Professor Esther McIntosh
From 1–10 June 2025, I participated in a solidarity and advocacy visit to the West Bank with Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA) and Sabeel (Palestinian Liberation Theology Center) in occupied East Jerusalem. Our delegation included ten members from the US, one each from Canada, Guatemala and Peru, and two of us from the UK. After October 2023, Sabeel became the only civil organisation to still bring international delegations to Palestine; their Director, Omar Haramy, insists that these delegations are needed more than ever. The aim of the delegations is twofold: to reduce violence towards Palestinians and to bear witness to their oppression under occupation, apartheid and settler-colonialism. Both Sabeel and FOSNA use the phrase ‘come and see, go and tell’. Below, I share my reflections from the visit, the people we met and the places we saw, but first, a brief recap on the history and current situation (all photographs are mine unless stated otherwise).
Background
Britain has been complicit in overriding the interests of Palestinians for more than a hundred years (see Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine). In 1917, the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, declared his support for the establishment of a ‘home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine (the Balfour Declaration – an antisemitic attempt to reduce the number of Jews entering Britain). Prior to this, Lord Shaftesbury MP, in 1838, proposed ‘returning’ Jews to Palestine (to convert them to Christianity, spread Protestantism, and hasten the second coming of Jesus Christ – a Christian Zionist belief). Rev. Alexander Keith, a Church of Scotland minster, visited Palestine in 1839 on a fact-finding mission: the phrase ‘a land without a people for a people without a land’ is a paraphrase from his 1844 book.
After WWI and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, in April 1920 the League of Nations gave Britain the mandate for Palestine, the land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea. Then, after the Holocaust, in 1947 the UN proposed partitioning Palestine into two states (Jewish and Arab). Jewish authorities declared the State of Israel founded in historic Palestine on 14th May 1948, when the British mandate ended: around 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed and 750,000 Palestinians were displaced in the Nakba (catastrophe) making them refugees in their own country, with no right of return.
War with surrounding Arab nations continued until 1949 and the Armistice Agreement, which marked a ‘green line’ on the map depicting Israel’s internationally recognised (temporary) borders and the Palestinian territory of Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem). Israeli forces had already captured more of the land than was proposed in the 1947 partition plan. Ongoing military clashes with Arab nations and incursions into Gaza, Rafah and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt led to the 1967 Naksa (setback) or six-day war, when Israeli forces not only captured (occupied) what remained of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), but also the Golan Heights in Syria. Since then, Israel has been building illegal settlements and Jewish-only roads. In the early 2000s Israel advanced the building of the separation barrier, or 440-mile apartheid wall, across the West Bank. Palestinians now live on only 12% of their original land.
(fig. 1 from Promised Land, the Jewish Museum of the Palestinian Experience).
Six million Palestinians live in diaspora in other (mostly neighbouring) countries; approx. 3 million still live in the West Bank and 2 million in the Gaza Strip. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are cut off by Israeli forces from Palestinians in the West Bank, despite being barely forty miles apart.
Since October 2023, Israel has been carrying out a siege in Gaza that multiple human rights organisations are calling a genocide; at least 60,000 have been killed and thousands more, including children, made amputees. Palestinians in Gaza who are still alive are starving, their hospitals and schools have been bombed. Gaza was once one of the wealthiest ports in the Mediterranean, a key trade route for spices. Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli military control and are subjected to settler violence, land confiscation, home demolitions and arbitrary detention; human rights activist Rifat Kassis has called this a silent genocide.
Arriving in the West Bank
We flew into Jordan in 37 degree heat and entered the West Bank via the King Hussein–Al-Karameh Bridge (also known as the Allenby Bridge): the only route for Palestinians from the West Bank. It was a chaotic experience. Members of our group who’d visited before told us that it is different every time. We queued from one desk to another, then back to the first desk; passports were passed backwards and forwards. We met an American Palestinian woman here who told us she is determined to make the effort to take this journey every year.
