There is even a category called “absentee present”. If a Palestinian falls into that category he also loses his property, if, for instance, he failed to till his land in time of war.

Fr Fouad got out his guitar, and taught us all the chorus of an Arabic worship song. Not as hard as that sounds, as the words were just “Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia”!

In Palestinian areas such as Shefr Amr registration of title deeds and getting planning permission to build involves “walking the Via Dolorosa”, said Fr Fouad. Nevertheless, with assistance from the Church of England they had recently managed to build a fine Church Hall where they gave us coffee.

At Banias, on one of the rivers which flows into the Jordan, we stopped to renew our baptism vows. Claudia had not managed to get permission to go to the part of the River Jordan where Jesus was baptised by John. In any case, the River would look very different today to in Jesus’ time, as 96% of the Jordan's water is being drawn off for irrigation, and as a result the level is very low. You can see Roman remains at Banias, which is said to be named after the Roman god Pan.

We were taken out on a boat in the Sea of Galilee, and as is customary they stopped the engines so we could get an idea of the silence - Edgar having taken the precaution of telling the boat proprietor in advance that we did not want canned music all the way!

(Even so, we were treated to “God save the Queen” and the hoisting of the Union Jack).

Instead we ourselves sang “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind”, and I will never sing it again without remembering what it felt like to be there.

We also saw a real fishing boat of the date of the Gospels, which was recently rescued from the mud at the bottom of the lake and carefully preserved. Claudia pointed out that Peter the Fisherman was by definition not a poor man, as his boat would have represented considerable wealth in itself.

The Synagogue in Capernaum, where Jesus and Peter would have worshipped, no longer stands, but the ruins of a slightly later Synagogue can be seen. It was built of paler stone on top of the foundations of the one of New Testament time (which was a darker colour, as you can see.)

At Jericho we stopped under a sycamore tree similar to the one Zacchaeus climbed, and read the relevant passage. Jericho is in the West Bank - that is, the territory on the West Bank of the River Jordan where the majority is Palestinian. (Not being very good at geography, it took a while for me to sort out that the West Bank is on the east side of the country.) The West Bank, or as many Jews prefer to call it, Judea and Samaria, was as I said a territory won by Israel in war, but now administered by the Palestinian authority. It would seem to be the obvious place for a Palestinian homeland, but there’s a school of thought among Jews that it is part of the Historic Land of Israel and it should rather be settled by Jews. In an attempt to block the eventual emergence of a viable country called Palestine, there are now many Jewish “settlements” dotted all over it, and roads joining them on which Palestinians are actually forbidden to travel.

The Wilderness, where Jesus spent 40 days, and anyone would have been tempted to turn stones into bread.

I gained a new respect for the leg muscles of Jesus and his disciples. Any devout Jew who lived in Galilee was supposed to go to the Temple in Jerusalem three times a year for the great Festivals. For the ordinary working person that meant walking, over this sort of terrain! This is where the Essenes lived, the strict Jewish sect which produced the Dead Sea Scrolls, and

this is the cave where the Scrolls were found: both the most ancient text of most of the books of the Old Testament in existence, and the Rule of the Essene order. The Scrolls were well hidden. The Romans wiped out the Essenes, but it was centuries before the Scrolls were found.

They were sticklers for ritual purity, taking two ritual baths a day (not just one). The water was brought from a spring by a viaduct. Not having heard Jesus’ injunction to “love your enemies” the Essenes looked forward to a day when the Messiah would come and lead them - to slaughter all the “less pure” Jews!

This is where the Scrolls are now kept, in Jerusalem, in a museum with a fountain playing over its roof to keep them cool.

A short drive from Qumran, we came to the Dead Sea, and soon saw the effect that all the irrigation is having on the water level. Not exaggerating, if something drastic (and expensive) is not done very soon to pipe water from the Mediterranean, the Dead Sea is going to dry up. The water level is dropping by 1 metre per year.

On previous visits Bob had floated in the famously salty water, in which you cannot sink, but I didn’t fancy it at all. When I dipped my hand in, it came out sticky - and look at the mud! (Highly prized for its cosmetic properties, but still...)

So to the (not so little, Palestinian) town of Bethlehem.

