On The Ground - Jonathan Kuttab’s Month in Palestine
May 8th, 2024 - Today, I met with ten Christians from Gaza who had managed to leave the strip recently. They told me harrowing stories of their ordeals: first, of the Greek Orthodox church whose compound was hit by a missile fired from a plane, leading to the collapse of one building (in the church's three-building compound) housing 90 Christians, resulting in 16 martyrs and several wounded; and second, of the Latin church targeted by snipers, who killed an elderly woman walking to a bathroom in the yard and who shot at her daughter trying to rescue her. This was followed by a tank siege, leaving them without water, food, or supplies for six days.
The Gazans also expressed concern specifically over the loss of law and order and a descent into anarchy if Hamas' governmental functions are destroyed and no alternative force is allowed to replace them to undertake normal government functions. People forget that Hamas, in addition to its fighters, was in-fact a governing body fulfilling the civilian functions of running a society that is now facing utter anarchy and lawlessness.
May 14th, 2024 - On my first day in Palestine, I went to visit my cousin Bishara Awad in Beit Jala. Bishara is now retired from his work as founder and president of Bethlehem Bible College. He lives in a lovely home in Beit Jala, dedicating himself to caring for his flowers and garden and taking care of his wife, Salwa.
It is amazing to see such a beautiful peaceful oasis in the West Bank, where it seems a person can retire and pretend the Israeli occupation does not exist.
Yet, I could not help thinking of his wife’s relatives who were asked to leave a similar home in Gaza City. They are educated, accomplished members of the local Christian community in Gaza. It is heartbreaking to know that all five of his relatives, together with another million residents of Northern Gaza, were ordered by the Israeli army to leave their homes in Gaza City and “move south.” Twice more they were ordered to move, until they ended up in overcrowded Rafah. Eventually, through connections and bribery, they managed to make it out of Gaza and into Egypt where I just visited them on my way here. They are currently awaiting a visa to the United States.
They are the fortunate ones. They lost their home and all their possessions, and they have heard since that their whole neighborhood was flattened by bombs. They are not allowed to return there, even if they wanted to. Yet they made it out alive. Unlike 2/3rds of the residents of Gaza, they were not refugees from 1948 but local Palestinian Gazans, who are now experiencing what Palestinian refugees endured during the 1948 Nakba. Most Gazans are not so fortunate. They still must endure further bombings, starvation, internal displacement, destitution, and the herculean task of trying to rebuild their lives from scratch, while depending on the charity of the international community to provide whatever “humanitarian assistance” Israel will allow in for their survival.
May 15th, 2024 - Today, I went with Bishara to our favourite desert place in Bethlehem, Fawanees (Lanterns) to have some of this delicious desert: Kenafeh is well known, and it originated in Nablus, in the North of Palestine. It is like some crushed wheat over a bed of white cheese, with pistachio nuts and rose water syrup on top.
As we sat waiting for our service, we started chatting with people at the next table who were already enjoying their Kenafeh. We talked about favorite restaurants in Khalil (Hebron) from which it turned out they came.
Soon, our Kenafeh came, and we started eating, and our neighbours got up to leave. As they said goodbuy, and left, having paid their bill, one of them shouted "Wasel" (Your bill has already been paid)!" Your Kenafeh today is on the Abu Sneineh family from Hebron"!
This generosity and friendliness to total strangers is one of the items that keeps the Palestinian people together, and I hope all of you can experience some of it, or at least, get to eat some delicious Kenafeh when you visit Palestine.
May 18th, 2024 - Vegetables and fruits in Palestine are wonderful. They smell and taste absolutely delicious and are extremely healthy.
I do not know the reason for this but it is true.
It may be the soil or the water, or it may be the fact that most of it is “baladi” raised on small individual farms with rain water rather than irrigation.
