Conflict, Religion, and Ancient Roads: My Journey to The Middle East
By Jared Smith
In July of 2017, I had planned to go on a humanitarian trip to Ghana through the Humanitarian Experience For Youth program (HXP, previously known as HEFY). I had always dreamed of going to eastern Africa, seeing the wildlife and getting to know the people. But just as I thought I was on my way, another opportunity presented itself. I got an email from HEFY informing, and inviting, me to apply for a brand new program called the Youth Summit Israel Peacekeeping Conference. The email explained that the YSI Peacekeeping Conference would be hosted in Israel and Palestine and would explore the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in-depth. We would meet with organizations that promote peacekeeping and peace solutions between the states of Israel and Palestine.
I was torn between the two options. But, while I was excited for my trip to Ghana, I chose to apply for the Israel trip. Little did I know how much that decision would shape my life.
Coming to Israel
Fast forward to early July. After meeting my group, we boarded a plane to Chicago, where we would then hop on a flight to Tel Aviv, Israel. After arriving, we walked through the airport of Israel. Hebrew, Arabic, and English text were on all of the notice signs, and even though things seemed familiar, everything felt a bit different; we weren’t in America anymore. We got our visas checked at customs and were given little cards instead of a stamp — you can’t travel to some countries if you have a passport indicating that you have traveled to Israel.
We arrived in Jerusalem after our driver, Saeed, maneuvered our bus through the impossible traffic of old Jerusalem. In the Middle East, the rule is that if you’re the big car, you get to go first. I’ll never forget the moment when Saeed pulled a turn, and began to back up into a one-way road that already had at least four cars coming in the opposite direction. A chaotic cacophony of honking ensued, but somehow, Saeed got us to our destination without incident. We slept in a beautiful hotel that night, letting the culture shock sink into our beds along with our sleep.
We traveled to Jerusalem on our first day in the country, and the first thing I noticed was how basic and simple the architecture was. The apartments and buildings were nearly all built of plain, sand-colored stone. It gave the cities and towns a memorable appearance of simplicity and uniformity. I also noticed that people had large water tanks on the tops of their apartments, which were apparently gravity fed water storage.
A Landscape Scarred with Bullets
The next morning, after a unique but wonderful Arab breakfast, we began our education. Late that morning, we met our guides: Tamul, a Palestinian, and Carmiel, an Israeli. Tamul and Carmiel would lead us through Jerusalem and other significant landmarks of Israel and Palestine to teach us the intricacies of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As my fellow trip members can attest, none of us had ever imagined that the conflict would prove to be so complex. Palestine and Israel have a long history of conflict. There are records of conflict even before the feuds between ancient Israel and the Philistine nation. However, to give you a sense of modern events surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, here is a short timeline.
This timeline gives some important context that I lacked before coming to Jerusalem.
Tamul and Carmiel showed us significant historical locations connected with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On the second day of our trip, we went to a large field with olive trees spotting the landscape and small herds of goats. In the middle of the field was a large monument with three huge pillars that met at the top in three large olive trees, their roots intertwined. The monument is symbolic of three peoples with three religions: the Israeli Jews, the Palestinian Muslims, and the Palestinian Christians. There, at the foot of that monument, Tamul challenged us with a question — How could these people, so entirely different in customs, religion, and history, have peace? Our naive and simple answers did not satisfy him, and we were quickly humbled by the complexity of the conflicts in Israel and Palestine.
Borders and Lines
Jerusalem is an incredibly diverse map of territories split between Palestine and Israel. The city of Jerusalem is split into West Jerusalem (owned by Israel) and East Jerusalem (owned by Palestine). The border between these two sections is known as “the green line.” Israeli settlements are construction projects that happened during the six-day war which are considered illegal under international law. These territories are a source of hot disputes. Currently, the temple site is situated in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem, meaning it is not officially Israel’s territory. The old city is split into quarters, accommodating multiple religious groups.
Emma Decker, a fellow Southern Virginia University student, also attended the YSI Peacekeeping conference. She recalled her experience learning about the complex conflict, “It made me feel a little bit sad. I mean, growing up I knew that there was bad stuff happening in the world. I wasn’t naive to that, but just to be there in the area where it’s happening and hearing people talk about it was different.”