Personally I did not find that the Church of the Nativity did much for me, other than to sadden me that the various Christian denominations which share it (Orthodox of different varieties, and Roman Catholic) could not succeed, over many centuries, in agreeing how to share its use and upkeep. The result is that nobody seems to take responsibility for cleaning (let alone painting!) the ceiling. After years of smoky oil-lamps it’s revoltingly dirty.

Here in the Grotto under the church, where Christ is supposed to have been born, the walls are covered with gaudy cloths, I guess to cover up the grime.

Much more evocative of the time of Christ’s birth was Manger Fields, where outside the church (a different church) we could see across the valley a Bedouin shepherd with a flock of sheep, and faintly hear their bleats, and their bells. The sheep are just below the road in the picture.

We paid a visit to a children’s home, Niño Dios, where 20 Palestinian children born with severe deformities are looked after day and night by just five loving Catholic nuns. Claudia was of the opinion that birth deformities are particularly common on account of marriages frequently taking place between close relatives. Often these children are abandoned.

The famous view, with the golden dome of the Omar Mosque, and just to the right of it the grey dome of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which stands roughly where the Temple used to be.

The modern way of entering Jerusalem, via a checkpoint. We did not have get out as indicated on the notice, but guards boarded the bus and gave cursory glances to our passports (all British).

We visited the Dome of the Ascension, which is not a church. It stands in the middle of a roofless octagonal mosque, and is built around a stone which purports to hold the footprint Jesus left on departing! (Claudia thought this was just to keep up with the Muslims, who revere a spot with the footprint of Mohammed).

At Paternoster Church, next door, the walls inside and out are decorated with hundreds of translations of the Lord's Prayer into the languages of the world.

Most of us walked down the Mount of Olives, following the Palm Sunday route. No olive trees left, just a huge Jewish cemetery. Oddly in recent centuries Jews have become very defensive of their cemeteries, forbidding any moving of remains,

although in Biblical times it had been common practice to remove bones from graves and store them in ossuaries like this. Even Caiphas’ bones were stored in such a way, and archaeologists have found his ossuary.

This lovely church is called Dominus Flavit, meaning “Jesus wept”. Unusually the altar faces west, because it looks out over Jerusalem, which is on the west. The expression “Jesus wept” kept recurring to me ....

At the bottom of the hill we came to the Garden of Gethsemane, and really - those olive trees look old enough to be the very same ones Jesus prayed under! Claudia is a Roman Catholic, and this was one of the occasions she used her charms and connections on the local monks, and got us let in, while other pilgrims were excluded and had to look at the trees from the other side of a fence.

The Sunday of our tour was spent in Jerusalem, and we attended a morning Eucharist at St George’s Cathedral. It was the Arabic Mass, aimed at the local Palestinian congregation rather than visitors, but what with over 20 of us and an even bigger party from an English diocese, we outnumbered the locals, singing heartily in English from the bilingual service sheets.

We were welcomed afterwards, not to tea, but to extremely strong sweet black coffee. The sermon was in Arabic, but the preacher gave a precis in English at the end - from which it was obvious his message was quite “political”, as people used to say in South Africa in the 80's.

Several of the churches on the holy sites have sculptures outside, and this was one of my favourites, commemorating the Visitation of the Virgin Mary to Elizabeth.

That evening, and on a previous evening in Bethlehem, we had guests come to address us who had been involved in the drafting and signing of the Palestinian Kairos Document. This was inspired by the South African Kairos Document produced in the 1980's. Cedar Duaybis, shown here enjoying pre-supper drinks with members of our party at the Knights’ Palace, is a Palestinian Christian who helped found an organisation called Sabeel, with the aim of helping Christians to hold on to their faith in the face of what might seem like persecution in the name of their very own Holy Writ. That week it was in the news that Israeli-Palestinian talks were resuming. Cedar prayed that they might lead to a solution, but had to observe that every time talks started, the Israeli government took the opportunity to rush into building more Jewish “settlements” in Palestinian areas, on the assumption that the West would refrain from protesting for fear of derailing the talks. She explained that the Palestinians’ first priority in any talks is drawing the boundaries for a two-state solution, while the Israelis’ first priority is security. Cedar encouraged us to read the whole of the Palestinian Kairos Document even if we don’t agree with the call contained in to Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions. She felt the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was “We should make their problems ours, and they should make our problems theirs”.

