CPTnet
August 21, 2004

HEBRON: Looking for Hope

by Doug Pritchard

Hope? - I have asked everyone I have met here in Palestine, whether they
have hope for the future and an end to this conflict. Most still say yes.

Atta Jabber is living in the third home he has built in the Beqa'a Valley
east of Hebron. The two previous ones were demolished by Israel for "lack of
a permit," which Israel never issues to Palestinians.
Most of his family's farmland in the valley has also been confiscated for
Israeli settlements. Yet Atta says, "We always have hope. Our faith in God
sustains us. We have always lived under occupation- Babylonian, Egyptian,
Roman, Ottoman, British, Jordanian, now Israeli. But we survive. The
refugees of 1948 still keep the keys to their houses in Haifa and Acre on
their walls. We must hope." It reminded me that the Jews, through the
centuries in the ghettoes and pogroms and finally the Holocaust, kept
promising each other, "Next year, in Jerusalem."

Zleekha, a Palestinian teacher in Hebron, who recently experienced the year
of curfews and harassment of children trying to get to school, responded,
"We know that the darkest hour is just before the dawn."

This week, CPT accompanied Palestinians in another of Hebron's "Old City
Shopping Days," where folk are encouraged to come back to the Old City to
reclaim its commercial and social life. During one conversation, a
shopkeeper asked, "Do you want tomatoes? There, they are coming back." He
pointed to a tomato plant, growing in the smallest crack between an ancient
building and the stone pavement, with tiny ripe tomatoes all over
it.

In this morning's worship, Diane Janzen expanded on this theme, reading from
Ps 30: "Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes from the morning."
(v.5)

Dianne Roe responded saying that there is still joy in the streets of
Hebron. There are still weddings and dancing even though unemployment and
closures have delayed or restricted them.

Janzen went on to read from Henri Nouwen's book "Mornings" (1997). Nouwen
recalls James and John asking to sit at Jesus' side in his kingdom, to
experience everlasting joy of his presence. Jesus asks them, "Are you able
to drink the cup that I am to drink?"

Nouwen says that we cannot separate the cup of sorrow from the cup of joy.
"When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will
become. Then we need to be reminded that our cup of sorrow is also our cup
of joy and that one day we will be able to taste the joy as fully as we now
taste the sorrow."

And may it be so.