From the Midwest to the Mideast

[Comadreja]

From the Midwest to the Mideast by Phil Haslanger

Abier, a mother of three, invited the seven Midwestern American 50-somethings for lunch in her West Bank home at the flash point of religion and politics in the Middle East. By the end of the afternoon, the news and rhetoric of the latest battles between Israelis and Palestinians had taken on a very human quality. The Americans were all members of a United Church of Christ congregation in suburban Madison, Wisconsin. Their pastor, Rev. Bonnie Van Overbeke, was spending seven weeks in Israel and Palestine on a sabbatical.

The other six joined her in mid-June at Christmas Lutheran Church, their partner church in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. Van Overbeke is a former elementary school teacher who became an ordained minister in 1991. Her husband is a retired director of finance for Oscar Mayer Foods. With them were a retired forestry professor, a retired electrical engineer, a retired occupational therapist, a utility company employee, and a schoolteacher. Now far from their comfortable lives in the United States, they were sitting in the living room of a Palestinian Christian family on a Sunday afternoon, learning what it is like to live under occupation.

Being Christian is hard enough in this land, where they are a distinct and shrinking minority, even though this is the land in which Christianity took root. Being Palestinian also puts them in the crosshairs of an Israeli army that keeps tight control over life in the West Bank. "I know I ought to be happy that I have a nice home, but I feel like a prisoner in it," Van Overbeke remembers Abier saying as tears welled up in her eyes. "I just want to be free. I just want to feel free. Don't we deserve basic human dignity?" Abier's husband took the visitors outside to see the bullet holes on the porch, in the front door, in the wall of their son's room from an Israeli incursion into Bethlehem.

Van Overbeke frets about this 15-year-old boy, citing his parents' worry about him "as he approaches the age at which the Israeli soldiers start suspecting him to be dangerous when all he really wants to do is stretch his wings a little as typical teenage behavior." The boy told them of being strip-searched at an Israeli checkpoint and Van Overbeke wondered how that would affect "a young teenager who is trying to figure out who he is and what it means to be a man."

Abier and Mazen's nine-year-old daughter charmed Ted Peterson, the retired forester, reminding him of his own granddaughter. He noted how the children in these families were just as animated and charming as those he knew here, "anxious to do things, many of which they can't do." Abier told the group that "too many times we have had to disappoint our children because we were not allowed through the checkpoint to go on a picnic or to the zoo." Ah, the checkpoints. They left vivid impressions on the American visitors, these places where Palestinians face long waits and humiliation as they cross the border between two distinct worlds. The Israelis have established the checkpoints and security fences to protect their own citizens who have felt too much terror from this war. Yet the effect on the Palestinians has become dehumanizing.

Dean Baumgardner, the utility employee, called the practices that he saw at the checkpoints "serious violations of human rights taking place on a daily basis." He recalled seeing people with work permits who had already gone through metal detectors pulled aside, strip-searched, and detained for hours for no particular reason. John Hilliard, the electrical engineer, told of one day when the group was scheduled to visit the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem as part of their effort to get an understanding of the Israeli side of this desperate equation. "We had to cancel it because we were held up at the checkpoint," he said. "This land is governed by fear on both sides," observed Van Overbeke. "Fear of suicide bombers. Fear of the tanks that roll through the streets at night. Fear that your home will be demolished. Fear that your children will be hurt on the way to school. Both sides are tired of the conflict."

She said that she finds hope in the small groups of Christians, Jews, and Muslims "who defy fear and despair, who meet together and share their common longing for peace, justice, and security." Phil Haslanger is the managing editor of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, and also served as the temporary lay pastor of the church that sent this delegation to Palestine.

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