Certainly the sparing use of pesticides and fertilizers plays a role, but whatever the reason the joy is real and the taste and smell of fresh fruits and vegetables is special. Today, I particularly enjoyed faccouse (a crunchy snack of the cucumber family that can be eaten raw anytime of the day when in season or pickled into a delicious, equally crunchy pickle).
Lovers of Palestine: come visit and enjoy.
May 20, 2024 - Today I met with 3 representatives of the Gaza Pilgrimage Walk, from New Zealand
These three are members of a new group that was formed to organize Pilgrimage walks of 22 miles (the length of the Gaza strip) to pray and advocate for peace and a ceasefire in Gaza. They were here to attend the Christ at the checkpoint Conference at Bethlehem Bible College slated to start in two days. You may want to know more about their activities on their website and social media:
www.gazaceasefirepilgrimage.com / @GCPilgrimages
I met them in Jerusalem, and gave them an extensive interview at the Martin Luther School in the Old City of Jerusalem. The School building is administered by the local Lutheran congregation, and since the school itself is closed, the congregation is discussing a number of joint projects and activities with Sabeel ( Jerusalem) aimed at empowerment of the local Christian community, and providing a safe space for contacts, learning and interaction between the local Christians and pilgrims to the Holy City. The entire offices of Sabeel may well move to that location inside the Old City soon.
May 21, 2024 - I went with Sabeel Director Omar Haramy, FOSNA Board Member Marie-Claire Klassen and a couple from Sabeel-Kairos Netherlands to Nablus, a town in the north of the West Bank to attend the launching of an interfaith website at the Shari’a School of Najah University. Clergy from the Samaritan community and different churches joined the event and discussed the value of interfaith communications, understanding, and sharing values and views.
The trip to Nablus, usually a 40 minute drive from Ramallah, turned out to be a tortious journey over a labyrinth of bypass roads, closed checkpoints, and travel through Palestinian villages as we manuvered our way with other Palestinian vehicles around and under the new Jewish-only superhighways, which we could not access even with our yellow-plated car.
The event was a good example of continued Christian-Muslim relationships in Palestine, as well as the historic Samaritan community, though the absence of Jewish theologians and participants due to the political situation lent the event a surrealistic feeling. It was a strong reminder of how the political situation had poisoned relationships between Christian and Muslim Palestinians and their Jewish siblings.
The true highlight of the whole visit to Nablus came in our encounter with the priest, Justinus, whose story I will be telling in a separate entry in my travel logbook.
Father Justinus - I met Father Justinus, the Greek Orthodox priest who is currently in charge of Jacob’s Well in Nablus and the Church he had built and renovated on top of the Well.
Father Justinus is 84 years old, and has been ministering in Palestine for the last 62 years. He developed a reputation with his ministry to the poor, particularly in the nearby Balata refugee camp, where they call him “the father of the poor” which he thinks is the only appropriate title for a man of the cloth. When Yasser Arafat heard of him, and came to visit him and give him a medal, he said, what use is a medal to me. I am a servant of God. What I really need is a permit to carry out major renovations and rebuild a church in this Holy site. Yaser Arafat agreed, and further ordered a million dollars from the Palestinian Treasury , which father Justinus promptly declined, seeking instead outside donations, so that here will be no claims on the property in the future.
Being the son of an architect, he proceeded to build one of the most beautiful churches I have seen. Its 2.7 thick walls (about 9 feet) are all made of stone, with no steel or cement. He uses stones from old buildings the Israelis destroy, and scavenges for valuable artifacts which settlers stole from Sabastia when he could.
He himself is a great artist. His huge paintings are all over the Church, as well as in his residence. He resides alone and guards the church property. He is also a great artist for icons which he showed us. Also, he is a master mosaic artist (see picture of his mosaic depiction of the wisdom of Solomon offering to cut the baby in half in order to recognize the true mother). He also climbs scaffolding to install and make more mosaics in different parts of the church.
Since he has had practically no visitors or tourists since Oct. 7, he was glad to share his story with us, and tell us the significance in Greek Orthodox theology of each aspect of the church he built.
