So, this is the first of my posts on praying for peace, and starting with the Israel-Palestinian conflict (or the Palestinian-Israeli conflict) is an intimidating one to start with.
I have so many people I love on both sides of this conflict. Friends I hold near and dear to my heart, and friends I would never want to hurt or upset. But at times I think you can't discuss this conflict honestly without upsetting someone. Just using the names "Israel" and "Palestine" can trigger emotions as one side denies the existence of the other (I cannot emphasize this enough, but this is true of people on both sides of the conflict).
It is for that very reason, though, that I need to start here, with this conflict, as my first "Praying for Peace."
The land is the land of my faith. Jesus wept there, in the town of Bethany, which is now known as al-Eizariya ("The Place of Lazarus") in Palestine's West Bank. He pulled Lazarus from death and told Martha to put away her chores and listen to his teachings. It was there that he accepted the offering of a woman that others scorned. The land is the land of my faith, where Christ was willing to die. Where he was buried. Where he revealed himself again, resurrected. The land is the land of my faith.
And in my lifetime it has never known peace.
Some say it has not ever known peace. I reject that assertion. The land was occupied prior to 1948 - a British and Ottoman exchange of rights and privileges over who could collect taxes and impose sanctions, use its water and its resources. But the communities there knew peace within themselves. I have friends whose families farmed those lands, whose parents and grandparents sewed clothing for people living on that land regardless of their faith or ethnicity. These friends are Christian, Muslim and Jewish, and their ancestors once lived much closer to each other than these friends live now.
I have other friends in this conflict. Friends whose families moved to Israel after 1948; friends who are moving to Israel now. I have other friends who grew up in the Palestinian IDP camps, never able to know a true home. Both claim the same land as their own, their understanding of history as truth.
My friend Murad, who is one my newest friends but one I am certain will last a lifetime (assuming he doesn't disown me after this post), has written on the concept and nature of citizenship. To understand what he writes, you need to understand the meaning of three Arabic words: Watan, Mowatana, and Mowatin. Watan is the "home you live in." But as Murad explains "The Watan is not just about the history or the geography, it also becomes a creator of the self, and an important source in creating the ego and the collective self. It becomes the glasses we look through towards ourselves and the world, and forms a part of culture." Maybe it is best understood as our homeland, the place where we identify ourselves with, though I think the English word still lacks something.
Mowantana is also not clearly translatable, though it is often defined as citizenship. As Murad explains, though, Mowantana is broader, meaning Muslims who by virtue of their faith have a right to belong. Finally, Mowatin are citizens, or the members of the community who belong.
The complexity surrounding these words becomes important when you consider Murad's broader conclusions about Palestinian citizenship, which I'm going to quote at length because they are really beautiful and they tell us so much about this conflict:
While I have never heard this sentiment expressed as beautifully by my Jewish friends of Israel, I have heard it expressed all the same. That longing for the place you belong. That desire to be reunited with your heritage, your ancestry, your family, your community; the desire to unite your past and your future.
It is not something I can relate to particularly well, and I think many in the US and Western Europe would have difficulty truly understanding this sentiment. I feel connected to Slovenia and Germany, where my mom's grandparents were born, but it's not that same grounding or gravitational force for my life. There is, however, a piece of farmland in Western Ohio that my family has owned since Ohio was "settled" by Europeans.
We are the settlers to that land. And while I realise the long-standing claims the indigenous of Ohio have to that land, it is so dear to my family. It plays a strange role in the identity of my immediate family. It's land shared between 3/4 of my great-grandparents' heirs, and it isn't even mine yet. My brother, sister and I will inherit our share at one of the worst moments of our lives: when both my parents have passed. My father has already told us he will haunt us if we ever even think of selling that land. That land will be our connection when all else has left us but each other. And it's a connection we'll share with our own children, probably with the very same promise of haunting them forever.
