Middle East Peace Initiative trips have included opportunities to spend time in a  variety of villages and neighborhoods and get a sense of the people, the challenges of daily life, and their hopes and dreams of peace. The following reports are from the September 2004 MEPI activities. Since MEPI participants come from different nations, cultures, races and religions, spending time as a group in these neighborhoods is a demonstration of the potential for diverse people to work together for a common cause.

Kafr Qasim

A man was walking toward a village on top of a mountain. On the way, he saw an old man and asked him what the people were like on top of the mountain.

The old man asked him what the people in the village he came from were like. “Oh, they were bad. They weren’t good at all. They were mean to each other, and they were always causing trouble.” He was told that he would find that the people in the village on top of the mountain like that too.

Another traveler came by and asked the old man what the people were like who lived on top of the mountain.
The old man asked him what the people in the village he came from were like. “They were full of love and goodness; they were always thinking about what they could do to help their neighbors,” the second traveler replied. He was told that he would find that the people in the village on top of the mountain like that too.

With this story, tour guide Maria Sfour welcomed an American MEPI group heading for Kafr Qasim, a Muslim village in the low hills, about an hour’s drive west of Jerusalem. This was a day for going where tourists rarely go and experiencing things tourists seldom experience. This was one of a number of opportunities to engage ordinary people with a message of reconciliation.

They practiced the greetings of peace, asalaam aleikum, They thought about the stories they had been hearing for the past few days. They could offer a listening heart. When Arabs see Americans, they may think of them as representing President Bush, and express strong emotions about the United States. One person mentioned how meaningful it can be to say, “I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.”

The bus descended through the rugged hills, past olive trees and cotton fields, past the Tel Aviv airport. After turning on side road and driving through narrow streets, it reached the close-set homes and warm Mediterranean climate of Kafr Qasim.

The Muslims in Kafr Qasim are Israeli citizens. On October 29, 1956, the eve of the Sinai War, the commander of an Israeli battalion nearby gave orders for curfew to begin within a half hour. However, the village people who had gone out to work had no knowledge of the curfew, and as they returned they were gunned down by the police. That evening 49 men, women and children died. The grieving survivors sought to rise above the past and find ways to live among their neighbors. (According to court records, the commander told the officers to show “no sentimentality.” As a result of the case, the Israeli Supreme Court made a landmark ruling on the obligation of soldiers to disobey manifestly illegal orders.)

The host at this village was Dr. Hassan Amer, a Muslim psychotherapist who is committed to bringing reconciliation among divided peoples. He founded a school to teach his people the principles of physical and emotional healing.
The bus parked beside some small shops, and stared as the visitors exited. Dr. Amer welcomed the visitors, and they spread out in groups of four or five to knock on doors. There were no doorbells, so they stood at the gate and call out Salaam alaikum. Often there was no answer. Sometimes a village boy would go to the door and persuade the family to answer it. They found children, mothers and grandmothers, with young people who could speak some English. They served guests sweetened fruit drinks.

Women were doing washing or ironing, washing tile floors, or preparing food for those who would be coming to eat after Friday prayers in the mosque. Young children peered around the corner or over a kitchen counter. The visitors passed around a booklet about MEPI’s effort to build bridges of understanding, respect and cooperation between people of different faiths. The booklets were in English, and the women asked why they didn’t make an Arabic translation. “We are sorry. We’re working on that,” was the answer.

There were animated conversations in the street with university students asking questions about American government’s policy. “We are sorry,” was sometimes the only response that could be offered.

Shopkeepers invited some visiting groups inside for coffee and conversation. In one instance, an entire meal was spontaneously prepared and served. “The first place we stopped there was some animosity,” one person reported. “The gentleman we were talking to was focusing on everything that was going wrong with his life, and he didn’t think we were in a position to be of help. I wondered if enmity was going to be all that we would find as we talked to people.” Later, a gentleman invited them to sit down at a table with him, and a teacher who spoke English expressed his concerned about the future of the children, a point of common interest for the visitors, who were also parents.

Dr. Amer hosted the group for a meal and invited everyone to his home and the college he is building to carry out his vision of what  it means to be an ambassador for peace. “It is a privilege of mine to serve you and have you in my village,” he said. “You cleanse my heart. I am willing to sacrifice my soul, my heart, and myself for this mission.” The building smelled of fresh concrete and plaster. “We plan to teach physical therapy, psychology and social work, because Israeli Arabs have almost no trained people in these fields,” Dr. Amer added. “It is difficult for Arab students to gain admission to Israeli universities, especially to these faculties.”

Back on the bus en route to the mosque, traffic was stopped along the road for a wedding procession. The bridegroom, accompanied by his family and friends, was heading down the street the meet the bride. People on the street motioned everyone to join in. Women did impromptu line dances with women, and the men gathered around the bridegroom, digging into their wallets to add to the money the wedding party was collecting.

“There are two dialogues in the world,” the sheik told the visitors to his mosque: “the dialogue of violence and the dialogue of peace. As religious people, we support the dialogue of peace. I hope you will succeed in this great challenge.”

Jerusalem

Shortly after the Jewish new year, American participants in a MEPI trip spent a day visiting Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem to give the greeting, Shana Tova! (happy new year!) and invite people to express their thoughts about peace. MEPI brings together people of many faiths to learn from each other, and participants understand that there is no intention to proselytize. Eighty percent of Israeli Jews are secular, and people found common concerns and a variety of ways to connect, beyond religious issues.

