Churches lend hope to Palestinians' struggle to survive
10/15/2003 News media contact: Tim Tanton · (615) 742-5470 · Nashville, Tenn.
Photographs and two sidebars, UMNS stories #491 and 492, are available with this report.
By Paul Jeffrey*
Graffiti in Nablus. A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey / ACT. Photo number 03-354, Accompanies UMNS #490, 10/14/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
Near
the Qalandiya refugee camp, Palestinians walk through an Israeli
checkpoint. A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey / ACT. Photo number 03-353,
Accompanies UMNS #490, 10/14/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
An
8-meter high concrete wall surrounds the West Bank town of Qalqilya. A
UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey / ACT. Photo number 03-350, Accompanies UMNS
#490, 10/14/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
A
Palestinian girl searches through the rubble of a house in Nablus blown
up by the Israeli military Aug. 8, purportedly because it was being
used as a hiding place for Islamic militants. The military used
helicopter-launched missiles and tanks against the building, where two
people died. A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey / ACT. Photo number 03-351,
Accompanies UMNS #490, 10/14/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
An
8-meter high concrete wall surrounds the West Bank town of Qalqilya.
Here the wall has been painted by protesters. A UMNS photo by Paul
Jeffrey / ACT. Photo number 03-349, Accompanies UMNS #490, 10/14/03
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Christian Peacemaking Teams. Photo number W03044, Accompanies UMNS#490
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Near
the West Bank village of Qalqilya, the roots of olive trees uprooted to
build a "separation fence." A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey / ACT. Photo
number 03-356, Accompanies UMNS #490, 10/14/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
Daily Life
No Long Caption Available for this Story
A
man, pistol tucked into his pants, prays at the Western Wall, all that
remains of the first and second temples. The Wall is located in East
Jerusalem, annexed by Israel in 1967. A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey /
ACT. Photo number 03-355, Accompanies UMNS #490, 10/14/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
Near
the West Bank town of Jayyous, Palestinians are forced to carry goods
around a barricade the Israeli military used to close this road, one of
scores of road closures throughout the occupied territories. A UMNS
photo by Paul Jeffrey / ACT. Photo number 03-352, Accompanies UMNS #490,
10/14/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
Sandra Olewine. Photo number W03038, Accompanies UMNS#490
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ACT
regional appeals officer Leila Dzaferovic (right) walks with Katam
Mahmod Zud through a field the Palestinian villager will lose to the
seond phase of the wall's construction in the village of Tiíinnik.
"Where am I then going to grow food for my children? The wall is taking
the food out of their mouths," Zud says. A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey /
ACT. Photo number 03-348, Accompanies UMNS #490, 10/14/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
Children of War. Photo number W03042, Accompanies UMNS#490
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Palestinians
collect the remains of olive trees bulldozed in April by the Israeli
military in the Gaza strip, occupied since 1967 by Israel. Many of the
trees were hundreds of years old. The trunks are often taken to be
replanted on Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories. A UMNS
photo by Paul Jeffrey / ACT. Photo number 03-347, Accompanies UMNS #490,
10/14/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
JERUSALEM (UMNS)-While peace in the Middle East
remains elusive, Action by Churches Together International continues
providing help and hope to people in the occupied Palestinian
territories.
Despite efforts by the international community to
push the "road map for peace," Palestinians still face travel
restrictions, unemployment, hunger and daily humiliations under Israeli
occupation. Yet they also can count on support from ACT members that
have been working in the area for decades, healing the sick, providing
job training, and helping Palestinians build a functioning civil
society.
"We are grateful to ACT, because through their support
we've been able to treat many in need and give hope to those who are
hopeless," says Suhaila Tarazi, director of the Episcopal Church's Ahli
Arab Hospital in the strife-torn Gaza Strip. "Because of ACT's support,
we feel we are not alone."
ACT is an international alliance of
churches and church-related agencies responding to emergencies. The
United Methodist Committee on Relief is an active member of ACT.