And yet, I know that my inheritance of that land is actually a source of pain for Native Americans. I don't usually rely on Wikipedia for facts (though the footnotes are sometimes awesome), but I was curious about who had been in this land before it became ours. Reading the story, though, is hard for a human rights activist (perhaps particularly one who also has Cherokee Indian heritage). By 1750, the county where our land is was occupied by members of eleven Native American tribes. After the Native Americans were defeated in 1795, they were supposed to have the land my family now owns as their place to be. In 1820, it was organized into a county with 12 townships. In one of those townships is my land. I hate how it became my land, but still... it is my land. It is the inanimate object with which I have my deepest connection.
When I feel lost in the world - and I mean truly lost, unsure of where I belong in the world - I rely on the knowledge that my family loves me and that land represents them, strangely in many ways even more than the home I grew up in because the land is representative of my broader family: my aunt Peg, who whispers to me how happy she is with what I'm doing; and my Uncle Mike, who took me aside once to tell me he doesn't understand half of what I'm doing, disagrees with me on the half he does, but he's still proud of my for doing what I do; my great-aunt Jo, who came to my law school graduation because my own grandmother was too sick to remember it; my uncle Johnny who left us much too young but whose spirit I have felt quite clearly protecting me at times while I drive; and my great-grandma Kate, who my father tells me I'm just like. Quite honestly, I don't know that I could pick out the actual property without my dad or brother along, but still... that land is my land, my family, and the idea that I would ever have to give it up - even though I deplore how it came to be ours - it would be heartbreaking and I would absolutely fight tooth and nail for it (probably not with actual weapons but I'm a lawyer... in the US that might be better than a weapon!).
What I feel can only be a small portion of the feelings associated with land like Israel and Palestine, whose recent past is so deeply intertwined with conflict and displacement. Israel was born from the Holocaust, from the reality that the Jewish people had few safe havens in the world, and felt most secure with the notion of living in community on the land of their ancestors. But taking that land required conflict and the expulsion of the Palestinians. Land ownership continues to be an issue. I was intending to link to this very specific article about property issues in Jerusalem, which I read when it was first published, but when I searched keywords associated with it, I just found story after story after story about the conflicts associated with land [the background to this one was the hardest for me to read]. Perhaps one of the more relevant ones was this, in which the then 80-year-old mayor of Jerusalem (an Israeli who immigrated to Palestine in 1934) blasted new settlements in the "Arab Quarter" of Jerusalem:
Israel has the power now, so it is often Jewish Israelis taking land previously belonging to Palestinians, but in another time that power dynamic could shift. I can only imagine how much fear and anxiety this causes the Jewish people living in Israel. I know how much anxiety and anger the dispossession causes the Palestinians. And fear. Fear that they will never see their homeland in their lifetime. Fear that they will always be the newest "people without a land." Fear that they have lost themselves, their community, and their ancestry. Fear that their life will always include outsiders who control so much more of their existence than they do themselves.
Fear drives anger, and anger hatred, and hatred violence, and violence conflict. All from a desire for self; a desire to realize the connection with one's homeland, with one's Watan.
It is a common desire for the Palestinians and the Israelis. That very reality is what makes this conflict so tense, so personal, so seemingly without end.
But I believe it will have an end. I am praying that the leaders will have wisdom and see a solution, and then be brave enough to pursue that solution.
I don't want to have simplified the conflict down to just land. There are serious and grave human rights issues here. Palestinians are often shot seemingly without cause, their ability to get to medical care and their ability to get to school or work is often hampered. Israelis fear incursions, particularly from Gaza but also from neighbouring Lebanon and Syria. It is tense and with each new death, there is new anger, and perhaps also a deeper connection to one's ancestral struggle - something that again these two sides share.
I don't have a solution that I can propose. I am neither Palestinian nor Israeli and my connection to the conflict comes only from my faith and from my friends. The solution will need to be internal; a coming together of two peoples with the same desire and the same fear to alleviate the other's fear and realize both desires. It seems impossible. But everything seems impossible until someone does it.
