April 10, 2008

Olive trees used by Jerusalem Lutheran bishop as bridge to Muslims

Jerusalem Lutheran Bishop Munib Younan has joined people from the Palestinian-inhabited village of Biddu in planting 1,000 olive and fig trees next to the Israeli barrier which separates them from their land, to show that Christians and Muslims can work together.

"We went to be in solidarity with the people," said Younan in joining about 100 people from the village close to the separation barrier.

Biddu is located between southwest Jerusalem and Ramallah, and the event was organised by the Environmental Education Centre (EEC), an educational program of the Lutheran Church in the Holy Land, which aims to teach children about ecological issues.

Villagers from nearby Einan and Khubiebeh also attended the tree planting ceremony in mid-March. The EEC works with schools in the villages, which are all Muslim.

Israel says it needs the 400-kilometre barrier in order to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks emanating from the West Bank and Gaza. While some sections the barrier are made of towering cement slabs, the section in Biddu is a wire mesh fence with a yellow gate through which the farmers must pass in order to work their land.

"It is very important for us to work together," said Bishop Younan. "It is good to make contact with these villages. It builds bridges."

This clustering of outlying small villages has led to them being largely neglected and they welcomed the attention and assistance from the Lutheran Church, said Bishop Younan.

The villages of the area once had 6,000 dunums (600 hectares) of land, but some 4,000 dunums (400 hectares) have been confiscated for Israeli settlements, said the bishop.

Younan noted that people from the villages now need special permits to reach their agricultural lands on the other side of the barrier which have in fact been annexed.

One elderly man, whose house is on the outskirts of the village where today the encroaching Israeli settlement of Adasha reaches, was permitted to keep his home only through a lengthy legal battle and the intervention of the Israeli Supreme Court.

Today he lives in a three-sided cage, surrounded by metal fences on three sides of his house. Only about three metres of land is left around his house on all sides. All visitors must leave his house by 6 pm Through the fence he can gaze out at the red-tiled roof houses of his neighbours in the settlement spreading out onto the horizon.

Younan said that when he urged the man not to lose hope, the man said, "I have nothing left to lose anymore. I have lost everything."

Judith Sudilovsky, ENI