Last year I spent three months living in the Palestinian West Bank as a volunteer with EAPPI, the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel. The programme seeks to make a contribution towards the peaceful transformation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, principally through offering protective presence to communities living under Israeli military occupation.
Daily I witnessed the violence of this military occupation: Israeli armed soldiers, roadblocks, the arbitrary arrest and detention without trial of Palestinian adults and children, the confiscation of Palestinian land, the demolition of Palestinian houses and businesses. In Duma, I met five-year-old Ahmad Dawabsheh whose parents and 18- month-old brother Ali were murdered in an arson attack by extremist Israeli West Bank settlers. Shocking? Well it was shocking to me. But did it begin here?
“British troops made Palestinians demolish their own houses, brick by brick. During army searches, soldiers would surround a village and then detach and guard the women and children separately from the men, who were often held in wire ‘cages’ during protracted searches. In the meantime, soldiers would ‘search’ the empty houses, often destroying everything therein, burning grain and pouring olive oil over household food and effects…Accounts in both Arabic and English also detail torture - of men being beaten with wet ropes, ‘boxed’, and having their teeth smashed, and of men having their feet burnt with oil. Guards used bayonets on sleep-deprived men and made them wear bells around their necks and then dance. Detainees jumped to their deaths from high windows to escape their captors.”
I quote from ‘Law and Order to Pacification: Britain's Suppression of the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936–39’ by historian Professor Matthew Hughes, whose work shows how brutally the British set the scene in Palestine.
Today, amongst the many refugees seeking asylum in Europe, there are Palestinians. Recently I spent six weeks living with such refugees in Calais. Volunteers told me “You must meet Sameh,” and I found him at a daily volunteer-run refugee food distribution on a piece of waste ground in an industrial estate on the edge of Calais. Sameh is a delightful young Palestinian from Ramallah, a linguist, full of hope for his future and always, whenever I saw him, with a beaming smile. But his days in Calais are often far from positive. A recent article in the Independent was headlined ‘Refugees beaten, abused and tear-gassed as they sleep by police in Calais, report warns’. It mentioned a 22-year-old Palestinian who said police had sprayed tear gas directly into his face, broken his glasses and injured one of his eyes. Sameh was this Palestinian.
Compressed into Calais is a microcosm of our world and the living casualties of its violence. Afghans, Iraqi Kurds and Syrians fleeing war. A Palestinian fleeing military occupation. I lived with a small community of young Orthodox Christians from Eritrea. Eritreans face years of unpaid military conscription, religious persecution, torture and extra-judicial killing. Palestinian Sameh, my Eritrean housemates, and all those others in Calais seeking a life away from violence and war, many hoping to get to the UK, now face the violence of the French police. And across the Channel there is a violent undertone in the attitude of some members of the British public. Responses to the Independent’s article included comments such as “Hoards of illegal degenerates”.
As Ecumenical Accompaniers, we witness life under occupation. We are on the ground 24/7 and are often the first to respond to human rights violations. We live with local communities and participate in daily activities. We monitor and report human rights violations, bringing eyewitness accounts to the world's attention. In response to what I have witnessed in both Palestine and Calais, I can only quote Archbishop Oscar Romero, saint and martyr:
“The Church always has before her eyes the human person. This is the star that guides the Church’s journey Every man and woman is a child of God and in each person that is killed we find Christ sacrificed.”