The bridge crossing is clearly designed to be difficult and stressful for Palestinians, at least 3 hours (sometimes 8 hours), with different opening times and different buses for internationals and Palestinians, without water or toilets. When we arrived on the West Bank side, it was even more chaotic. Israeli border control officers were shouting at everyone, sending us backwards and forwards through crowds of people, while parents tried to hang onto their children. Israeli officers searching luggage were ripping open packets and throwing items around, while Palestinian families scrambled to gather up their belongings.
(fig. 2 photograph of passports and Israeli entry and exit visas)
When we reached the final set of desks, a man beside me was being asked the same questions over and over, unable to give answers that satisfied the Israeli officer, but the officer who took my passport, saw my name and said ‘Esther . . . that’s a Jewish name; you’re very welcome to Israel’. He returned my passport with a little slip of (blue) paper.
We would now need to show this piece of paper every time we went through a checkpoint; if we were to lose this slip, we could be arrested. On our return journey at the end of our ten day visit, after being given the (pink) exit visa, we weren’t allowed to leave the building and board a bus back over the bridge until we paid an ‘exit fee’: this was new, even members of our group who had been as recently as February, four months earlier, hadn’t paid this. It wasn’t cheap – about £50 – the Israeli officer wouldn’t accept my bank card and there was no cash machine; if I hadn’t been with a colleague, I would have been stuck in that building. I do not know what happens to Palestinians who cannot pay.
The Educational Bookshop
After checking in to the Armenian Christmas hotel in occupied East Jerusalem, we walked a short distance to the Educational Bookshop, where we met one of the owners, Ahmad Muna. Ahmad invited us to take a seat, and he told us what happened when they were raided in January this year.
Officers from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) came into the shop, confiscated the owners’ phones and accused them of selling books that incite hate. The IDF started pulling books off the shelves and tossing them on the ground; the Hebrew-speaking soldiers couldn’t read the English and Arabic books, so were entering titles into Google translate to try and find anything seditious. At one point the IDF picked up a copy of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and claimed it was a book about 1948; then they spotted a copy of Ha’aretz (an Israeli newspaper) and claimed it was Hamas. With no success, they went downstairs to the storeroom and came out with a children’s colouring book called From the River to the Sea; they debated whether the drawing outlines of Al-Aqsa and other sites were inciting hate, eventually tossing the book on the floor: it landed with its back cover facing upwards, in the middle of which was a small Palestinian flag.
(fig. 3 photograph of Educational Bookshop, Jerusalem)
They arrested Ahmad and took him away for interrogation, leaving the shop open with books all over the floor; his uncle had been in their stationery shop opposite and he too was arrested and taken away. For two days Ahmad was interrogated: they wouldn’t give him water or a blanket (despite the January cold). He couldn’t contact anyone (because they’d taken his phone), and so he didn’t know what was happening with the shop or his uncle. (He later found out that his uncle had been taken to one of Israel’s notorious prisons, stripped and beaten). Suddenly, something changed for Ahmad: the officers offered him food and then released him. He saw on his phone that the international educational community had been condemning the raid and calling for his release; he stressed the importance of international voices in speaking out and keeping them alive. He also told us that the shop has stayed opened, despite threats and intimidation, because existence is resistance, and education is resistance.
Silwan
(fig. 4 photograph of a demolished Palestinian home in Silwan)
The next day, we visited Silwan: a neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem where Palestinian homes have been issued with forced demolition orders. We saw the remnants of demolished homes: tiles, sinks, washing machines and toys in the rubble. The Israeli government is sending bulldozers to demolish these homes and make thousands of Palestinian families homeless, because it claims this is the site of the garden of King David in the Bible, which it plans to recreate here.
There is art as resistance here. The I Witness Silwan project paints murals and eyes on the buildings: eyes of community members and human rights activists (such as Rachel Corrie) and those facing human rights abuses (such as George Floyd). The eyes say ‘we see you and you should see us too’.
(fig. 5 photograph of eyes painted on buildings, I Witness Silwan Project)
The morning after we visited Silwan, IDF soldiers arrived to threaten families and give access to bulldozers: another 3 homes were demolished, trapping the belongings of Palestinian families in the rubble and forcing them to leave. Israel ramped up the rate of demolitions in the West Bank in 2024 and has continued carrying out more demolitions in 2025 than in any year since annexing East Jerusalem in 1967.
