Hebron: Fasting
9 October 2006 - From Donna Hicks, EPF convener of the Middle East Action/Interest Group and Christian Peacemaker Team member in Hebron
In the liturgy for Ash Wednesday in the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer, the people are invited “to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word”.
In Islam, the people are called into a period of spiritual renewal during the month of Ramadan. From sunrise to sunset Muslims are called to fast from food, drink, and some varieties of pleasurable activity, and from evil thoughts and desires.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus taught the disciples that “whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting: Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face….”
Being illiterate in Arabic, I don’t know the words the people might hear in their mosques in preparation for and during Ramadan. I can tell you what I sense on the streets of Hebron’s Old City. And pancakes figure into it.
I grew up with pancake suppers on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, when we stuffed ourselves with pancakes and sausage as we “prepared” for the fasting of Lent. For the last few years, we’ve had a talent show in my parish after we’ve finished off the pancakes, a time of laughter and tears, of joy in the sharing of parishioners’ gifts and talents with our parish community.
The people of the Old City grow up with trays and tables of pancakes, qataayif, usually on Fridays, which are snatched up by the men coming from noon prayers to take home to their families on their weekly holy day. But in Ramadan, the pancakes are out there every day, purchased in the afternoon to take home for the break fast meal around sunset. On the street the men pour the batter onto big gas-powered griddles, brown them on one side, slip the spatula underneath and gracefully toss them onto a quilt-covered table. (I’ve never seen them miss.) Boys line the qataayif up in rows, and count them out to be weighed and wrapped in paper by young men for the purchasers to carry home.
On the streets, there is a sense of joy I’ve not seen during the rest of the year. The men greet one another with great pleasure, amidst handshakes, kisses on the cheek, and embraces. Sometimes the streets are so crowded it’s hard to move forward.
All this is in the midst of the nearly forty-year long Israeli military occupation, a boycott by the West of the democratically-elected Hamas government, a strict school strike to continue until the Palestinian teachers are paid, and economic deprivation of much of the population.
Friday 6 October was the thirty-third anniversary of the war called Yom Kippur by the Israeli Jewish community and Ramadan by the Arab community. Saturday 7 October was the thirteenth anniversary of Baruch Goldstein’s massacre of twenty-nine Muslims at prayer in the Ibrahimi Mosque.
During this Ramadan, I am thankful for and blessed by the joy I see in the Palestinian community in the midst of so much adversity.
Ramadan kareem (sweet Ramadan)!
24 October 2006
Late this afternoon, a Palestinian friend stopped three of us and said a squad of Israeli soldiers had come through, taking four Palestinian men blindfolded and handcuffed to the Beit Romano checkpoint, the Bab iBaledeyyah. We headed in that direction. On the corner across the street from the Beit Romano checkpoint, four young Palestinian men stood against the building with their hands cuffed behind their backs, white blindfolds with thin black plaid stripes over their eyes. Two observers from the official international observer group stood nearby. A few Palestinian children gathered along with a few men. An older man leaned against a large concrete block that stopped the movement of vehicles. Two of the children walked over to the man and, in turn, took his hand, kissed it, and pressed it to their foreheads. One of the soldiers drew lines and circles in the air with his nightstick. Two stood guard at two corners. One was on his radiophone. Others gathered around the four Palestinians.
One, two, three, the Palestiniansâ?T handcuffs â?" the plastic variety â?" and blindfolds were removed. The soldiers returned their ID cards. They left. The fourth Palestinian stood against the wall.
Twenty minutes after we got to the Bab iBaledeyyah it was all over. The soldier undid the handcuffs of the fourth man. The man removed the blindfold, took his ID, and walked off up the street away from the Old City and towards that part of Hebron nominally under Palestinian control.
Why the delay? The young man did not have his ID card with him and either did not remember or would not give the Israeli soldier his ID number. Someone had to fetch it.
You might ask what this has to do with peacemaking.
The Old City of Hebron and the area surrounding it is under total Israeli control. The Israeli soldiers, border police and blue (regular) police can stop any Palestinian at will and demand his ID card. Around 20,000 Palestinians live in this area, designated H2, under Israeli military occupation. About 1200 Israeli military and law enforcement personnel patrol it. About 500 of probably the most ideologically radical of Israeli settlers, mostly Americans, live in H2 in settlement enclaves and clearly say their aim is to rid Hebron of its â?oArabâ?ť population.
We choose to live some of our lives under Israeli military occupation. We choose to witness its inhumanity and to tell its stories. We seek to â?ostrive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human beingâ?ť. That is why we stood there until all four Palestinians were released: taking notes, asking questions, taking photographs. That is why I am writing about this twenty-minute incident at the end of a busy day.
