It’s been ramped up to fever pitch – mob rule – Government endorsed. Pitchfork law … of clubs, guns, and torches.

As West Bank settlers attack graveyards, burn houses, cars, brutally harass villagers, and steal land and lives.

It’s all about erasure, of both Muslims and Christians, from the holy lands. But they don’t want to leave. Attached as they are so deeply to the land.

For Faith is ancient in places like Taybeh, the last wholly Christian town in the West Bank – only an hour’s drive away from Bethlehem. In John’s Gospel, it was known as Ephraim, a place where Jesus sought and found refuge. A faith traceable through their ancestral ‘living stones’ – there in Jerusalem on the first Pentecost. Become part of the very first church.

And like them, the people of Taybeh possess a multiplicity of identities: Arab, Palestinian, Semitic. And Christian.

Ensnared now in an ever-tightening web of Apartheid indignities.

That October, 70 families in Taybeh were forbidden to travel to Israel to work. Economic strangulation sent unemployment soaring. A ‘Silent Starvation’ aimed at making life so unbearable that you might voluntarily leave.

However, despite the odds, Father Bashar Fawadleh says,

‘We do as much as we can to give people hope. But that alone is not enough. People need employment – the ability to earn a living.’

And around their church compound, they have created 40 jobs, encouraged craft industries, with ideas for more. They’ve set up an online radio station, established a home for the elderly, and offer help with schooling. They want to stand on their own two feet – earn a living – sell their products. And keep hope alive.

Hope in the still small voice of a Galilean Prophet, who walked long days on the edge, and who sought refuge there during the last weeks of his life, as the Temple courts plotted Deicide. Of one dressed in the guise of an unlicensed Galilean Rabbi who refuted what we might now term as – ‘DNA tenancy tests’ – one who had a higher, more inclusive vision … and who would weep, perhaps, over Jerusalem still.

Christians4Palestine are working to establish a ‘Twinning’ arrangement between some Belfast Parishes and Taybeh that will offer both practical and moral support.

Editor’s note: You can support this project by visiting their online store, which sells handcrafted Christian gifts made from Olive wood, all made in Taybeh Palestine. But you might want to check about delivery times, if you want gifts for this Christmas.

 - Slugger O'Toole Article