Bob and I actually missed the Wailing Wall through turning up at the wrong City Gate for the rendez-vous. Bishop Richard found his lost sheep, and brought us by taxi to the next point in the itinerary, the Pools of Bethesda, and the beautiful St Anne's Church. The Pools are empty now, but water for washing sacrifices etc used to be brought there by viaduct. When the water spilled over from the upper pool to the lower, the water in the lower pool was said to be "troubled by an angel".
 

We were given an insight into what it feels like to be Palestinian when we were privileged to visit Hebron. This is a West Bank town which has had a Jewish Settlement built right in the middle of it. 400 Jews live in what looks like a block of flats. To protect them we were informed, 1500 Israeli Defence Force troops are deployed!

To create a buffer zone next to the flats, the proprietors of this whole street of shops were evicted. As you see, the shops are all empty and derelict. In fact a total of 1,829 shops had to close, either by order of the army, or because they had been cut off from their customers and lost their business. The settlement does overlook the Souk (Arab market) on the other side. You might expect the settlers to feel outnumbered and threatened, but oddly they make a habit of chucking their rubbish out of windows when Palestinians are passing below.
 

The Palestinians have resorted to erecting wire netting over the narrow streets of the souk to catch the rubbish. On this afternoon tour we were guests of the Ecumenical Accompanier Programme for Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), a WCC programme. EAPPI volunteers go and spend three months living among Palestinians and accompanying them in their daily lives. It has been proved that the settlers, and the Defence Force, act more courteously when they know that foreigners are watching. The two EAPPI volunteers who took us in tow were middle-aged women from Europe. Among their duties is accompanying children to school to make sure they are not harassed. At the time there was a man from St Francis Mdantsane among the EAPPIs, Mxolisi Sonti, but unfortunately we didn’t manage to meet up.

Our ostensible reason for visiting Hebron was to see the Tombs of the Patriarchs, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and so on. The monastic-looking brown-clad figures are actually the female members of our party, who were obliged to put on the robes supplied to cover ourselves from head to foot. Not so the men!
The Tombs are housed in a large building which was until recent years both a mosque and a synagogue. This remarkable inter-faith sharing came to a horrible end when in 1994 a fanatical Jewish doctor (born in the USA) went into the building while the Moslems were at prayer, took out a gun and killed 29 of them. He was overpowered and in fact beaten to death. The consequences were the Moslems were punished, a wall was built to divide the mosque from the synagogue, and the Jewish American doctor’s grave has become a place of pilgrimage....

While in Hebron we also paid a visit to the offices of the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee, an NGO which receives funds from overseas. Most of their work is restoring semi-ruined Arab buildings, work which is made more difficult by the restrictions on Palestinian-registered trucks coming in with building materials. Nothing daunted, they use horse-drawn carts. One horse was detained for 3 hours, we were told, and became a hero as a result!

Their own office building is one among 900 they have succeeded in restoring, in traditional style but with the addition of mod. cons. Their aims also include job creation, legal aid and the promotion of cultural events and tourism.

I am glad to say that not all Jewish Israelis whole-heartedly embrace their government’s treatment of Palestinians. There are young Jews who refuse to serve in the army for their national service, as some young white South Africans refused in the 1980s. We were taken on a revealing tour of Jerusalem by a young (Jewish) man from the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions. The streets of the Jewish, West side of Jerusalem, compare well with any in the Western world, with the pavements and lighting you would expect. But on the other side of the wall ....

the picture is very much like the worst of our townships. This, the only tarred road through this bit of East Jerusalem, proved a challenge to the driver of our bus. It struck those of us who had lived in South Africa (and there were several of us including Edgar Ruddock) that "Apartheid" was a word that we heard with surprising frequency, and even "Bantustan". In East Jerusalem schools are overcrowded, water supplies frequently get cut off, there are no pavements or street lights. It was explained to us that the contrast in services between East and West Jerusalem was not just the result of neglect, but part of a deliberate policy of making life so uncomfortable for the Palestinians that they would opt to go and live somewhere else.

