March 23, 2002
Fr. Hossam with children from the Anglican daycare in Nablus.
Marthame spent the morning visiting with Fr. Hossam and the children of the Anglican daycare. We are pleased to learn that the Anglican Bishop has reconsidered some of the clergy moves, given the current situation, and that Hossam will stay as the priest for Nablus and Zababdeh. He will have more work than before, but now that we know he is staying we can begin to make something akin to "plans" - many times it seems like such a thing is counter-cultural.
A demolished wall in Balata Refugee Camp.
Marthame then headed over to St. Luke's Anglican Hospital to visit with friends from Nablus and Zababdeh who work there. He was introduced to one of the workers, a man from Balata refugee camp, a place which has been in the news much recently. The man invited Marthame to come and see what had happened in the recent incursions.
Palestinian boys try to clean up their demolished home in Balata Refugee Camp.
A destroyed Palestinian home in Balata Refugee Camp.
They headed down by taxi, entering the camp off the main road across the street from the Orthodox Church at Jacob's Well. The camp's population is about 30,000, and most of the people are refugees and their descendents from pre-1948 Jaffa-Tel Aviv villages. In the recent Israeli incursion, tanks, helicopters, and foot soldiers penetrated the camp with the aim of confiscating arms, destroying bomb-making factories, and punishing those responsible.
Palestinian girls by the hole in their wall that leads to another home in Balata Refugee Camp. During their incursion, the Israeli army blasted holes between adjoining homes.
While they did a handful of such actions, even the Israeli military agreed that the incursion did not accomplish its goals. What it did accomplish was leaving behind a horrific scene of destruction - buildings dynamited to the ground because a suspected terrorist was thought to live in it, homes with holes knocked between neighbors for Israeli soldiers to enter the next door neighbor without re-entering the street (and arrows spray-painted to show the way), tale after tale after tale of fear, anger, hopelessness. Every house - or where a house used to stand - Marthame visited he heard similar tales about what happened a few weeks before - leaving in the middle of the night, still wearing the clothes on their backs, cleaning up the mess, staying with neighbors or family or wherever they can - as well as stories of their villages in 1948 and the reasons they left - tanks nearby, temporary departure until the fighting was over, protection of the young...
Marthame wanted to bring candles like the Zababdeh kids had taken to Jenin, but finding none, instead brought plastic flowers - very popular here for some reason - as a sign of new life and hope. Everyone was anxious to tell their stories and - of course - offered coffee and tea. News has come out recently that if cease-fire talks fail, Israel plans to hit the refugee camps again. What more can be done, other than ethnic-cleansing? The refugees have nowhere to flee, and even if they could, the spectre of 1948's "temporary" flight weighs on their minds. Fleeing is no longer an option. Staying and fighting is all that remains. These scars will stay a long time...