It is not the impossibility that worries me - it is the lack of courage to make this happen that worries me. Courage to admit that one's own side has not always been right or good or fair or just in this conflict. Courage to develop a solution that may not meet the desire of everyone but will meet the needs of everyone. Courage to see the other side as a full, real human being with their own truth and their own reality and their own human worth and value. And courage to stand up to the interests of one's own side to develop a plan and to implement it.
Children know in a way adults sometimes forget that human beings are, at our heart, the same. Our languages and clothing and music and food preparation may differ, but our feelings are universal. Our fears our universal. I am praying that courage will be too.
And that is what I'm asking from you as part of this first praying for peace. I am asking that you pray for courage for individuals and leaders in this conflict in identifying, developing, and realising a solution. Pray for the individuals and the leaders on both sides, not just the side you normally favour. Pray for the individuals whose lives will be affected by whatever decision is developed. Pray for Peace.
I know as a Christian, I am supposed to go into our closest and prayer, but how are you supposed to encourage people to pray about something if you don't talk about it and talk about praying? That's the very issue I face here. But if you want to pray over this, and you're unsure how to do that, this is a short version of the prayer I will inevitably be reciting over and over this Saturday and you're welcome to use it:
Dear God, I ask you to bless the people and the leaders of Israel and Palestine. I ask you to help them find a solution. Help them identify it, develop it, and realise it. Give them the courage and strength necessary to find communal peace, and through communal peace eventually individual acceptance and peace with one's life and surroundings. Help the people in Israel and Palestine to see each other as your children, and help them to value the human worth in one another. All these things I pray in your name, Amen.
I have so many people I love on both sides of this conflict. Friends I hold near and dear to my heart, and friends I would never want to hurt or upset. But at times I think you can't discuss this conflict honestly without upsetting someone. Just using the names "Israel" and "Palestine" can trigger emotions as one side denies the existence of the other (I cannot emphasize this enough, but this is true of people on both sides of the conflict).
It is for that very reason, though, that I need to start here, with this conflict, as my first "Praying for Peace."
The land is the land of my faith. Jesus wept there, in the town of Bethany, which is now known as al-Eizariya ("The Place of Lazarus") in Palestine's West Bank. He pulled Lazarus from death and told Martha to put away her chores and listen to his teachings. It was there that he accepted the offering of a woman that others scorned. The land is the land of my faith, where Christ was willing to die. Where he was buried. Where he revealed himself again, resurrected. The land is the land of my faith.
And in my lifetime it has never known peace.
Some say it has not ever known peace. I reject that assertion. The land was occupied prior to 1948 - a British and Ottoman exchange of rights and privileges over who could collect taxes and impose sanctions, use its water and its resources. But the communities there knew peace within themselves. I have friends whose families farmed those lands, whose parents and grandparents sewed clothing for people living on that land regardless of their faith or ethnicity. These friends are Christian, Muslim and Jewish, and their ancestors once lived much closer to each other than these friends live now.
I have other friends in this conflict. Friends whose families moved to Israel after 1948; friends who are moving to Israel now. I have other friends who grew up in the Palestinian IDP camps, never able to know a true home. Both claim the same land as their own, their understanding of history as truth.
My friend Murad, who is one my newest friends but one I am certain will last a lifetime (assuming he doesn't disown me after this post), has written on the concept and nature of citizenship. To understand what he writes, you need to understand the meaning of three Arabic words: Watan, Mowatana, and Mowatin. Watan is the "home you live in." But as Murad explains "The Watan is not just about the history or the geography, it also becomes a creator of the self, and an important source in creating the ego and the collective self. It becomes the glasses we look through towards ourselves and the world, and forms a part of culture." Maybe it is best understood as our homeland, the place where we identify ourselves with, though I think the English word still lacks something.
Mowantana is also not clearly translatable, though it is often defined as citizenship. As Murad explains, though, Mowantana is broader, meaning Muslims who by virtue of their faith have a right to belong. Finally, Mowatin are citizens, or the members of the community who belong.