We heard more about the denial of planning permission to build new houses, or to extend a house by adding an extra floor to accommodate a married son and his family (as is the custom). After a Palestinian has applied repeatedly and been rebuffed, he will often take the risk of building without permission. And this may result in the house being demolished as an illegal structure. One heap of rubble pointed out to us was the remains of a block of flats which one Palestinian had put up. When it was demolished, he was told to clear the site at his own expense. He responded that the demolition had left him bankrupt, so he couldn’t. And there the rubble remains. Of course the Israeli authorities can’t get around to demolishing all the “illegal” houses. About 100 houses get demolished per year, while the total of “illegally” built houses is something like 100,000. Nevertheless the threat makes Palestinians very nervous. And that’s a deliberate ploy.

Apartheid, we remembered, never actually involved building a huge and hideous wall like this, with check-points through which workers have to pass every day on the way to and from work. A 20-minute journey can take two hours, because of the detour due to the wall, and the delay at the checkpoint. The reason given for building the wall was of course security. There were Arab terrorists who had to be controlled and prevented from entering. But strangely the spate of suicide bombings came to an end, without the wall having been completed. As the young Jew who was hosting us said, why should a desperate terrorist be deterred by an unfinished wall which he could easily walk round? In fact, he said the reason the attacks ended was that they were having a negative effect, and tactics were changed.

The wall does not run along a straight line. It winds around Palestinian homes, and Jewish settlements. Here it was built to exclude a Palestinian house, leaving the family cut off from their neighbours. The reason? To induce the owner to sell - to someone who’s apparently a Syrian businessman, but turns out to be fronting for a Jewish settlement.

Jesus wept. We did walk the Via Dolorosa, from what had been Pilate’s court, setting out so early in the morning that the shops were shut, the children were going to school, and there were no other pilgrims in sight. It was very moving, and I didn’t take photos to spoil the devotional nature of the walk.

It must have been very hard and horrible to walk up those steep stony streets, carrying a heavy chunk of wood after having endured a Roman scourging.

We ended our walk here, with our Resurrection reading and, at last, a hymn, in a back chapel of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, found for us by the remarkable Claudia with her excellent Catholic connections.

On the last morning of the Pilgrimage, en route to the airport at Tel Aviv, we stopped at Abu Ghosh, where the Ark of the Covenant rested for some 20 years. This 20th century church there had remarkable acoustics, which we tested out by singing a few verses of hymns. Edgar and I led a spirited rendering of the South African worship song “Siyahamba ekukhanyeni kweNkosi - we are marching in the light of God”!

Abu Ghosh is also one of several possible sites for Emmaus, and we had the final service of our Pilgrimage there in the open air, focussing on that Resurrection story.

The manner of our departure from Israel was bizarre, but not unexpected. We were warned in advance by Edgar that he, and some of us chosen at random, would be questioned by the Israeli military on duty at Tel Aviv airport, and we had to allow three hours for the checking-in and security process, not just two. We were told we might be asked if we had been given anything during our stay. Answer “No” - even the garish caps we got from the tour company were not gifts, after all we had paid for them as part of the tour. Don’t be flippant. Be brief. And it all happened much as we were warned. Some were questioned, some had their luggage opened. I had to open my suitcase for a very young female soldier doing her National Service. She looked at my bottle of shoe-cleaning liquid and asked if I had brought it from home, and was satisfied when I said I had. One member of our party, Linda, a very distinguished and elegant woman Lay Canon of York diocese, had everything taken out of her case and gone through, and was extensively questioned. The reason we concluded was that she had the unfortunate surname Ali. (Never mind she comes from Trinidad in the West Indies.) I suppose they were looking for bombs, but they missed the most explosive items in my luggage - my notebook and diary!

We had been back in South Africa a mere fortnight when the news broke of the Israeli Defence Force’s attack on a Turkish flotilla trying to break the blockade of Gaza. It all made sense - the Palestinians’ desperation, the Israeli authorities’ trigger-happy jumpiness. Jesus wept. Pray for the land of the Holy One, where an answer to the intractable question of how to make possible both a secure home-land for Jews, and a genuinely independent home-land for Palestinians, seems as far away as ever.
 

Bibliography
SHLAIM, Avi: The Iron Wall. (History of Israel, and her relations with her Arab neighbours, since 1948)
TOLAN, Sandi: The Lemon Tree (Factual account of an unlikely friendship between a Jewish and a Palestinian family, who met after the Jewish family had been allocated the Palestinians' former home)
ARMSTRONG, Karen: Jerusalem (History of the city from pre-historic times, explaining the interactions and conflicts between Jews, Muslims and Christians)