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10.18.2025

A Fraught and Beautiful Pilgrimage

 Since we have been on the ground, our team of four has been split in half, serving at two very different sites, experiencing different faces of the same genocide. Two have been in Masafer Yatta, the South Hebron Hills, staying with families who are under daily threat of expulsion, forced removal, and vicious attacks by illegal Israeli settlers. That team sleeps in tents, simple one room houses, or caves at night and keeps watch over the hills by day, looking out for possible attacks or theft of livestock.

The other two have been assigned to Al Khalil, the city of Hebron, where we have been asked to monitor checkpoints and be present during the weekly settler incursions into the city. This team has also been asked to participate in some of the ongoing month-long olive harvest, traveling to various locations around the West Bank where villages are organizing large group harvests in order to support families who are vulnerable to attacks (which is pretty much everybody now).

Wanting to reunite and reconnect with each other and see some of the sites of Palestine, our team recently took a two-day break together to Nazareth and Taybeh. Nazareth, while technically inside the nation-state of Israel (which many Palestinians refer to as '48 - the year that much of Palestine was stolen and taken over by settler colonialists) is still very much a Palestinian town. It's just that the Palestinians here - 20% Christian and 80% Muslim - also have Israeli citizenship. According to the Gospels, Nazareth is the place where the angel Gabriel asked Mary if she would be willing to be the mother of God. It is the place where Mary, herself living under the occupation of an outside colonizing force, said, "yes." 

To get to Nazareth and to visit the Sea of Galilee, our Palestinian friend recommended that we rent a car, which we did. Half of our team picked up the car in Jerusalem and drove to Ramallah to meet the other half - an enormous lesson in the occupation's tactic of restriction of movement. Though Ramallah is only 10 miles away from Jerusalem, it took our team 3 hours and many frustrated attempts at navigating roads closed by military checkpoints and other military roadblocks to get there. Neither google maps or the Israeli app "Waze" would navigate us inside the Palestinian civilian-controlled Areas A or B, and so we had to rely on calling Palestinian friends and getting various pieces of advice before finally driving through the massive and intimidating Qalandia checkpoint. The next morning, thinking we had solved the issue, we attempted to leave Ramallah (area A) and travel to the Israeli controlled territory toward Nazareth. Once again, it took us 2 hours just to leave the Palestinian city, encountering more road closures and checkpoints enforced by the Israeli military.

We were lucky. As internationals in a rental car, we had the yellow "Israeli-only" license plates, basically a free ticket to travel through checkpoints in a special, speedier lane. Palestinians with green and white license plates are under much more scrutiny when traveling into Jerusalem; and most Palestinians are not allowed into Jerusalem at all, though it is their capital and only mere miles away.

Once inside '48, we drove along modern highways lined with both Israeli and U.S. flags - the close relationship of these colonizing forces on display for all to see. We felt relief entering the more Palestinian town of Nazareth, exploring the Church of the Annunciation, and eating a lunch of falafel, hummus, bread, and veggies before putting our bags down at a quaint hostel inside the Old City. After a nap, we headed out to the Mount of Beatitudes where we drank wine and read aloud the Sermon on the Mount before traveling to the Sea of Galilee. There, we reveled in a gorgeous waterfall and sat on the rocks while noticing Palestinian men nearby fished from the same body of water where Jesus called his disciples.

 





The next day, Monday, was a joyous one for so many. With the signing of the peace deal, 20 living Israeli hostages were released from captivity in Gaza, and the bodies of those hostages who had been killed (most by Israeli fire) began to be released as well. In turn, 1700 Gazans who had been kidnapped by the Israeli military were also released and reunited with their families, as well as 250 Palestinian political prisoners. Sadly, 150 of those released were immediately deported to other countries and not allowed to reunite with their loved ones.

