March 1992, Page 38, 39

Bethlehem Bulletin

The Darkness Around the Candlelight in Shepherds' Field

By Brother Patrick White

Candles have a strange fascination as their flames flicker light and shadow on human faces. These were meter-tall, blue, red, yellow and green candles held in the hands of over 2,000 Palestinians and Israelis as they marched from the Greek Orthodox Church in the Shepherds' Field and along the open tarmac lane that crosses the fields and rises into the town of Beit Sahour. I found myself in a tightly packed crowd as it began to surge along the road. Familiar and unfamiliar faces appeared fleetingly in the candles' illumination, their greetings just as sudden and brief, before darkness enveloped them in shadow or turned them into a silhouette.

There was almost a sense of the bizarre as I found myself shoulder to shoulder one moment with a member of the Israeli Parliament, and the next with a student of mine just released from six months without trial in an Israeli prison. Candlelight can convey a sense of wonderment and perhaps fantasy; I was curious to know whether this lit up a reality or just some passing illusion as I marched under the banners inscribed with "Yes for a just peace" this Christmas evening.

I recall that almost two years ago, during the Christmas season of 1989, I had stood with thousands of Israelis and Palestinians in a human chain around the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. We proclaimed Peace Now for 1990. And yet a year later, fearful Israelis and Palestinians were preparing shelters and safe rooms against the threat of missiles and chemical attacks as the Gulf war was about to begin.

This Christmas, 1991, the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams have just returned from what appear to have been fruitless peace talks in Washington. The brief euphoria experienced after the opening Madrid peace talks in November had evaporated, and those who still believed in the dialogue recognized that the new year 1992 was going to be a long and difficult one.

Laughter and loud voices around me: "Brother Patrick, hello!" A shining Palestinian face, once a student of mine, golden in the ephemeral candle flames. "Aren't you frightened?" she asks, as she joins in conversation with an Israeli young man from Hebrew University who walks beside us. I leave them as they fall into friendly banter. "My name is David," he says. Their voices fade in the night. I half hear her explain with delight: "And mine, Butaineh!"

Call them by name. What has happened to some of the faces that I have come in contact with during the past two years? Taha, who wrote poetry, graduated from Bethlehem University after six years and eventually found night work in a sweatshop in Beit Jala. Occasionally he comes to my office after his night shift, tired and depressed before he walks home to the wretchedness of Deheisheh refugee camp. He offers me another poem with diminished hope written on his face. The Survivor, he entitles the piece: "So many skies above," the lines run, "But we don't see." I mutter to myself, "Lord, that I may see!" as I listen to him haltingly read the poem. I experience the helplessness of not being able to do anything to ease his misery. Perhaps all I can do is to be present to his suffering.

I experience the helplessness of not being able to do anything.

On a more joyful note, Firas, the student who sent a postcard from prison, has returned from six months' imprisonment and is now continuing his studies at the university. Majida, his wife, has almost finished her degree and works part time. Though thankful for this man's release, I notice in the present candlelight procession the brother of another student who has just been arrested. Before Christmas a whole series of arrests took place and students disappeared from classes at the university. I look across the fields now in the semi-darkness. Lights at the eastern end of Shepherds' Field remind me of Salam Musleh, the only son of a family that lives there. No doubt the Russian settler who shot Salam dead as he talked to his mother in their kitchen one evening continues to drive past the house each day. No doubt the settler remains free and unpunished. No wonder there is deep skepticism among many in Beit Sahour about peace walks and the effectiveness of Peace Now to change what really needs to be changed.

Lynda Brayer, the Israeli lawyer, fights on in the Israeli High Court but encounters further suffocating legal positivism emphasizing the Israeli government's determination to gain complete control of the West Bank and Gaza. The cost of becoming a Christian and working for justice for the Palestinians has been enormous for Lynda. She has weakened her ties with her family and lost many of her Israeli friends. I was intrigued when she invited me to her daughter's marriage to the son of an important member of Israeli intelligence. At the reception I was informed that a sizeable cross-section of the Israeli intelligence service was present for the occasion.

