July 13, 2005

Dear Family and Friends,

It’s shaping up to be a long, hot summer here in the Middle East! As the temperature heats up here in the Holy Land, so does the political climate, ahead of the long-awaited Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip slated for mid-August. Approximately 8,500 Jewish settlers will be removed from the illegal settlements they have constructed in the Gaza Strip over the past 38 years.

Already opponents of the planned withdrawal, referred to as “the disengagement,” are implementing their well-planned and organized disruptions of major highways and intersections inside of Israel. Here in Jerusalem, orange stickers, banners, and flags—the color of choice of the opponents of disengagement—are flying from the radio antennas of many Israeli vehicles.

According to international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory, an occupying power may not move its own civilian population into an area that is under military occupation in order to change the demographics, or in order to create “facts on the ground.” Yet it has always been the creation of such facts on the ground that has been at the core of the Israeli settlement enterprise.

Gaza is known to be one of the most densely populated areas in the world and is “home” to 1.3 million Palestinians, 75 percent of whom are refugees and descendants of refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. They are clustered in eight refugee camps.

Imagine 1.3 million people crammed into 141 square miles, mostly in single story housing! Couple that with the fact that someone else controls 40 percent of the land 60 percent of the water resources!

I have accompanied countless visitors to Gaza over the past ten years, and most have returned shocked and horrified at what they saw. Many said that Gaza looked like the world’s largest outdoor prison. That’s a fairly accurate picture!

Surprisingly, many Palestinians residents do not favor a unilateral, Israeli disengagement. They fear total isolation by the outside world and worry that Gaza’s economy will suddenly be linked with that of Egypt, rather than with the West Bank and Israel, to which they have become accustomed.

“If this is what peace looks like, what would the situation look like if we were in a period of war?” asked Suhalia Tarazi, administrator of the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City recently to a group of Presbyterian supporters. She was referring to the severe economic conditions under which most Palestinians are living, where more than 60 percent of the population exists on less than two dollars a day.

Meanwhile, and under the smoke screen of the planned withdrawal, Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank continues unabated. The building cranes and the hydraulic drills are busy bringing down mountains and hills all across the West Bank. The Palestinian landscape is being dramatically changed, as existing Israeli settlements continue to grow at an alarming rate.

The larger settlements of Ma’ale Adummim, Beitar Illit, and Har Homa, all on the perimeter of Jerusalem, are today absorbing the greatest numbers of Israeli settlers. They have been strategically built and designed to encircle Jerusalem to the east and south and complete an chain of settlements that encircles the city, making any future negotiations over the status of Jerusalem difficult, to say the least.

Construction of Israel’s “separation barrier” has also been speeded up recently, with plans to have the portion of the wall completed around Jerusalem by early September. Fifty-five thousand Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem will now be left outside of the municipal boundaries, with no access to jobs, schools, hospitals, and basic services. Only this week, Haim Ramon, one of Israel’s cabinet ministers, commented publicly that the construction of the barrier would make Jerusalem “more Jewish,” admitting for the first time that the separation barrier was being built not only with security concerns, but also with demographic aims in mind.

Will Israel finally withdraw its settlers from Gaza in August, and bring to an end its 38-year occupation of the strip? Will Israeli troops open fire on fellow Israelis attempting to disrupt the disengagement? Will Israeli settlers turn their weapons on Israeli soldiers and officers engaged in the disengagement? These are the questions that are on everyone’s mind here in Israel and Palestine, as temperatures—and tempers—continue to rise.

And the long, hot Middle Eastern summer drags on.

Doug

The 2005 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 170