Aida Camp
We heard the news of the demolitions while we were on our way to Aida refugee camp (2km north of Bethlehem) in the occupied West Bank. Established in 1950 after the Nakba, three generations have now been born and raised in this camp: refugees until their right to return to their villages and towns is respected. At the entrance to the camp is a giant key; a symbol of the housekeys that Palestinians took with them, with the intention of returning, when forced to flee during the Nakba; these keys are now passed down through the generations of refugees still waiting to return.
(fig. 6 photograph of giant key, entrance to Aida camp)
Once we passed through this keyhole into the camp, we were alongside the section of the separation (apartheid) wall that has been built right inside the camp. From the watch tower on this section of the wall, the IDF can look directly into people’s homes; boys in the camp have been shot and killed or injured from that watch tower and from IDF raids in the camp.
(fig. 7 photograph of separation barrier and watch tower inside Aida)
Aida camp is overcrowded (0.07km2 for approx. 6,000 people) with a lack of privacy and a lack of water. Palestinian homes have flat roofs with water tanks on top to store water, because the Israeli government controls how much water Palestinians receive; water only comes out of their taps for a few days every month. We heard of mothers who stay up all night to wash all the clothes, bedding and towels when water comes out of the tap, because they do not know how long the water will be turned on for, or how long they will have to wait until it is turned on again. If the water tanks empty, Palestinians cannot wash their hair until Israel turns the supply back on. Children looking for spaces to play greeted us with smiles asking if we were UNRWA as they followed us through the narrow streets.
(fig. 8 photograph of crowded Aida taken from Alrowwad rooftop)
At Aida camp, we met Rayan Abusrour who works for Alrowwad Cultural and Arts Society. She told us that every action of a Palestinian is an act of resistance: living, staying, learning, maintaining the culture and the land. Alrowwad provides eight programmes in cultural arts and education, including providing the only public library in Aida. Rayan refers to Alrowwad and Aida as beautiful resistance, but she is afraid that the Israeli government will enforce its plan to ban The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
UNRWA was created in 1949 to provide relief to the refugees; in the refugee camps, schools and medical centres are provided by UNRWA. If Israel carries out its plan to ban UNRWA, UNRWA employees will be out of work, Palestinian children will be deprived of schools, and refugee families will be deprived of healthcare. There are more than sixty Palestinian refugee camps, nineteen in the West Bank and eight in Gaza (the others are in surrounding countries: Lebanon, Syria and Jordan); most of the camps were established after the 1948 Nakba, with more needing to be established after the 1967 Naksa. A third of Palestinians live in refugee camps. UNRWA schools in occupied East Jerusalem have already been forcibly closed by Israeli forces.
Al-Makhrour
From Aida camp, we travelled on Palestinian roads to the fertile valley of Al-Makhrour. Al-Makhrour is an area of Palestinian land, located between Bethlehem and Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank; it is a UNESCO World Heritage site of Roman agricultural terraces. There are apricot, fig and olive trees here owned by the Kisiya family.
(fig. 9 photograph of Al-Makhrour land)
We met Alice Kisiya here and she told us that in 2019 Israeli forces demolished their family restaurant for the fourth time and then also demolished their family home and damaged their fruit trees. For five years the family slept in tents here, until the Israeli government issued military orders to prevent the Kisiyas from accessing their own land. Illegal settlers, backed by Israeli soldiers – settler violence is state violence – violently attacked the family, destroyed Christian icons, and occupied the land. Alice and her family have been fighting a protracted legal battle to ban the settlers from their land: they have managed to prove their ownership of the land from archival documents, simultaneously proving that ownership documents the settlers produced were forgeries supplied by Himanuta Ltd (a subsidiary of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a registered charity in many countries, including the UK).