The Christian-Palestinian Perspective
We had the opportunity to hear first-hand accounts of people’s experiences living in and around Jerusalem. One experience that I will never forget is when we visited a Christian-Palestinian family. The family was very welcoming and kind. They made a traditional Palestinian dinner for us and gave us some wonderful herbal tea. Unaware of the local customs, I finished off my plate of food quickly — quite the mistake — and was rewarded with another massive serving from our host. In the United States, some of us are taught to finish all the food on our plates–a tradition that likely came out of the thriftiness of the great depression, but in Arab culture, finishing your plate is a signal that you haven’t been fed enough. While I was completely stuffed from a double portion, the food was wonderful. After we ate our fill, our host told us his story. He is a Christian and a Palestinian, but he is sadly among the very few Christian-Palestinians that remain in Palestine.
He further explained that the difficulty with the mixture of these two identities is that it brings persecution from the Palestinian-Muslims due to differences in religion, and persecution from the Israelis due to differences in nationality. He explained that many of his friends and family had moved away from Palestine due to persecution and danger for their lives. However, he was determined to stay. Indeed, the Christian Palestinian population has not grown but diminished significantly. In 1922 it was estimated to be 70,000, whereas it was estimated to be 42,000 in 2017. As the day drew to a close, my group and I shuffled out of the lovely home. We all felt very grateful for his generosity, and sobered by the difficulties he had to endure.
The Muslim-Palestinian Perspective
I had no concept of an every-day life filled with a regular fear that you might not even make it safely home to your family. We had the opportunity to visit a Muslim family’s home in the evening. A wonderful woman greeted us, offered us food, and had us sit down in her family’s courtyard. There weren’t enough places to sit, so some of us stood up on the second floor balcony to listen.
She began to tell us the story of her life in Palestine. Her family was moderate in their practice of Islam, meaning they did not enforce some of the stricter interpretations of the Islamic law. She, however, expressed that she was very proud of her Hijab, and had made her decision to wear it intentionally as an important part of her religion. I was impressed by her devotion and dedication to her religion, something we often do not understand about the Middle East. She had graduated from Israel’s university, but only through a great deal of stress and worry for her life. During her time as a student, extremist Palestinian groups would often commit terrorist acts on buses and in other public places. She would hear news of buses exploding — the same buses she had to take to the university. I remember her saying, “every day, I would get on the bus, not knowing if I would live that day.” At other times, Palestinian terrorist groups launched rockets into Israeli territory without respect to who they might be killing. At the same time, Israeli military strikes were (and still are) often condemned by the international community for their targeted strikes on Palestinians.
Fortunately, she did live through the chaos and was able to graduate with her degree at the Israeli. The violence between fighting factions was terrible, and it caught many innocents in between its clutches. The Palestinians extremists would bomb buses without caring who was in the buses, and the Israeli military strikes would often cause the deaths of innocent civilians. Again, we left that home feeling very grateful for the hospitality, and sobered by the stories of every-day survival in the midst of war.
The Jewish-Israeli Perspective
Our Israeli guide, Carmiel, led us through many Jewish sites within Israeli territory. On a Friday evening, at the start of Shabbat, we went to a reformed Jewish synagogue and joined their worship. It was a memorable experience, and we prayed along with the congregation, reading the transliteration, though we understood little of it. Later, we had the opportunity to visit the Western Wall, where large groups of Jews lined up to put their hands against the ancient stones and pray for the restoration of their homeland and the temple site. There is a Jewish tradition and belief that the temple mount is the site where God created the universe. It is a site that is filled with religious and historical significance. As we learned more about the conflict, it became evident that the religious interests surrounding the temple site were an issue that was incredibly difficult to come to an agreement with.