Life Must Go On

Life must go on for Khalid and Agnes Shehade and their children. They sent their Christmas greeting from Haifa, where they still run the House of Grace. In Jaffa the staff in the school still teach both Israeli Arabs and Jews. I really hear little from Abuna Manuel Musallem, isolated and ghettoized in the northern part of the West Bank. Friends tell me he continues to work with vigor but faces increasing fractionalism and a paralyzing despondency among his people. Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch, remains prominent in his leadership of his flock and quietly encourages his people who are so depressed. The Rapproachement Center in Beit Sahour continues to meet on Thursdays and is mainly responsible for the organizing of this candlelight procession today. Mayor Freij, just returned from the Washington peace talks, encountered the now-familiar Christmas scene in Bethlehem. He pleaded with the local political factions to allow the shops to be open for Christmas Eve but failed to prevent a strike through most of the town.

Our procession had now reached the courtyard outside the Greek Catholic Church. The place was packed with people as the speeches began in Arabic, Hebrew and English from the mayor of Beit Sahour, Ghassan Adoni and the Israeli Peace Now spokesman.

In front of the cameras and videos the mayor reminded us of the deep historical association of the Shepherds' Field with the local Palestinian community. The angels, the mayor explained, announced to the shepherds: "Peace on earth to all men of good will." Pleas were made for a Palestinian state, for self-determination, for peace to live side by side with the Israelis.

As the speeches progressed I was again troubled by the possibility of illusion versus reality.

The illusory images caught by candle flames during the procession, the cries of eloquence and the claims for justice and freedom for Palestinians at the gathering outside the Greek Catholic Church did not correspond to the crushing reality surrounding us. Brave were the words of the Israeli orator that freedoms denied Palestinians left Israelis unfree. However well intentioned and high-sounding those words, I was more conscious of the pervasiveness of time's power and the harsh future that Palestinians inevitably have to face. Brutal political power and the long-term agenda of the Zionist lobby will not be derailed by cries for peace and justice.

"These are but the trappings and the suits of woe," Hamlet explains to his mother, referring to his black clothes of affliction. Our mourning in Bethlehem today only drapes the underlying reality of an unfolding catastrophe for the Palestinians that has continued for years and is now accelerating towards its denouement. The cliche "facts on the ground" is still a reality in spite of its triteness. The vast expansion of Israeli urban settlement and the new cities, such as Ariel, built inside the Green Line, have developed massive urban corridors across the West Bank that are irreversible facts on the ground. Whatever happens at the peace talks, the illegal presence of extensive road systems serving the ever-growing settlements will be virtually impossible to change.

The prospect is bleak for the Palestinians. The fast approaching reality, as these maps of the West Bank demonstrate, reveals pockets of Palestinians surrounded by large Israeli populations. Pockets cut off from viable markets, isolated from the new infrastructures; pockets that will soon have characteristics similar to those of the contained homelands for the blacks in South Africa. The noose will then be tightened further and all argument for a state and self-determination a thing of the past.

The Holy Family in Bethlehem were homeless refugees; they came and went. Nor did their visit prove to be entirely beneficial to the families in the small town at the time. The slaughter of the Holy Innocents after the Holy Family's departure was a dreadful demonstration by Herod of crude political power. That tragedy continues to bring us face to face with the mystery of the seeming contradiction of human suffering and a merciful God. Today, imprisoned in their human condition, Arab and Jew alike relive that contradiction, and Rachel again mourns for her children in this Holy Land.

I struggle to find some answer for this and, ironically, St. Paul in his letter to the Hebrews, chapter 11, helps a little. He reminds us of the exemplary faith of the ancients: by acknowledging themselves to be strangers and foreigners on the earth they showed they were seeking a homeland, the land promised them by God. They saw and saluted the promise from afar, and although many died before receiving the promise, they died in faith. Perhaps we should be like them, hoping in things we cannot see, confident that God has some better plan.

Brother Patrick White teaches at Bethlehem University in the West Bank.

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