Meeting Elias

Today provided the marvellous experience of meeting Elias. Elias is a student at Bethlehem University. He is Palestinian and also Christian. He and his family worship at a Baptist Church in Bethlehem even though originally, his mother was Catholic and his father was Orthodox. Elias helps to run a youth group at his church and is presently organizing a youth conference for Palestinian Christian youth. Elias and his family welcomed me into their home with warm and gracious hospitality.

Elias has an interesting story to tell about being Palestinian and what it is like to have been born in Bethlehem and to still live in Bethlehem. He has seen many changes in his short lifetime. He shares that he used to be filled with the hope of a great future. Just not so long ago in 2000 he felt that there was no better place to live than Bethlehem. Then the second intifada begin and every aspect of life changed. He is uncertain about his own future and that of the Palestinian people. He does his best to hang on to the hope that there will be gradual improvements in the living conditions.

At present, travel restrictions cause significant hardship. Since Israel is unilaterally establishing its borders by building a security wall / fence and the state is taking whatever land it wants or feels it needs. Elias' own family have been separated from 10 acres of land which is now on the wrong side of the security wall. This land which used to grow olives is now under the concrete of a new Israeli settlement.

When the second intifada began in 2000 Elias was sixteen. He remembers soldiers commandeering his family house so they could have the element of surprise against youth who threw stones at soldiers every day between 10 am and 3 pm. It was tactically successful as they managed to shoot approximately fifteen youth that day from the second floor of his family home. He recalls being under 24 hour curfew along with the rest of the population of Bethlehem in 2003 while the Nativity Church was occupied by resistance fighters and persons seeking refuge. They ran out of food, had no water, no electricity and were confined as a family of nine in one room below street level to avoid intended or stray bullets and mortar shells. Elias remembers fearfully hiding behind mattresses in the corner of the one room and wishing his life would end.

Elias is making something of his life. He is studying psychology and hopes to pursue graduate studies in a yet to be chosen area. He has visited Northern Ireland and South Africa as a participant in special projects that seek solutions to conflict situations. At a conference on non-violent solutions for justice held in Bethlehem, Elias met to his surprise an Israeli student. On a visit to see his sister in Jerusalem last Christmas Elias called this Israeli Jewish student who subsequently invited Elias to his family home also in Jerusalem. Elias accepted the invitation although they both knew this was risky because one never knows who may be passing information along to security forces. They know that too many persons disappear in the night after visits from the IDF. Elias described this as no minor miracle of God that a Palestinian from Bethlehem sat with a fellow Jew in Jerusalem in friendship.