Day 6

Sabeel Center

The Sabeel Center is “An ecumenical center in Jerusalem for Palestinian Liberation Theology which seeks to make the Gospel contextually relevant.” Omar, the representative from the Sabeel Center who we got to talk to, was able to give us the Arab Christian perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unfortunately, I found this to be one of the less interesting outings we had. Omar wasn’t especially engaging, and I honestly don’t remember a lot of the details of what he talked about. The main theme of his talk was the importance of nonviolence and of actually practicing nonviolence. He mentioned that with their youth groups, instead of sitting around talking about nonviolence, they will try to find a way to put it into practice. The other thing I found more interesting about his talk was his insight about housing demolitions. Although I doubt I’ll ever understand the full complexity of the issue, the general problem is that the Israeli government demolishes homes built by Palestinians in occupied areas. This happens because the Israeli government refuses to give building permits to Palestinian people, and then the Palestinian people build the houses anyway because they need places to live. The Israeli government then has these “illegal” houses demolished, and the cycle starts again. This seems like more trouble than it is worth, but it also seems like an effective tactic of the Israeli government to dehumanize and break down the Palestinian people.

Supreme Court

We then went to the Supreme Court, which was a very interesting building. The picture below is an outdoor courtyard, but I wish I had more pictures of the inside.

Inside, there is a library, and the floors of the library segregated depending on your role in the judicial process. For example, lawyers and judges wouldn’t be allowed on the same floor because they don’t want people to talk about cases or influence any opinions. The higher up you go on the floors, the more importance/experience the people have. The first floor is for lawyers, the second floor is for judges, and the third floor is (I’m pretty sure) for retired judges. This emphasizes the hierarchy of knowledge.

I’m also going to steal a bit of info from Jess Manno’s blog because she summed up the system so well…

“The Israeli judicial branch operates as follows: Across the country there are 32 magistrate courts, then 6 district courts, then the supreme court (with 15 justices, governed by a chief justice-which is essentially the one with most seniority). There are NO JURIES, as they wanted their court system to be fully professional and NOT to have people judged by their peers. Courts hear civil and criminal cases and whether you start at magistrate or district depends on the level of sentence that could result if you are guilty. If you start in magistrate you can only appeal to district and if you start in district you can only appeal to supreme. HERE IS THE KICKER… there are no real requirements on being a supreme court justice-you don’t even really need to be a lawyer-you just have to be knowledgeable in law. You have to be at least 18 and be qualified. You could petition in, be recommended or any other avenue then you go throw an interview process.”

City of David

Following the Supreme Court we went to the City of David. We saw a very disorienting 3D movie, but then got to travel through some underground tunnels! Yael gave an explanation about how they built the tunnels under the city to direct the flow of water into the city. We hiked down through the tunnels and then back up the mountain on stairs (reminded me of Lehigh!) that offered beautiful views of Gethsemane and Mount of Olives.

Coming out of the side of the mountain and looking across the valley to a modern city…

Awesome, old olive tree…

One of my favorite views of the entire trip…

Encounter

We ended the night with a group called Encounter, which was by far the most engaging group we had come to talk to us in our night sessions. Encounter brings American Jews to Israel to see the “less popular” sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The leader of the group, Rebecca, said that she was shocked when she learned about the experiences of Palestinian people under Israeli occupation, because she had never heard that side of the story before. She has made it her job to expose that side of the story to American Jews who are leaders of different organizations—she called them “grass tops” because it’s not as much of a bottom-up approach as grass roots organizations, but she’s not targeting policy makers either. Through this experience, these American Jews have the opportunity to listen to the stories of Palestinian people and even participate in a home-stay with a Palestinian family. It’s less about dialogue and more about listening, which I think is really interesting and probably helps the Jewish people focus more on what they are hearing than any rebuttals they may be tempted to make.

I think they were also one of my favorite groups because they never seemed like they were trying to preach to us. They told us what they were all about, were super interested in answering our questions, and shared some really personal information about their goals and their experiences in Encounter.