Reflecting on Bethlehem this Christmas
 

I sense my prayer this season has to be that people will have the chance, one by one, to see and value ‘the other’ and recognise themselves in it, writes David Nelson, a Baptist church member who ran the Palestine Marathon earlier this year 

Taken on a warm spring evening earlier this year, the Church of the Nativity stands on Manger Square in Bethlehem under the light of the moon. Sadly, Google tells me it’s not technically  a star. But the image works, I hope. The area was full of taxis waiting for their next fare, people chatting to neighbours and friends, couples picking up falafel at Afteem’s, and a small group was out running under the motto ‘Freedom of Movement’.

Five days later, the Palestine Marathon Festival took place, an event of 10,000 runners that was a wonderful moment of joy, an outpouring of smiles and exhilaration, of hot sweaty faces, of limping or sprinting over the finish line in that same square. Grandsons ran alongside their grandparents, babies were carried on shoulders and pushed in prams; groups in wheelchairs, women in scarves, some good athletes.

Such colour, such openness, such togetherness. I was humbled to be there and nine months on I still hold that feeling. To have spent a week on the West Bank was deeply moving. Maybe even more so after the past two months.

I think of the warmth of all the people we met, their ordinariness but also their astonishing welcome, their hospitality, their quiet ‘sumud’ – the Arabic word for resilience, for steadfastness.

Bethlehem now? Empty. No tourists, not even for Christmas. Just checkpoints and roadblocks and utter, utter sadness. Trapped.

I think of the people I spoke to back in March, some in their shops or just around town, telling that they had little hope and only foresaw a third intifada within three or five years. There were some who had hope, but none had hope for the near future.. ‘we’ve been waiting 50/75 years, we can wait some more’…

And I think too of the kindly old Israeli man at the small stall handing out leaflets by the Western Wall, just five miles from Bethlehem but in another world to all intents and purposes. A paid job for him, a daily opportunity to chat to those visiting to pray, to those visiting to see – the leaflets were in multiple languages.

And the large, happy family I met on a bank holiday walking on the dusty hot trails west of Jerusalem, who allowed me to take their photo and taught me the right way to say ‘goodbye’ in Hebrew.

And I think of the tall young IDF soldier we chatted to in Hebron, nearing the end of his national service, such a gentle lad with his large army weapon, and I wonder where he is now, called back as a reservist probably and maybe in Gaza, maybe up near the Lebanese border – and I wonder how he feels about all that’s happened and is happening around him - excited? scared? troubled? How do his parents feel?

The moon will still be over the Church of the Nativity this Christmas but everything has changed. There will be some who might say nothing has changed (war, uprising, war..). Views about Israel/Palestine can be that contradictory!

And in the same way there is such divergence between the views of (most of) those in Israel, and most of those in the West Bank, or Gaza (though I feel simply dwarfed by the tragedy unfolding there).

I sense though my prayer this season has to be that people will have the chance, one by one, to see and value ‘the other’ and recognise themselves in it – but also how I should seek opportunities to play a part to bring that about.

David Nelson is a member of a Baptist church in West Yorkshire. He has travelled to Israel and the West Bank twice in the past year and was due to go again on Monday 9 October until the flight was cancelled the day before.

He ran the Palestine Marathon in support of Amos Trust, a small creative human rights organisation based in the UK and registered as a charity. Their principal area of work is supporting partners in the West Bank and Gaza, and they have been involved in home rebuilding projects for a number of years. They are also involved in separate programmes concerning street justice and climate justice in other countries.




 

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