I am speechless to see the reality of the situation in Palestine and Israel in this graphic. Britain was very complicit in this journey, alongside other nations. We were trying to find a home for Jews after the horror of the Second World War when so many of them were killed. I myself have Jewish family background so don’t take this lightly. I have no desire to minimise the terror of anti semitism and the holocaust in particular. But now it’s like the hatred fuelling Hitler’s persecution of Jews and others, which everyone agreed needed to end, has been meted out systematically over the past 76 years against the Palestinians whose land has now been reduced to an unfeasibly small area. This is an over simplification. The Palestinians have not been put into gas chambers or sent to concentration camps. But they have been driven out of their country, or oppressed in an inhumanely controlling regime.

Many Palestinians have fled in order to remake their lives. They’ve had to because they have had their homes and livelihoods (olive farms etc) stolen from them. Looking at the maps above you can see why. Even things like access to water supply, medicine and other basic infrastructure you need to live has been denied to them as Israel has taken more and more land for its own settlements. Most Palestinians in Gaza have had to build water tanks on their roofs in order to be able to survive because they can’t get access to water as they would have done before the Israeli occupation. Imagine having your water supply taken from you in your own country. Imagine that.

There has been a systematic disassembling of the dignity of the Palestinian people for decades. Nothing justifies bombs and missiles, but I can understand the need to find a way to resist, when everything has been taken from you and your family, including many, many lives being taken.

Jews need somewhere to live but I do not believe there was ever any need to take the homes of others to house them. Surely there is enough land for all on this earth? I know it’s more complex, but is it? Really? I know I don’t know, I can’t understand. But the situation is so dire.

I understand the holiness of the holy land, as a Christian and as someone with Jewish heritage. But God is surely big enough to meet us anywhere? And God will work their purpose out without requiring humans to be at war with one another. We are not living in ancient times any longer. And we have the stories in our holy books to learn from. Those of us with faith already know how God can work miraculously, and needs no “help” from us. The constant refrain through the Hebrew Bible is to look after the foreigner in your midst. Look after them. Not strip their dignity. God desires mercy, humility and love for those disempowered, not sacrifice and not violence, surely. If this were not the case, why would we worship God?

We look after exiles and refugees, remembering we were once exiles ourselves in Egypt. That’s the refrain in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). We all have ancestors who were exiles or refugees if you trace our ancestors far enough back. And in the future we may all become refugees again due to war, unpredictable flooding or drought, other extreme weather events or political events beyond our control. I think this should affect the way we treat others who are refugees or exiled from their homelands today, and how we treat others still attempting to live in their homeland under occupation, too. We are all ultimately brothers and sisters anyway.

I don’t know what the answers are, but I have a weariness with war and violence. This is a heaviness of heart, which surely must be shared by people on all sides of the conflict by now?

I remember teaching about this conflict decades ago. The teenagers I taught then used to say to me, “Miss, why do adults fight?” We looked into it all; the history of the land, its significance to each party. When squabbling broke out in the classroom, I drew their attention to it and said, “Look – here you are criticising adults for fighting, and you’re fighting yourselves…” But at the end of the day, I recognised their question as valid.

At the end of the day I am a long way from Israel and Palestine. I don’t know how people live in the midst of the constant threat of bombs and violence. How they manage to survive when it takes them three hours just to get through a checkpoint in order to get to work in the morning not far from where they live. (I don’t know how you find patience for that sort of thing, when soldiers presumably following orders from somewhere deliberately take hours over something that could take minutes? When the whole idea that you can’t just pass by easily is meaningless anyway, since this was once all just the country you lived in, with no impassable walls and borders through the middle of it.)

I don’t know how it feels to lose a daughter or a son who really believed in working for peace at the hands of others who didn’t even know them but who have developed such a strong sense of hate that they are ready to take human lives seemingly indiscriminately.

I am not condoning violence on either side, but I am trying to understand where it is coming from. And I am longing and praying for alternative ways to be found now. For those who want to walk humbly and embody kindness and mercy and creativity to come to the fore and be watched, listened to, attended to and followed.

For anyone wanting to understand more from the Palestinian angle, I recommend this humane, poignant and revealing book by Raja Shehadeh: Where the Line is Drawn: Crossing Boundaries in Occupied Palestine https://g.co/kgs/B48QYx

When I think back to my teaching days, I wonder whether young people may bring a wholly different approach to these age old conflicts? Here come the young. May they bring hope, vision, compassion, creativity, love and healing in their wake. Martyn Joseph has voiced this prayer of longing. Amen for the young of Palestine and Israel and all countries: https://youtu.be/BVesEfMD3jA?si=-hb6joC52vLmTRhr