Much
of ACT's work focuses on helping people survive during a time of
tension and violence between Israelis and Palestinians. The current
intifada, or popular uprising by the Palestinians, has been under way
since late 2000.
In August 2002, when several West Bank cities
were cut off by the Israeli military, the International Christian
Committee - a service arm of the Middle East Council of Churches, an ACT
member - sent five trucks loaded with 1,900 food packages to the
besieged cities of Tulkarem and Nablus. The convoy, accompanied by
international church leaders, faced down Israeli tanks to deliver the
emergency supplies.
Khaldiyeh Hamdan was one of those in Nablus
who received food from that effort for her family. She had lost part of
her house when an Israeli bulldozer smashed through it to open a wider
access for military tanks to enter the narrow streets of the old city.
Four months pregnant, she fled with her children to a neighbor's, and
they were allowed to return home three days later, their hands in the
air under the gaze of Israeli snipers. Searching through the rubble
beside what was left of their home, her children found the body of a
neighbor, yet they weren't allowed to remove the body from the
neighborhood until the curfew was lifted for a few hours seven days
later.
Hamdan says the food provided by ICC/ACT helped restore
hope to people terrorized by the incursion. "When the food came, it not
only helped us survive physically, it reminded us that people outside of
here cared about us," she says.
In Hebron, an ancient city in
the southern part of the West Bank- where more than 5,000 Israeli
soldiers protect some 500 Jewish settlers - a state of siege earlier
this year trapped thousands of Palestinians in their homes. Israeli
tanks and bulldozers destroyed the city's vegetable market in January,
and in the weeks that followed, people began going hungry. The ICC/ACT
prepared 1,000 family food packages, each weighing 30 kilos and
containing sufficient food to feed a family of five for three weeks.
"Getting
the packages to the hungry families wasn't easy, as the city was under
curfew and the soldiers would often shoot anyone who moved in the
streets," says Ramzi Zananiri, the executive director of ICC/ACT. "So in
many areas, we took the packages apart, and children smuggled the food
from house to house until it got to its final destination. They'd first
take the milk, then come back for the rice, until we had finally moved
all the food to people who were truly desperate with hunger."
ACT
members in the occupied territories, where the overall unemployment
rate is more than 35 percent, are also engaged in a variety of income
generation and vocational training programs.
However, chronic
road closures have devastated the economic and social life of
Palestinian communities, says Nora Kort, the country representative for
International Orthodox Christian Charities, another ACT member. Travel
to work, to visit relatives or to take products to market turns
impossible when Israeli bulldozers pile rubble on the main roads,
blocking vehicular traffic, and soldiers at military checkpoints either
refuse to let Palestinians pass or leave them waiting for hours before
letting them through.
The state of siege has also hurt health
care, as sick people and their families, turned back at military
checkpoints, endure lengthy delays and detours in order to get to their
health care provider. ACT-supported medical programs in the Palestinian
territories are reaching out in creative ways to deliver health care to
poor Palestinians. Hospitals are busing in patients from remote
locations to get them through checkpoints more efficiently, and several
ACT members have started rural clinics or dispatched physicians to
refugee camps.
Health professionals in ACT-supported facilities
long for the day when they can focus on encouraging wellness rather than
repairing bodies broken by violence.
"During the worst of the
intifada, for more than two years, I was in the operating room from 7 in
the morning until well past midnight," says Dr. Maher Ayyad, the chief
surgeon at Ahli Arab Hospital. "Every day. I know how a child dies from
bullets. I know a father's face when he comes to pick up the body of his
son. I've lived with war for too long. When it comes someday, peace
will be good for health care."
Through the Middle East Emergency
Advance No. 601740, the United Methodist Committee on Relief helps
underwrite nutrition, micro-enterprise, medical aid and other support
projects for citizens throughout the Palestinian territories. Donations
can be made through local churches or directly to UMCOR at 475 Riverside
Dr., Room 330, New York, NY 10115. Credit card donations can be made by
calling tollfree (800) 554-8583.
# # #
*Jeffrey is a
United Methodist missionary in Central America who traveled to the
occupied Palestinian territories as a field communicator for ACT.
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