He has sustained 32 assasination attempts. The previous priest was hacked to death with an axe by a settler Rabbi, and a nun was also attacked with a grenade and killed. He told us her story and showed us the place where the grenade exploded.
A true man of God. Just visiting him and his church should be the highlight of every trip to the Holy Land. As he described the story of the Samaritan woman at the well he indicated this is probably the only true site in terra sancta (the Holy Land) where we can be certain of the location for a biblical story as there is no such well anywhere in the whole region.
An amazing person and a true Man of God
May 24, 2024 Today, Sabeel Jerusalem participated in the Christ at the Checkpoint Conference by facilitating half a day's activities in the form of a tour of Jerusalem's Old City. About 100 participants of the conference toured the Old City where they visited a number of NGO Christian projects in the city. The central event was a visit to the Armenian Property in the Armenian Quarter that is threatened by a take-over from Jewish settler organizations.
Apparently, a corrupt priest tricked the Armenian Patriarch into signing a deal for a 99 year lease of about 20% of the area of the Armenian Quarter, which has been held in trust for the Armenian community of Jerusalem for the last 500 years.
Young people found out about this a year ago, and they mounted a campaign to cancel the deal before it was implemented. The patriarch agreed, dismissed the corrupt priest, and began a process of legally cancelling the deal. Meanwhile, the settlers and the developer moved in with bulldozers and police protection to try and take possession of the land. The young people resisted, setting up a 24 hour presence to protect the property and declaring that this was not a commercial deal but a form of ethnic cleansing of Armenians from the Christian Quarter and the Armenian Quarter in favor of a Jewish settler group.
We heard from the young people, went to the property, and prayed with the Armenians. We spoke together of resisting the ethnic cleansing. We joined the Armenians in praying for an end to ethnic cleansing from Armenia, to Jerusalem, to Gaza. It was a moving experience and one sign of hope in the midst of otherwise constant bad news.
We witnessed young people resisting nonviolently, but collectively, the encroachment on their communal property.
May 25, 2024 - Today I participated in the conclusion of the Conference of Christ at the Checkpoint, under the title: Do Justice, Love Mercy. I hope some of you have been following it online, or have seen some of the tweets and Instagram entries which FOSNA retweeted. In all cases, you can view some of the lectures/sessions which can be accessed on Facebook:
I strongly urge you to check out some of these lectures /sessions which I found very instructive, especially Munther Isaac's call for Repentance and Tony Deik's theological critique of Christian Zionism.
About 150 foreign participants attended the conference with local Christians as well. South Africa had a strong presence, with their Ambassador to Palestine giving a word that was more like a sermon than a diplomatic speech.
The conference was organized by Bethlehem Bible College, under the leadership of Rev. Jack Sarah, and Munther Isaac. It is the 7th such conference (the first was in 2010 started by Rev. Alex Awad).
In addition to the value such a Conference definitely had on the participants, it was the first conference, or large group of foreigners to come to Palestine since the October 7 events. Local merchants, vendors, restaurants, and shops told me they were delighted since there has been virtually no tourism or visitors since the war on Gaza started, and together with the cancellation of all work permits to Israel (where over 100,000 workers get their livelihood) the West Bank population was really suffering.
The brave conference attendees (5 were actually turned back at the Allenby Bridge) decided to come despite fears and warnings from the State Department, and their families, have illustrated that it is indeed safe to come to Palestine again, and FOSNA hopes to organize a number of such trips in the near future.
May 26, 2024 - Today, I went to the Negev Prison to visit Mohammad Halabi together with Maher Hanna, his lawyer from my office in Jerusalem. Halabi, former Director of World vision in Gaza, was falsely accused six years ago on ridiculous charges. Details of his trial can be found in FOSNA’s previous publications. Maher had gone to the Israeli High Court to obtain a special permit to see Halabi to prepare for his appeal. (Since October 7, attorney visits to Palestinian prisoners are almost never allowed).