We traveled back into the West Bank to the Christian village of Taybeh (an Arabic word meaning good or delicious), to visit the only craft brewery in the Middle East. It was easier to get back into the West Bank this time, as we were driving through Area C. (Fully controlled by the Israeli military, Area C constitutes 60% of the West Bank and is likely to be annexed by Israel soon). Still, the Israeli app "Waze" would only direct us to the outskirts of the village, where we encountered a huge red sign warning us that entering a Palestinians village would be "Dangerous" to our lives (example pic here).



We got to spend a few hours at the brewery, sipping different types of delicious beer and enjoying the stunning view. We got a tour by the owner, Madees, and listened to the story about her Palestinian father who moved back from Boston to Taybeh after the Oslo Accords of 1994 to start a family business, believing peace was on its way. We learned that each year since 2005, Taybeh Brewery has hosted an Octoberfest Weekend with live music, food, beer, and fellowship.




For almost twenty years, Octoberfest in Taybeh was a huge event, attended by people from all around the West Bank and a boost to the local economy. Unfortunately, since the start of the war in Gaza two years ago, Octoberfest has been cancelled. "People don't feel like celebrating right now," said Madees. "Also, with security so tight, people have lost their jobs and don't have the money."

Though we had been planning to move on to Ramallah that night in order to be closer to the car rental return, we learned that there were extra road closures and settler attacks on the roads due to the prisoner release. And so after wandering around Taybeh, we decided to stay the night at a guesthouse and go to Monday evening mass, having missed it the morning before due to our delays.

Unfortunately, the road closures still had a huge impact on our evening. The owner of our guest house - unbeknownst to us - had been working in Ramallah that day and was stuck for 2 hours at a checkpoint, unable to return to Taybeh until 8 pm to get our rooms ready. Unsure of what to do after Mass, we were so grateful to be invited by two Palestinian women (neighbors, one of them a relative of our guest house owner) to their home for tea while we waited.

One of the women had lived in Australia for 35 years with her husband, but had recently moved home to Taybeh to retire. "See how they treat us here?" she asked. "Nobody in the whole world would stand to be treated this way." When I asked her whether she ever considered returning to Australia or to another country where one of her three children lived she immediately replied, "Never. This is my home."

We met Abu Jaber (name changed for safety), the husband of the other woman and the owner of the house where we had tea. Abu Jaber is originally from Gaza, and was watching on his TV news of the ceasefire and the joyous reunion of political prisoners with their families in Ramallah. Noting this, I asked him if he still had family in Gaza. "Yes," he replied. "Is your family OK?" I asked. "Nobody in Gaza is OK," he replied.

When the owner of our guesthouse finally arrived, he joined us for tea before taking us to his newly completed guest house where he brought us to our rooms for the night. We were the first guests! Since the start of the war, Abed's (name changed for safety) employment had decreased from full to part time. And so he spent his free time fixing up his grandfather's old house in the beautiful village of Taybeh. It was stunning and welcoming. He and his wife cooked us an incredible, traditional Palestinian meal of maqluba, using herbs from their garden. We awoke to a gorgeous spread of bread, hummus, yogurt, beans, cucumbers, olive oil, za'tar, coffee, and eggs from their hens - a delightful meal to send us on our way back to our placements for our remaining two weeks.

Nowhere on earth have I experienced such amazing hospitality or stayed in such beautiful hostels as in Palestine. And yet, their economy is struggling because nobody is visiting. Israelis tell the world that it is dangerous to enter a Palestinian town or village, though it is only dangerous because they make Israelis make it so.

If you ever feel so inclined, I highly recommend you to visit. My prayer is that Christians from around the world travel here in such droves that it becomes impossible for Israel to continue to lie about the reality of this oppressive occupation. My prayer is that Christians from around the world travel here so often that it becomes normal for us to together marvel at the beauty and the deep Christian history of this Palestinian place. My prayer is that Christians from around the world stand in solidarity with their Palestinian sisters and brothers and demand an immediate end to Israel's brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

 




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