The complexity surrounding these words becomes important when you consider Murad's broader conclusions about Palestinian citizenship, which I'm going to quote at length because they are really beautiful and they tell us so much about this conflict:
"The Palestinians lose their Watan, but they still are attached to it even though they are living in it as Mowatin. The Palestinian generation creates the difference between the Watan and Mowatin and they can distinguish between them very well.
. . .
In the Palestinian context, the Watan is the imaginary part, because it is missing from the reality. So, the Palestinians draw the Watan in their imagination wishing and working to move it into their reality. Here we can notice the correlation between the lack of the Watan in reality and the imagination of each person and their will to make it real. This depends on each one's belonging and believing in these terms.
Why do we feel that we have to be tied to one place?
In an attempt to redefine these terms, these questions may help you to analyze your point of view: What does stability mean to you? Does stability change from one period to another in a humans' life? What does it mean to belong? Does belonging to something mean you feel responsibility towards it?
Tell me what the Watan is for you, and I tell you who you are."Now, I am afraid he will hate me for what I am about to write (though he's a very good man, and he should be super flattered with how much of him I quoted, so I'm hoping he'll forgive me... eventually), but....
While I have never heard this sentiment expressed as beautifully by my Jewish friends of Israel, I have heard it expressed all the same. That longing for the place you belong. That desire to be reunited with your heritage, your ancestry, your family, your community; the desire to unite your past and your future.
It is not something I can relate to particularly well, and I think many in the US and Western Europe would have difficulty truly understanding this sentiment. I feel connected to Slovenia and Germany, where my mom's grandparents were born, but it's not that same grounding or gravitational force for my life. There is, however, a piece of farmland in Western Ohio that my family has owned since Ohio was "settled" by Europeans.
We are the settlers to that land. And while I realise the long-standing claims the indigenous of Ohio have to that land, it is so dear to my family. It plays a strange role in the identity of my immediate family. It's land shared between 3/4 of my great-grandparents' heirs, and it isn't even mine yet. My brother, sister and I will inherit our share at one of the worst moments of our lives: when both my parents have passed. My father has already told us he will haunt us if we ever even think of selling that land. That land will be our connection when all else has left us but each other. And it's a connection we'll share with our own children, probably with the very same promise of haunting them forever.
And yet, I know that my inheritance of that land is actually a source of pain for Native Americans. I don't usually rely on Wikipedia for facts (though the footnotes are sometimes awesome), but I was curious about who had been in this land before it became ours. Reading the story, though, is hard for a human rights activist (perhaps particularly one who also has Cherokee Indian heritage). By 1750, the county where our land is was occupied by members of eleven Native American tribes. After the Native Americans were defeated in 1795, they were supposed to have the land my family now owns as their place to be. In 1820, it was organized into a county with 12 townships. In one of those townships is my land. I hate how it became my land, but still... it is my land. It is the inanimate object with which I have my deepest connection.
When I feel lost in the world - and I mean truly lost, unsure of where I belong in the world - I rely on the knowledge that my family loves me and that land represents them, strangely in many ways even more than the home I grew up in because the land is representative of my broader family: my aunt Peg, who whispers to me how happy she is with what I'm doing; and my Uncle Mike, who took me aside once to tell me he doesn't understand half of what I'm doing, disagrees with me on the half he does, but he's still proud of my for doing what I do; my great-aunt Jo, who came to my law school graduation because my own grandmother was too sick to remember it; my uncle Johnny who left us much too young but whose spirit I have felt quite clearly protecting me at times while I drive; and my great-grandma Kate, who my father tells me I'm just like. Quite honestly, I don't know that I could pick out the actual property without my dad or brother along, but still... that land is my land, my family, and the idea that I would ever have to give it up - even though I deplore how it came to be ours - it would be heartbreaking and I would absolutely fight tooth and nail for it (probably not with actual weapons but I'm a lawyer... in the US that might be better than a weapon!).