I went along, but was not allowed in.
Maher reports that Halabi looked like a ghost. He had lost 30 kilos (about 66 lbs) in weight, was pale, and his hands were shaking (from overtight handcuffs frequently used in moving prisoners around). His skin was clinging to his face and arms, and he looked unwell.
Halabi reported that, like other prisoners, he has been suffering terribly since Oct. 7, as a deliberate policy of revenge publicly announced by Police Minister Ben Gvir: no change of clothes since Oct. 7, no daily exercise, limited water and electricity, no paper and pens, no books, TV, radio, or newspapers, no canteen supplies, no cigarettes, and no family visits. He also reported frequent beatings for no reason, daily humiliations, overcrowding (the small cell, already crowded with six people, now includes 12 but with still only six mattresses) and drastically reduced amounts of food of poor quality.
I have been hearing similar stories from other prisons and hope to write about it soon, once I obtain some more exact information from additional sources.
Meanwhile, for those of you who have been following the case of Halabi will be pleased to know that he is still amazingly in good spirits, but mostly concerned for his family in Gaza; they have had to move 3 times and are living in a tent in Rafah. His brother was taken hostage ("prisoner") by Israel 80 days ago and has not been seen since. I will keep you posted of any news I receive of him or his family.
May 29, 2024 - Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
Today, I visited with attorney Sahar Francis, General Director of Addameer Prisoner Support and Human rights Association. Addameer (www.addameer.org) is a human rights organization in Ramallah, West Bank, which follows prisoner issues and keeps track of their conditions as much as possible.
Francis stated that there are currently about 9,300 prisoners from the West Bank together with over 3400 administrative detainees, including 45 children and 25 women who are kept without charges or trial. This does not include over 3000 prisoners from Gaza and an unknown number who are kept in detention by the Army in improvised prison camps, not with the Prison Services Authority.
Shortly after Oct. 7, National Security Minister Itimar Ben Gvir announced a new policy to punish and severely change prison conditions in Israel for all political prisoners. Books, papers, radios, phones, extra clothes, and personal items were all confiscated. In addition, he instituted a new policy of starvation. No prisoner leaves prison now without having lost considerable weight and showing signs of skin disease and physical abuse. Daily beatings are common, all family visits prohibited, and lawyers’ visits severely restricted. No visits by the Red Cross have been allowed, and there is severe overcrowding on top of the already crowded prisons as they take on double the number of prisoners per room as before.
According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, 35 prisoners from Gaza have died from beatings, and another 18 were beaten or tortured to death from Jerusalem and the West Bank. Their bodies have not been delivered to their families for decent burial.
Sahar said that Israeli human rights organizations have made several petitions to the High Court about these prison conditions but to no avail. The Addameer website includes several reports about these conditions, and they are filing regular reports with the International Criminal Court regarding these matters.
I promised her FOSNA will undertake actions and possibly a campaign regarding Palestinian prisoners and captives.
May 31, 2024 - Update for Tent of the Nations
Since October 7, 2023, there have been significant changes surrounding the Tent of Nations.
First of all, access to the site, as well as the nearby village of Nahhalin was further restricted, through physical barriers that were put up. Two new road blocks were set up near the land, and a new Israeli watch tower was erected.
Next, settlers started appearing increasingly in and around the land of Tent of Nations. Some were wearing army uniforms and acting as soldiers. Others were in a jeep marked “Rescue Without Borders” who were harassing and intimidating Palestinians in the lands near the settlement of Neve Daniel.
On April 17, 75 apple trees were destroyed and soil was removed and bulldozed on part of the land. On May 27, an RV was placed by settlers right at the edge of the land, with a table near it, where settlers played loud music till midnight, and attempted to intimidate the Nasser family. Another settlement outpost called “Ebdya Edin Farm” was established near the property of TON.