It has been an expensive legal battle that isn’t over yet for the Kisiyas, and even some lawyers have double-crossed them. Alice and her mother were attacked whilst they were in their car, but they were then arrested and charged with driving over a soldier; they have been acquitted of this false charge but the Israeli authorities are attempting to bring the charge again. To support their non-violent resistance, Alice started the interfaith solidarity movement, Save Al-Mahkrour, but solidarity tents and interfaith camps they set up were destroyed. They are determined to stay on their land: to exist and to resist being pushed out by illegal settlers or the Israeli government. The day after we visited, they broke through the chains, unlocked the gates and accessed their land; through grassroots resistance they have successfully expelled settlers from five illegal outposts on their land.
Tent of Nations
(fig. 10 photograph of cave mural, Tent of Nations)
Our next stop was the Tent of Nations, a large 42-hectare hilltop farm south of Bethlehem with evidence of ownership by the Nassar family since 1916. A beacon on the hill protecting smaller Palestinian farms, Tent of Nations is now surrounded by five expanding illegal settlements. As we approached the farm in our minibus, we were halted en route by a new roadblock created by settlers – piles of rocks, earth and rubbish with no way through – at this point we had to get out and walk. At the farm, we met Daoud Nassar, in a cave painted with peace and justice murals by children; they run summer activities here for children from the refugee camps.
Daoud told of us of repeated attacks by settlers and intimidation by Israeli soldiers. Tens of thousands of olive, grape and apple trees have been destroyed by masked men just before harvest, and now with the settlements expanding and adding new roadblocks, it is becoming more difficult to drive fruit to market. It won’t be long, Daoud thinks, before they’ll need an olive press here to make olive oil on site, because truckloads of olives won’t be able to find an unblocked road to drive down to market. In effect, the settlements are disconnecting and isolating Tent of Nations physically and socially from other Palestinian families and their farms.
(fig. 11 photograph of fruit trees at Tent of Nations farm)
The Nassar family have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal battles to prove their ownership, to stop the settlements and to resist demolition orders, but they are fighting unjust laws that are stacked against them. The Nassar family are prevented from having running water, mains electricity, or even building on the land, and yet the settlements and the settlement roads that are being built right up to the farm have plenty of water and electricity, including streetlights. To exist here requires creative resistance, Daoud explains: not allowed to build on their land, they dig caves instead; not allowed mains electricity, they have installed solar panels and made their own; not allowed running water, they have built a rainwater collection and filtration system. There are thousands of trees on the Tent of Nations farm – almond, grape, fig and olive – that are watered by hand with two cups of water per day.
The Nassar family’s motto is that they refuse to be enemies. Daoud told us that they refuse to hate and they refuse to be victims, they are not crying and they are not leaving. They believe that justice will come (even though it is taking a long time). He told us that they are peacemakers not peace-talkers; they believe in active non-violent resistance (and yet they are still subjected to violence). They welcome international volunteers at Tent of Nations to help maintain the farm and to plant, weed and harvest.
Hebron
The next day, we were driven to Hebron, one of the most beleaguered cities in the south of the occupied West Bank, split into two areas, H1 and H2, since 1997. In the H2 area the Palestinian majority population is under Israeli military control, with a whole brigade of IDF stationed here to protect the minority, the illegal settlers. (Israeli Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has a lengthy criminal record under Israeli law, lives in a settlement in the H2 area of Hebron). Considered to be a site of particular Jewish significance – the Ibrahimi Mosque or Cave of the Patriarchs is located here (believed to be the burial site of the biblical figures Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their wives Sarah, Rebecca and Leah) – settlements have been expanding in Hebron since the 1967 Naksa. Palestinians are doubly caged here: fenced in by Israeli authorities, and having to build higher fences to protect themselves from settlers who throw stones, spit and swear at them and their children.
(fig. 12 photograph of Palestinian school in H2 area of Hebron)
Settlers are paid to live here while Israeli news reports that Holocaust survivors are living in poverty. To even walk down the street here, and to use public toilets, we had to pass through and have permission from Israeli police and Israeli soldiers. The once bustling market streets are deserted, except for the settlers we saw stringing up fairy lights here, and the soldiers standing guard to protect them. Since 2015 Palestinian shops in the old city of Hebron have been forcibly closed and welded shut by the IDF locking Palestinian goods and livelihoods inside. Israeli flags mark the buildings where settlers have moved into and taken over Palestinian homes.