The day began with a walking tour of the Old City escorted by Dr. Eliezer Glaubach, who had served four terms as a Jerusalem city council member. “When my wife and I moved to Jerusalem 40 years ago, our lives were transformed,” he explained, as he walked through a gate that seemed to take us back through the millennia. “This is the reality of Jerusalem.”

Dr. Glaubach grew up in Haifa, but he and his wife felt something lacking there and moved to Jerusalem. “Jerusalem has an inexplicable attraction,” he reflected. “Every stone has its history. The holy scriptures were formulated here. Whether we are Muslim, Christian, or Jew, we worship the same God.”

From the Old City, they went to a neighborhood with apartment buildings, parks, single-family homes, and shops where they divided up into small groups. One group knocked on doors of an apartment building and had conversations with couples who were struggling with terrorism. A shopkeeper described how his family had been living in this land for 2,000 years. He said that people of different faiths lived together peacefully in the past, and he believed they could learn to do it again.

A woman was walking down the sidewalk, carrying a baby. When she was a baby, she said her father had promised her a future without wars. But when she was 18 she had to do military service. Now she wants peace for her baby, and would like to ensure her a world without war.

“If you are here for peace, please come in my house,” a lady greeted another group. She described an incident after the 1967 war when a Palestinian woman holding a baby was trying, without success, to get through a barbed wire fence. The looked her in the eyes and handed her the baby to hold while she got through the fence.

One group came back carrying a bouquet of red roses they were given at a flower shop as an expression of her hopes for peace and best wishes for our mission. They reported talking with an elderly couple who could not recognize anything good in the Palestinians and a younger couple who believed that people were capable of living together despite their differences.

Repeatedly, people asked why the visitors had come. One American participant with a Muslim husband said she felt comfortable relating to Muslims but anxious about participating in a peace trip to Israel and talking to Jews. “When I thought of those Jewish people who were taken out of their homes, put on freight trains and shipped to concentration camps, never to return, and how my ancestors had stood by and let this happen,” she added. “Then I knew I had to come.”

One Israeli woman told an American Christian that she couldn’t understand why he had come there working for peace when there is so much unrest in America. He responded, “Our Bible teaches us that we should pray for the peace of Jerusalem and that those who love Jerusalem will prosper.”

Standing in her doorway, one elderly lady wondered aloud why she was still here on earth. Each time the question is raised, it stimulates a quest for a deeper answer.

Bethlehem and Beit Sahour

“The future is uncertain if you don’t look at it with faith and love,” tour guide Maria Sfour remarked another day as she escorted a bus-load of MEPI participants to Bethlehem.

Maria, who lived in Bethlehem, had been staying at her son’s home in Jerusalem for a number of days because of travel restrictions imposed on Palestinians. If she re-entered the West Bank with the group, she didn’t know when she would be allowed back into Jerusalem. Still, she wanted to show people around her hometown. Maria studied to be a tour guide at Bethlehem Bible College, and she views her work as a ministry.

Olive groves lined either side of the highway from Jerusalem to the birthplace of King David and Jesus a few miles to the south. On a hilltop to the left were the densely-packed buildings of an Israeli settlement that was being ringed by 12 to 15-feet high concrete barriers. An Israeli soldier boarded the bus at the checkpoint and glanced at each person’s passport before waving it through.

Among the limestone buildings on the hills and valleys, groves of olive trees dot the rocky slopes. Eight Israeli settlements have been built among the 21 villages and three cities: Beit Jala, Beit Sahour, and Bethlehem. Graffiti from the various political parties mars the walls. People make their living from tourism and creating craft products from olive tree wood, but when the second Intifada began in September 2000, tourism plummeted and unemployment rose.

A network of host families around Bethlehem open their homes and hearts to travelers for a home-style meal or overnight stay. In groups of five or six, people set off to these host homes for lunch. The Christian families talked about how their ancestors had lived in the area for several centuries, but travel restrictions make it difficult to visit relatives. The American-style roast chicken and vegetables served by one family made the guests feel right at home. MEPI is grounded in the conviction that world peace is rooted in family peace, and guests offered blessing prayers for their host families.

The culmination of the day was Maria’s invitation to visit her home high on a cliff. It had taken 12 years for her family to get a building permit, but the view from the curved verandahs overlooking the spectacular skyline of Jerusalem was priceless. The buildings were misty in the dusty horizon. In the winter, the tallest buildings are visible above the damp fog.

Maria’s in-laws are from France. Her father-in-law retired from practicing dentistry when his eyesight began to fail, and he amuses himself playing solitaire with large cards. He was thrilled to have dozens of visitors.

Maria’s mother-in-law served cake and lemonade. In turn, the music-lovers in the group gathered around the piano and sang show tunes and gospel song to a rock-and-roll beat. The final song was a solo sung in French, celebrating the beauties of autumn; it brought tears to the eyes of Maria’s father-in-law.

The Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem” describes the town as the convergence of the world’s hopes and fears. The visitors tasted a bit of both that day. The Christmas carol’s author, Bishop Phillips Brooks, wrote the following lesser-known words: "Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for power equal to your tasks."