So close: Michael Eccles of FWCC takes a pastoral visit to the Middle East
‘People here feel the pain of Gaza.’
“Back in April I had the privilege of travelling to the Middle East, to visit Friends and the Friends’ schools in Palestine and Lebanon. The visit was organised by Friends United Meeting, which is the main supporter of Ramallah Friends School. Ethel Livermore (clerk of Europe & Middle East Section) and I joined the visit. We spent eight days in Ramallah, and two days in Brummana. The schools are amazing, thriving in places, amid much uncertainty in daily life, and often a lot of violence, even if it’s not always seen. We went to listen, to be alongside people, to get to know them, and hear their stories. We wanted to learn about their lives in Palestine. Not everyone wanted to talk to us – some of them didn’t trust us at first or know whether they could trust us – but many did talk to us, especially the longer we were there.
I want to share a few reflections of being in Ramallah. I first went there over thirty years ago on a Young Friends workcamp. We spent a month living in the school and working on it, and on the Meeting house. Half our group was Palestinian, the other half was British or from the US. At the weekends we went on excursions to places such as Bethlehem, Nazareth, the Mediterranean, and the Gaza Strip.
In those days it was possible for Palestinians from the West Bank to visit all those places. Now they can only dream of going to such places – the occupation makes it all but impossible. Even to visit Bethlehem or Jerusalem, just a few miles from Ramallah, requires a long drive to avoid closed roads and the humiliation of going through checkpoints, with the risk of being refused the right to pass if they don’t have the correct permit.
I have been back several times in the past thirty years. The situation there is worse than ever before: there are more road closures, and the West Bank wall has encircled most Palestinian towns…”