(fig. 13 photograph of closed Palestinian shops and Israeli flags)
Human rights activist, Issa Amro, lives in Hebron. We needed further permission from Israeli soldiers who control a gate to open it and let us walk through to continue towards his house; as we pass a settlement, a soldier watches us from a roof top. A couple of months before we visited, in April 2025, the BBC broadcast The Settlers, a Louis Theroux documentary in which Issa features.
(fig. 14 photograph of Issa Amro at his house in Hebron)
As retaliation for his part in the documentary, a fire was set on Issa’s property at 4am. Issa told us that he woke up smelling smoke. His house has bullet proof windows and doors for protection from the IDF and armed settlers; his house is surrounded on all sides by illegal settlements and by Israeli soldiers (the soldiers protect the settlers, not the Palestinians). No ambulance can reach Issa’s house, and he cannot leave the house unattended for fear of attacks. Masked soldiers broke into his house and stole his Black Lives Matter flag and burnt it, while mocking a picture of Issa’s dead brother.
If Issa tries to defend himself or files a complaint, he is arrested. While we sat talking, drinking sage tea and Arabic coffee with cardamom, soldiers came up to the door to watch us and to intimidate Issa.
From 2001-2006 this house was taken over by the IDF and used as a military base; then in 2007 settlers moved in. Issa helped to reclaim the house by renting it from its Palestinian owner, and he has turned it into a community hub. Since October 2023 he has built kitchens and a cinema here; he has smuggled in all the building materials, and children’s toys. He too told us that he practices creative non-violent resistance: when the IDF only allows Palestinians in Hebron a few hours to access their land and harvest olives, Issa organizes; he brings as many people as possible to the harvest. Restrictions are designed to prevent Palestinians accessing their land; if they don’t harvest the land, it is declared abandoned by Israeli authorities who then take it for the settlers. Palestinian residents in Hebron are not even allowed to have their extended family from outside of Hebron visit them for Eid.
Issa is determined to build solidarity and help Palestinian families to stay despite attempts by the IDF and settlers to force them out. He documents human rights abuses and has been nominated for the Noble Peace Prize, but, he told us, his existence is precarious and depends upon international support.
Beit Ijza
After spending time with Sabeel staff learning more about advocacy and the significance of their presence in Jerusalem, we relocated to the Ankars hotel in Ramallah. From there we travelled to Beit Ijza, northwest of Jerusalem, where we heard of more threats to home, land and existence at the Gharib family home; a home surrounded by illegal settlers. The Palestinian family who own and live in this house are also doubly caged and have had to build high fences with screens to protect themselves from armed settlers who strip naked and threaten to shoot the children in the head.
Sa’adat told us that his father, Sabri, arrested more than thirty times before his death in 2012, refused to give up this home and now the next generation continue this fight. Sa’adat’s twelve-year-old son has previously been arrested, interrogated and imprisoned for playing football in his own garden; when the ball went over the fence, the settlers called the army. His younger son is sacred of any loud bang, and his wife and daughters are scared to go outside. Several family members have been attacked and arrested multiple times, including being held in prison in the early 2000s while a section of the separation wall was built across their farmland to cut off their access.
(fig. 15 photograph of the fenced and gated Gharib family driveway)
In 2008 impenetrable metal gates were added to the drive; the yellow military gate at the bottom of the drive is controlled by the IDF, and an orange gate in the wall at the side of the drive is controlled by the IDF and by illegal settlers. In other words, the army and the settlers can access this Palestinian home at any time, but the family who live here cannot control these gates. They needed permission from the IDF for us to visit (in some countries prisoners have more visitors’ rights than this family have in their own home) and we are recorded on camera as we enter. Illegal settlers have an army to protect them from this caged family who just want their children to be able to play without fear.
