Nazareth Hope and Tragedy

David Lamarre-Vincent

August 3, 2008

We hear daily of the” facts on the ground”. Today in and just outside of Nazareth was a day where Western Christian stereotypes collapsed into tragedy when confronted with the “facts on the ground.”

Outside Nazareth on a rural hilltop an elderly Palestinian man, bearing weathered and yellowed old documents bound by a rubber band and protected by a black plastic bag, walks with us through the remains of his Palestinian village, once home to over a thousand Christians and Muslims. This was one of the most visible of the over 531 Palestinian village destroyed since 1948.

During my 1991 Holy Land we visited Nazareth as pilgrims. The New Hampshire Catholic clergy concelebrated mass in the church of the Annunciation, built above the home of a young Jewish woman, Mary, virgin mother of God.

Stereotypes and facts on the ground prove to be quite vulnerable to stories of life, memories of the past, present hopes for the future offered by Palestinian and Israeli, Jews, Christians, Muslims

At that time my only contact with Palestinians was minimal and superficial as typical Holy Land pilgrims are rightly intent on retracing the steps of Jesus. I have come with my American Christian stereotype view of the Holy Land, its ancient history and modern states.

Today was an experience of two Palestinian villages, two homes, and two memories of village farm life separated by two millennia from the life of Mary and from another Palestinian who was made homeless. As we walk through the village we see only remains of homes dynamited and destroyed.  Graves covered by six feet of gravel for new cattle sheds of the new occupants of the farm land.  The only village building left standing is the two room school of his childhood.  Many Palestinian villages remain attached to their houses and lands that they preserve in their memory.

A 78 year old man outside Nazareth, with his best shirt and pants, walks and speaks energetically about leaving his village of a thousand Muslim and Christians temporarily one day in 1948.  And the last then he did was lock the door of his house.  Like many Palestinians he holds the legal documents to the family house and farmland in ________.

His black plastic bag holds the weathered documents of land ownership and in his had is the key to family’s house.

As we walk through the remnants of his village we see only remains of homes dynamited and destroyed during the 1948 war. A village graveyard is now covered by six feet of gravel for cattle sheds of the new Jewish occupants of the farm.  The only village building left standing is the two room school of his childhood.  In a way hard for us to understand, Palestinians remain attached to their homes and lands that they preserve now in their memory.

Earlier today a young Palestinian Christian woman related her lifetime of experience working for basic human rights. Palestinians have lived in this land continuously for millennia.  Her Christianity was much simpler and bare than mine from the West.  There is no need for Holy Land pilgrimages. They know the land of Jesus for it is their land as well.

There is a need for freedom to move from one town to another. There is a need to visit home and friends without loosing their Israeli citizenship. They wish to own a place of their own to raise a family.  And most importantly, they wish to be treated as a human being not subject to the racist attitudes of the majority of the people who have come to live with her in the Holy Land.

A young Israeli student prepared us for this day relating that from his point of view how absurd for the Palestinian “present absent people” dream of returning to the village houses and lands. “They even have keys to the doors of house that they abandoned sixty years ago.  Why don’t they just get on with life?”

Fact on the ground is so important here. The expropriation of Palestinian land is nearly complete. For some the critical problem is a Palestinian minority who not only won’t leave but are increasing in percentage of population in this “democratic” nation.

What is an American Christian pilgrim who visits the home of Mary the Mother of God and the annunciation to do in the fact of stories that shatter the nearly universal U.S. story of “facts on the ground” that conflict with the stories of young and old Palestinians and young Israeli’s?