About 81% of Israelis are Jewish, however, 20% of Israelis claim they do not believe in deity, and 15% state that they do not observe any formal practices. The average American’s perspective is challenged by this reality. The Hasidic, fundamental sects of Judaism, are much smaller in Israel than most people think. As we learned the history and context of wars and struggles for territory in Israel, it became clear that this was not an easily settled issue. Both Palestine and Israel have legitimate economic, religious, and sovereignty interests. Neither side is entirely in the right or in the wrong, making the black and white solutions much more problematic than we would like.
Spiritual Awakenings
About six days into our stay in Jerusalem, we went to the Pool of Bethesda. Right next to the historic site was the Church of St. Anne, a Catholic church renowned for its acoustics. We ventured inside it, where a few people were seated. An elderly couple, after sitting in reverence for some time, stood and sang the classic hymn, Amazing Grace. After a few lines, our group decided to join in. As we sang, the sound of our voices became one and reverberated throughout the entire building. The acoustics were remarkable, the sound of our voices coming back to us as if it were combined with a choir of angels. There was something ethereal about that moment. It gave you goosebumps as you heard the music coming back from the concave stones of the church.
In that moment, things clicked for me — the moment sunk in. I was among the ancients. There was something hallowed about the stones that we explored, something so beyond my limited comprehension. Long ago there was a man sitting at the steps of that deep pool, waiting to be healed. Jesus Christ, not just a myth but the real, living Son of God said to this man, “Rise, take up thy bed and walk.” He rose up, and walked on those same stones, the same stones we looked at in wonder. I felt a strong connection to a deep spiritual history in that place. Amidst all the conflict, there was a sacred feeling about the city.
Reflections
In my interview with Emma Decker, she told me about her takeaways from the experience. “I do remember that when I left, I was just humbled. Very, very humbled and I think that was like the beginning of my being much more aware of what was actually happening in the world. You know, we are pretty lucky in the United States to feel pretty safe, not having the same kind of conflict that they do [in Jerusalem]. Coming back to the states it kind of made me feel like, wow, I’ve got a lot. That has stayed with me ever since. I’ve become more frugal and thought more about what I need versus what I want. And it’s just really trying to be aware of, not just socially, but also culturally what’s happening in the world, and going beyond myself and what the media is telling us is going on in those countries.”
My biggest takeaway from this experience was that my presumptions about Israel, the Jews, Palestine, and the Muslims were naive and majorly ungrounded. I had heard a single story from my limited experience, and assumed that I knew better about these people, their way of life, their conflicts, and their thoughts. Upon getting to know them a little better, many of my assumptions were challenged, and I was able to both appreciate and better understand their customs, cultures, and situations. Unfortunately, many Americans believe a strong stereotype regarding faithful Muslims, associating them and their religion with extremist Islam groups and even terrorism. Such stereotypes are rooted in nuance and do not represent the vast majority of faithful Muslims.
Moreover, visiting Israel and Palestine helped me to see beyond the sheltered rural city I grew up in. One day, as we were walking away from the historic location of Hezekiah’s tunnel, I saw a car on the side of the road that was completely blackened. Its metal frame was bent and its windows were smashed in. Nothing but a hollowed out metal corpse remained. The catastrophe looked somewhat recent, but it was evident that no simple car accident could cause such damage. I assumed that it was a car bomb or some other powerful explosive.
The brutal reality is that conflict and war have become a common fact of life in this part of the world.
On another occasion, we learned that in the old city a violent shooting happened between three Palestinian men and Israeli border patrol officers. Four officers were shot, two of which survived, and all three of the Palestinian assailants were killed. We were shocked to hear the news, but with the recent things we had learned and seen, it was hardly surprising to us. The brutal reality is that conflict and war have become a common fact of life in this part of the world. While we understand why people fight, at the end of the day it feels like such a senseless waste of life.
Despite these sobering aspects of my experience, I felt particularly drawn towards these peoples and their cultures. After I returned to the United States, I resolved to take Arabic and studied it for two years at Brigham Young University. I continue to independently study Arabic in my free time, with the hope that I might have the opportunity to go back and work among those wonderful people in a war-torn land.
As you walk down the street today, I hope you feel some gratitude for the peace we enjoy in America. We are a very fortunate population with seemingly endless opportunities. So, keep things in perspective, and recognize the abundance we have from stability.