Since October 2023 the opening of the gates has been become even more restricted; on some days the children who live here have been unable to get out of the drive to go to school. In February this year, when an ambulance was needed for Sa’adat’s critically ill elderly mother, it was stuck outside the locked gate, and Sa’adat feared that his mother would die in his arms. The family had to break open the pedestrian gate to carry a stretcher in and out, but then the family was charged for the repair.
The Gharib family are physically and mentally exhausted, and very alone here; but they refuse to leave. The family continue to assert their right to their land and their home; even though they have been offered a blank cheque and passports to other countries in an attempt to persuade them to leave. They resist, but continuing to exist here is a challenge: their access to water is intermittent, the roof is leaking and they are not allowed to carry out repairs on their home. They are only permitted through the separation (apartheid) wall to farm for a few hours; they desperately need to raise funds for a tractor.
Qalandia
Not far from Beit Ijza is the village of Qalandia. Omar showed us the disused airport, taken by Israel in 1967, erasing freedom of movement for Palestinians. We see deserted shops lining the road, there is no longer any business here. Palestinians used to run on the main road from Jerusalem to Ramallah with the Holy Fire at Easter; a 15km route that passed through Qalandia. That was just twenty years ago, before the West Bank barrier was erected right across that main road.
(fig. 16 photograph of separation barrier blocking the road from Jerusalem and Ramallah)
The vast concrete wall forcibly reroutes 26,000 Palestinians through the notorious Qalandia checkpoint every day extending their daily commute of a few minutes into hours at a time. A 9am start now means getting up at 3 or 4am to travel a few kilometres. Palestinians with West Bank identity cards (and white Palestinian numberplates on their cars) have to pass through the checkpoint on foot; only cars with Israeli (yellow) numberplates are allowed into Jerusalem.
Since October 2023, permits for Palestinians to work in Jerusalem have become even harder to obtain than previously. We saw people at this wall trying to find a way to climb over to get to work. A fortnight after we returned to the UK, a related news story appeared in Al Jazeera sharing accounts of attempts to scale the 8-metre wall: several Palestinians have either been shot by Israeli forces or fallen and shattered their legs (at least thirty-five Palestinians have died this way this year).
Jerusalem
(fig. 17 photograph of the upside-down dish, maqluba)
A stay in the West Bank wouldn’t be complete without exploring the old city of Jerusalem. When we came here at night, the city was heaving with families out celebrating Eid, shops were open late, piled high with toys and sweets, and children skipped past us giddy with excitement. But this busyness was temporary. Tourism in Bethlehem and Jerusalem has plummeted since October 2023 and the Palestinian businesses here are struggling. Omar arranged for us to eat in Palestinian cafes and restaurants, at least putting some money back into the economy. We were treated to Zaatar pies, falafel, baba ghanoush, taboon, maqluba, and, of course, watermelon. Yet we were reminded that even the collecting of indigenous herbs has been ruled unlawful by Israeli governments; Palestinians are denied food security and food sovereignty.
(fig. 18 photograph of East Jerusalem, including the old city and the Dome of the Rock)
The old city of Jerusalem is divided into four adjoined quarters – Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian – clearly and visibly denoting the historic presence of the Abrahamic faiths here, and their continued intermingling and coexistence. Holy sites are connected and overlapping: the Al-Aqsa compound is built on Temple Mount, a hill in the old city, and contains the oldest Islamic architecture still in existence, known as the Dome of the Rock with its recognisable golden dome. The Prophet Muhammad is said to have ascended into heaven from this location, and yet the Israel authorities restrict access to the Al-Aqsa mosque, frequently preventing Palestinian Muslims from praying here during Ramadan.
The western border wall of Al-Aqsa, much of which is in the Muslim Quarter, includes the section of wall known as the Western Wall or Buraq Wall, and believed to be a remnant of the biblical Second Temple, the Herodian temple built to replace the destroyed Solomon’s temple. In 1967, the IDF forcibly evicted Palestinians from the Moroccan/Mughrabi Quarter (an extension of the Muslim quarter) to create the plaza area where Jews now come from all over the world to pray at the wall.
