John Harris, a member of the Los Angeles area PCPF and reservist with Christian Peacemaker Teams, sent this report on August 11, 2007.  Please join us in prayer for the Holy Spirit to continue to lead and empower Christians everywhere to follow Jesus as we should and to become more aware of the situation in the Israel/Palestine.

Hebron Update #3: Christians in the Land
Greetings one last time from beautiful Hebron, West Bank, Israel/Palestine. The weather is beautiful, the children are playing, and the mountains and the city combine to produce a most glorious mosaic of the direct creation of God and the positive side of human creativity.  My first update focused on the Palestinian situation and the second on interactions with Israeli settlers.  This last update will focus on Christians I have met throughout the region.  I will also fill you in on some of the political events here in Hebron.

I traveled to Bethlehem last week to meet Bishara Awad, President of Bethlehem Bible College.  He is a Palestinian Christian who founded Hope School for Boys.  Bishara then established the college when the need arose for the boys to continue their education beyond high school. Bethlehem Bible College is an Evangelical and Pentecostal institution that trains Christians in reaching people with the salvation of Jesus Christ.  Classes include theology, missiology, and multimedia production.  While its focus is evangelism, it also finds itself in the midst of what it has determined to be an ongoing foreign occupation.  Bethlehem Bible College is in the Palestinian Territories, and is all Palestinian.

Besides being a learning institution, the college also serves as a retreat center.  The dorms that day were full of a visiting Athletes in Action group.  The media studio produces films for local filmmakers.  It also produces the hour-long weekly Christian television program broadcast on local Muslim TV.

Christians associated with the college work with churches in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and other cities.  Some churches are large, some small, and some meet in homes.  In one church within Israel, Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Israelis (Palestinians living within Israel proper) worship together, some having converted to Christianity from Judaism and Islam.

I told Bishara about a new group I am part of, the Pentecostal Charismatic Peace Fellowship.  He was glad to hear this.  He too is a Pentecostal Christian.  Not many Pentecostals make their way to Bethlehem Bible College when they visit the Holy Land, he said. His brother, Mubarak Awad, was responsible for the movement for nonviolent resistance during the Palestinian uprising in the late 1980s.  (Israel exiled Mubarak during this time, as they obviously deemed the nonviolent movement as a threat to the military occupation of the Palestinian Territories.)  A Pentecostal Christian began the Palestinian nonviolent struggle for the end of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

I also met Brenda Awad, wife of Alex Awad, pastor of East Jerusalem Baptist Church.  She and her husband met while students at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky.  My parents went to this same seminary.  It is a small world!

Bishara shared his concerns regarding Christians and the occupation of Palestine.  While Christians here are working on nonviolent solutions to end the occupation, Beshara feels that the majority of American Evangelicals are working for the opposite.  We discussed what he labeled Christian Zionism.  He is frustrated that American Pentecostal and Evangelical Christians would support the taking of his land by the Israelis.  He pointed out that Christians in the area of Palestine are the first Christians in the world.  It is frustrating to Palestinian Christians that so many American Christians support the minority of Israelis that want to clear the land of Palestinians to make way for Jews.Let me make his point clear: When American Christian Zionists support Israelis taking land from Palestinians, they are supporting the taking of land from Christians, including those who are descendents of the first Christians.

The following Sunday, I met the people at the Aboud Church of God, a small Pentecostal church in a village about and hour north of Hebron.  The praise and worship music was in Arabic with a Middle Eastern style.  There was little evidence of Westernism in the service.  The congregants were friendly and welcoming to me, a visitor. I was invited to the local Church of God Elementary and Secondary School for lunch.  My host was a woman who seemed to be the headmaster of the school. I loved the chicken and rice.  The Neapolitan ice cream that contained lemon was off the hook.  After lunch, I received a tour of Aboud, its farms, its ancient buildings, and…

As we approached the road to Tel Aviv, the roadblock built by the Israelis stopped us.  In the distance was an Israeli settlement.  Our hosts began to share with us all their trials: the taking of land, the military occupation, and the violence in their community.  Aboud Church of God is the only Pentecostal church I know of where the kids can get out of Sunday School and go blow up an Israeli military jeep.  This happened one Sunday.  The Christian leaders here have been unable to get the Christian children not to throw rocks and blow things up.

On a Saturday evening, I traveled to West Jerusalem, the Israeli side of town.  In the open-air market, I met an American Evangelical woman and her husband, a Messianic Jew from there in Jerusalem.  We had a good, open discussion.  The woman works at the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, a Christian Zionist organization that seeks to bring Christians to Israel in order to support the Jewish people’s claim to Jerusalem.  The couple was very strong on their opinion that all the land here belongs to only the Jews and not the Arabs.  In their version of things, the land should also extend beyond Israel’s current borders to the north and to the east.  God, they believe, had chosen this land for only Jews, for all time.

They too are Evangelical Christians like Bishara.  They share the same Christian cup of communion.  Bishara is a Palestinian Christian and against the occupation.  The American woman is a Christian Zionist, and her husband a Jewish Christian Zionist who wants all the Palestinians to leave.  The Christian world here is complex.

In an earlier email, I shared about the planned eviction of two Israeli settler families here in Hebron.  Hundreds of Israeli soldiers did come, and the settlers were expelled.  The Israeli military had to cut holes on their houses, as the Israeli settlers had themselves welded in.  Israeli settlers threw glass and other objects at Israeli military during the eviction.  Young Israeli settler youth ran through the hills, beating Palestinians and burning some homes.  I witnessed some of this personally.

Two days later, Israeli military shut down eight Palestinian shops located next to a settlement.  I stood with the owner as the Israeli military commander gave him written orders that his shop would be sealed.  We stood with him for some time as he tried to negotiate to stay open.  Finally, he gave way.  He was not going to be arrested as well.  We offered to stay and be arrested as his friends, but he decided to have us leave as well.  As the Israeli soldiers closed his shop, the welding of his doors began.

We stood two yards away in opposition to this act, engaging soldiers carefully in constructive dialogue.  Most soldiers stood behind their actions.  One told me that he must do this to satisfy the Israeli settlers. Another soldier told Jan, a CPTer, that he knew what he was doing was wrong, but that he didn’t know what to do about it.  She told him to go to his community in Israel and share what is happening.  Most Israelis have never been to the occupied territories.