July 19, 2001

Sabeel is an important Palestinian Christian organization - working with church leaders locally, and reaching out internationally.

Following class we headed down to Jerusalem for a meeting at Sabeel, an ecumenical Christian center in the Eastern side of the city. The yellow taxis with green (Palestinian) plates that usually go from Ramallah to Jerusalem now all have been replaced by monochrome Ford Transits with yellow (Israeli) plates. Sometimes we get stopped at the Jerusalem checkpoint, sometimes no. Today we weren't, but were stopped inside the city - not far from the Old City - by an M-16 toting Israeli soldier. He asked to see a few IDs, Marthame's included, and then shut the door.

We headed on to our meeting, a product of the Conference we had attended in February. For the past several months, locals and internationals had been gathering to discuss ways to support - and participate in - nonviolent activism. Since Zababdeh is on the other side of the planet (or so it feels nowadays), we hadn't been able to be involved in anything around the Jerusalem-Ramallah-Bethlehem area. This meeting was a chance to reflect on where the movement is and where it might be going. This was somewhat encouraging, but the mood throughout the land continues to deteriorate. The violence of the Israeli Occupation is increasing, as is the Palestinian response to that Occupation. Non-violent resistance continues to be used as a strategy to fight the Occupation (consider the daily acts of resistance performed by thousands of people: crossing road blocks to go to work and school, using tractors to open closed roads, refusing to buy Israeli goods, requesting international monitors to observe/protect them, organizing protest marches and events, etc.). However popular, non-violence appears to be viewed and judged as a strategy rather than as a moral obligation.

We had dinner with a friend who is now with the Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron (where we visited in December), a group thoroughly committed to non-violence as a faithful act of confrontation. Things in Hebron simply sound more desperate than ever. After supper, we made our way back to Jerusalem in the familiar Ford Transits lurking around the Damascus Gate.

Once inside Ramallah, a man in civilian clothes carrying a kalashnikov (we think - we don't know guns very well) pulled over our taxi and asked us, "Btahki 'Arabi? (do you speak Arabic?)"

"Shway. Nudrus fil-jama't Birzeit bi-Saif. (a little - we're studying at Birzeit University this summer)" Apparently that was the Palestinian equivalent of the ID check in Jerusalem. A fitting way to bracket conversations about non-violence.