What I feel can only be a small portion of the feelings associated with land like Israel and Palestine, whose recent past is so deeply intertwined with conflict and displacement. Israel was born from the Holocaust, from the reality that the Jewish people had few safe havens in the world, and felt most secure with the notion of living in community on the land of their ancestors. But taking that land required conflict and the expulsion of the Palestinians. Land ownership continues to be an issue. I was intending to link to this very specific article about property issues in Jerusalem, which I read when it was first published, but when I searched keywords associated with it, I just found story after story after story about the conflicts associated with land [the background to this one was the hardest for me to read]. Perhaps one of the more relevant ones was this, in which the then 80-year-old mayor of Jerusalem (an Israeli who immigrated to Palestine in 1934) blasted new settlements in the "Arab Quarter" of Jerusalem:
"Does anyone seriously think that there will not always be Muslims and Christians in Jerusalem, that we can ignore their rights and expect the world to respect our own?" the 80-year-old Mayor, in office since 1965, said in a statement.
An Israeli newspaper quoted him today as saying, "We are driving the Arabs crazy and forcing them to hate us."
Israel has the power now, so it is often Jewish Israelis taking land previously belonging to Palestinians, but in another time that power dynamic could shift. I can only imagine how much fear and anxiety this causes the Jewish people living in Israel. I know how much anxiety and anger the dispossession causes the Palestinians. And fear. Fear that they will never see their homeland in their lifetime. Fear that they will always be the newest "people without a land." Fear that they have lost themselves, their community, and their ancestry. Fear that their life will always include outsiders who control so much more of their existence than they do themselves.
Fear drives anger, and anger hatred, and hatred violence, and violence conflict. All from a desire for self; a desire to realize the connection with one's homeland, with one's Watan.
It is a common desire for the Palestinians and the Israelis. That very reality is what makes this conflict so tense, so personal, so seemingly without end.
But I believe it will have an end. I am praying that the leaders will have wisdom and see a solution, and then be brave enough to pursue that solution.
I don't want to have simplified the conflict down to just land. There are serious and grave human rights issues here. Palestinians are often shot seemingly without cause, their ability to get to medical care and their ability to get to school or work is often hampered. Israelis fear incursions, particularly from Gaza but also from neighbouring Lebanon and Syria. It is tense and with each new death, there is new anger, and perhaps also a deeper connection to one's ancestral struggle - something that again these two sides share.
I don't have a solution that I can propose. I am neither Palestinian nor Israeli and my connection to the conflict comes only from my faith and from my friends. The solution will need to be internal; a coming together of two peoples with the same desire and the same fear to alleviate the other's fear and realize both desires. It seems impossible. But everything seems impossible until someone does it.
It is not the impossibility that worries me - it is the lack of courage to make this happen that worries me. Courage to admit that one's own side has not always been right or good or fair or just in this conflict. Courage to develop a solution that may not meet the desire of everyone but will meet the needs of everyone. Courage to see the other side as a full, real human being with their own truth and their own reality and their own human worth and value. And courage to stand up to the interests of one's own side to develop a plan and to implement it.
Children know in a way adults sometimes forget that human beings are, at our heart, the same. Our languages and clothing and music and food preparation may differ, but our feelings are universal. Our fears our universal. I am praying that courage will be too.
And that is what I'm asking from you as part of this first praying for peace. I am asking that you pray for courage for individuals and leaders in this conflict in identifying, developing, and realising a solution. Pray for the individuals and the leaders on both sides, not just the side you normally favour. Pray for the individuals whose lives will be affected by whatever decision is developed. Pray for Peace.
I know as a Christian, I am supposed to go into our closest and prayer, but how are you supposed to encourage people to pray about something if you don't talk about it and talk about praying? That's the very issue I face here. But if you want to pray over this, and you're unsure how to do that, this is a short version of the prayer I will inevitably be reciting over and over this Saturday and you're welcome to use it:
Dear God, I ask you to bless the people and the leaders of Israel and Palestine. I ask you to help them find a solution. Help them identify it, develop it, and realise it. Give them the courage and strength necessary to find communal peace, and through communal peace eventually individual acceptance and peace with one's life and surroundings. Help the people in Israel and Palestine to see each other as your children, and help them to value the human worth in one another. All these things I pray in your name, Amen.
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