Other posts from Palestine
Dear Friends and Family,
In November Maria and I are going on a peacemaking delegation to the West Bank of Palestine with Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT). CPT has been working in Palestine for 30 years and has a full-time team located there. They also have teams, at the invitation of local communities, in a few other places around the world. In these locations, CPT practices nonviolent direct action to confront systems of violence and oppression.
On the delegation, Maria and I will be joining the full-time team in their day-to-day work of accompanying the local people in activities such as children crossing Israeli military checkpoints as they go to school, families harvesting olives, and any action people take to nonviolently defend their rights. In all of these activities, the Palestinian people face the threat of wanton violence, arrest, and property seizure and destruction. Having foreigners present to witness and document any incidents keeps many situations from escalating. Being there we hope to be helpful in mitigating the escalation of violence and to encourage, support, and show solidarity to the full-time team. During our visit, we also hope to gain firsthand experience that we can use to bring attention to the violence and occupation that Palestinians in the West Bank face.
We have been connected to CPT for a few years, and we have been planning to go on this delegation even before the recent escalations. In the last year, while we have seen the 75+ year conflict evolve into an ongoing genocide, tensions have also been rising in the West Bank. While attention is focused on Gaza, in the West Bank arbitrary arrests, land seizures, killings and other violence has risen. We know that there are risks for us in going to the West Bank, but they are small, especially compared to the risks that the people who we will be working with face every day. We feel strongly a calling to stand up for oppressed people by taking nonviolent direct action to confront systems of violence.
This calling that we feel has been growing over a few years, and we feel that going on this delegation is a big step for us to start living into that calling. We’ve also been thinking a lot about what our lives will be like when we return home from traveling. We want to live out the things that we believe in, rather than keeping them in our heads while going along with the path of life that is easiest and “makes sense”. We will be returning home soon and feel that this delegation will be putting us on the right path to boldly act on the things that we believe.
We feel that this is a big step for us, so we wanted to let those of you close to us (and yes, if you are receiving this, even if we don’t talk often, your relationship is very meaningful to us) know what we are doing and why we are doing it. We appreciate your encouragement and prayers. If you’d like to support CPT, please consider donating to them at cpt.org.
We welcome any questions that you have. Maybe about why we are doing this, or why we feel a call to nonviolent direct action, or why Palestine? We know that some of you may disagree about the nature of the Israel/Palestine conflict. I don’t expect to convince you of anything in this letter, but if you want to discuss it and hear our experience, then consider this an opening to start a conversation.
With Love,
Christian & Maria
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