(fig. 19 photograph of IDF graduates at the Western Wall complex)
When we visited, we could hear the singing of a Bar Mitzvah coming from the men’s side of the wall; the women, segregated and confined to the smaller women’s side, were straining to catch glimpses of their sons, husbands and other male relatives through tiny gaps in the dividing screens. At the same time, a group of female teenagers spilled out into the square in IDF uniform and started posing for graduation photographs with their assault rifles slung across their backs; they had just completed their IDF training, taught to use deadly weapons to protect those praying in the background.
(fig. 20 photograph of the tomb where Jesus is believed to have been buried)
Less than half a mile from Al-Aqsa and the Western Wall is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (or the Church of the Resurrection in the Greek Orthodox tradition). At least six Christian denominations share parts of this church, and, in a centuries-old arrangement, a Muslim family hold the keys to the church door and arrange for its daily opening and closing. Considered to be the holiest site in Christianity, this is where, according to the Gospels, Jesus was crucified at Calvary/Golgotha and then buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Currently, building works inside the church restrict access to the tomb, but our guide, George Stephan, a Palestinian archaeologist who grew up here, negotiated a way through. As the smallest member of the delegation, I was sent into the tomb with a torch to enable others to see inside.
George’s emotion bubbled to the surface at this point as he described the restrictions that have been introduced by the Israeli authorities during his lifetime; he used to play here and sleep here as a child, but now, despite international visitors flocking from all over the globe to worship at this Church at Easter, the Israeli authorities restrict access for Palestinian Christians. George also told us that his brother, who travelled abroad over thirty years ago, lost his Jerusalem ID and has not been allowed to return to Palestine, not even for their mother’s funeral, and George has not been granted a visa to leave Palestine to visit him in another country: neither have seen each other for decades.
Jerusalem ID is only ever temporary for Palestinians and they have to reapply every seven years and it does not extend to their children or spouses (if someone with Jerusalem ID marries someone from Ramallah, they have to live in Ramallah). From the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, we walked through the old city to the Armenian quarter, where we met fourth generation genocide survivors fighting to maintain a plot of land, known as Cow’s Garden; a rare open space in the midst of the ancient buildings of the old city of Jerusalem.
(fig. 21 photograph of Cow’s Garden in the Armenian Quarter, Jerusalem)
Hagob Djernazian explained to us that, in 2023, the Armenian community found out that their patriarch unlawfully granted a 98-year lease to developers. A movement to save the Armenian Quarter, Save the ArQ, was set up by the young Armenians in Jerusalem to protect the historic land and its use by the Armenian community. In 2024, they filed a lawsuit to have the lease cancelled, and prevent the developers from carrying out work here, but settlers came to attack them.
In response, the young Armenians built a clubhouse here to maintain a presence on the land twenty-four hours a day every day to protect it from takeover by developers or settlers. This grassroots youth movement of non-violent direct action is supported by Armenian political parties and the diasporic Armenian community (in fact, we met someone in the clubhouse who was visiting from Newcastle, UK to lend support). A pre-trial hearing is due to take place in September this year, and they are hopeful that their efforts will assist in keep the religious mosaic of the old city and the presence of Armenians in Jerusalem.
Taybeh
(fig. 22 photograph of the Melkite church, Taybeh)
On Sunday we visited Taybeh (which means good), an ancient Christian village, northeast of Ramallah, with Melkite (Greek Catholic), Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. These small Christian communities come together for joint celebrations of Christian festivals around Christmas and Easter; the priests of the different churches collaborate and make decisions together. At the Melkite church we met with Fr Jacques-Noble Abed and his community whose families told us that life is difficult here: their children struggle to find homes and jobs without moving away.
The day of our visit to Taybeh was Pentecost Sunday and when we met Michel Sabbah, the Palestinian Emeritus Catholic prelate, he had just released that day’s Pentecost statement: An SOS for Gaza.