3 roads were started that infringe upon the land. It is not clear whether the work on these roads is carried out by settlers or the army, and what is the legal basis for them. The lawyers from the office of Kuttab and Khoury have already appealed to the High Court and obtained a temporary injunction to stop the work on the road.
Most worrying at all, on April 15, 2024, the army declared a certain area (see attached map marked in red) to be a closed military area. This area is in the bottom of the valley, and there is no logical or apparent military purpose for this confiscation. TON lawyers appealed to the High Court, which ordered the Military Government to give an answer why this land is being closed. The Military Government is to give an answer to this objection by June 5, barring a further extension, which is likely to be granted.
The ongoing case for the registration of the property is continuing and the next hearing is to be held on July 2nd, unless it is postponed. Daoud himself will testify, as will an Israeli Jewish Surveyor, and it should in theory be the last hearing, since the other side has given no evidence whatsoever. In a normal situation, there would be no need for additional evidence and a ruling should be made to recognize the registration of the property in the name of the Nassar family, but this is not a normal court, and the judges are not independent jurists, but rather settlers themselves.
Daoud Nassar continues his struggle to hold on to his land, and make it truly a place of peace and gathering for all people, but he desperately needs some measure of justice which seems to be lacking.
Please continue to pray and raise the issue of the Nasser family as well as all Palestinians whose land is being stolen, bit by bit from under their feet.
June 1, 2024 - Today, Holy Land Trust hosted, together with Wi’am, a discussion by me on the subject of "Optimism versus Hope."
We had a long discussion about the current situation, the long term prospects for an end to the occupation, and the suffering of the Palestinian people under Israeli oppression.
The meeting was attended by representatives of civil society groups in Bethlehem. These groups, together with Holy Land Trust and Wi’am, are active in providing services in the Bethlehem area and offer true signs of hope in the midst of a very frustrating situation.
June 3, 2024 - Today I joined an interfaith march for peace and human rights in Jerusalem. Several hundred people marched and sang in this event that was organized by Rabbis for Human Rights and cosponsored by Sabeel in Jerusalem. No flags, banners, placards, or written materials were allowed other than this identifying banner, and the police were quiet and respectful. I had to leave early for the event in Bethlehem. Most of the participants were from Israel, but were joined by a group organized by Sabeel in Jerusalem.
June 6th, 2024 - Yesterday, I visited at Al Haq. They had arranged for me to have a discussion with the heads of a number of civil society organizations in Ramallah. I was pleased to hear their perspectives on the current events and their prognosis for the future, and I shared with them about the US situation, particularly the encampments at the Universities, and the changes and actions taken by the churches with respect to Gaza.
I was also pleased to hear about the role civil society organizations, led by Al Haq played in encouraging both the ICJ and the ICC to take effective actions regarding the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Al Haq, and other organizations, not only prepared and collected credible evidence of the ongoing genocide, but also lobbied the said courts and their personnell, and provided valuable behind the scenes legal analysis, arguments, volunteer lawyers and international law experts, as well as discussed on an ongoing basis what needed to be done. They worked hand in glove with the South African delegation, and knew first hand (and experienced) the intimidation Israeli Mossad and others have been using to block these legal actions. The recent article in the Guardian magazine finally broke the story, which was well known to Al Haq, of the intimidation and threats by the head of Mossad, nothing lower, against the Prosecutor of the ICC court and her family.
Of all the organizations I have helped establish, perhaps Al Haq is the one I am most proud of. Now that Israel has declared it a terrorist organization, the German Government and some other funders have pulled out promised funding, and they must now rely on personal donations more and more. Yet they are determined to work. When October events took place, and some Gaza Human rights organizations faced closure or destruction, Al Haq stepped up to help. It received many calls from lawyers, human rights activists, and others who had had previous connections with Al Haq over the years, and they set up a network of trained human rights workers, who proceeded to document, film, and collect material evidence of the ongoing atrocities which were then organized, vetted, and made available to the international courts and other interested parties.
I am glad to visit them, and consider myself to continue to be part of their team.