Unusually, since 1994 Taybeh has been home to a Palestinian brewery; it was in fact the first Palestinian brewery and the first micro-brewery in the whole of Middle East. Taybeh Brewery produced its first beer in 1995, which is now sold in about seventeen other countries (including in the UK, in the Palestinian restaurant, Maramia, in London). Business growth has not been easy: Israeli authorities often hold up their shipments for weeks or months, and travel by land is delayed and complicated by the wall and checkpoints. America would only accept the beer if the labels on the bottles state ‘product of the West Bank’ instead of ‘product of Palestine’.
(fig. 23 photograph of wine and beers at the Taybeh brewery)
Nevertheless, the brewery has persisted and now has facilities to bottle 5,000 beers per hour, and it has gradually expanded its product range to include wine and spirits, experimenting with indigenous ingredients such as Zaatar and coffee. Since 2005, the brewery has been bringing tourists to Taybeh for Oktoberfest, whilst also promoting other local Palestinian products, such as baked goods, olive oil and tatreez (Palestinian embroidery made by local women).
Since our visit in June, existence for Palestinians who live here has been made more difficult; we have seen news reports of repeated attacks on the village by illegal settlers spraying threatening graffiti on the walls and setting fire to villagers’ cars, including near a cemetery and the archaeological ruins of the fifth century church of St George.
Sabeel
On our way to the Sabeel offices (which means the way) earlier in the week, we stopped at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem to meet Fr David Neuhaus. Now a Jesuit priest, he told us he was born into a Jewish family residing in South Africa where they had fled to escape the Nazis. He saw apartheid growing up and was taught that it was wrong. As a teenager, he ran away from the Jewish boarding school he had been sent to in Israel and was taken in by a Muslim family. Convinced that Zionism is morally wrong, he refused to do his mandatory IDF service and was imprisoned. He is unequivocal in advocating for a just peace in which Palestinians have equal rights with Israelis and the Bible is no longer used to justify oppression.
(fig. 24 photograph of Sabeel plaque)
In the Sabeel offices, in occupied East Jerusalem, we met Budour Hassan, one of the authors of the December 2024 Amnesty International on the genocide in Gaza. She told us that the physical and spatial separation of Palestinians with different identity cards and different experiences of the occupation also leads to mental, social and psychological fragmentation. This is part of the fragmentation policy of the Israeli government: Palestinians in the West Bank are unable to help Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, who in turn feel abandoned; moreover, Palestinians in the West Bank paying hefty taxes to the Israeli government (taxes which are reduced for Jewish Israeli citizens and taxes from which illegal setters are exempt) have to live with the guilt of knowing that their taxes are funding the genocide of their fellow Palestinians in Gaza.
Palestinians were quick to remind us that however terrible things are in the West Bank, they’re not as bad as in Gaza. While all Palestinians are living with trauma, in Gaza, Budour told us, there are children injured in bomb blasts who wish they had been killed so as not to be a burden on their families. Children with additional needs whose cultural centres have been destroyed in airstrikes have lost their means of communication. Families in Gaza are starving. Budour told us of children who have died from lactose intolerance because of a lack alternatives, and babies who have died because there is no baby formula. Bereaved families, she explained, have no space to grieve; they are constantly displaced and searching for food, water and shelter.
The scale and the speed of destruction in Gaza has made it seem unstoppable, but she reminded us, America could’ve stopped it at the start with the stroke of a pen. Even since the Amnesty report was released half a year ago, there still isn’t a full arms and trade embargo on Israel. She insisted that the world after Gaza will be different: we have already failed in the face of genocide, we have to make sure that we don’t fail the post-genocide trauma recovery.
Bethlehem Bible College
Directly connected with Gaza, at Bethlehem Bible College we met Shireen Awwad. Shireen’s relatives were amongst the Palestinians sheltering in the 1600-year-old Greek Orthodox Church, St Porphyrios, in Gaza City when it was hit by an Israeli airstrike. One of Shireen’s aunts thought she had survived but later died in hospital from undiagnosed internal bleeding; there was no x-ray machine to see the bleeding. Another of her aunts needed hip surgery which had to be performed without anaesthetic. Shireen told us that her mother gets dressed in her best clothes every night, brushes her hair, puts on perfume and sleeps with the door open; if she is killed in the night she wants to be found with dignity.
(fig. 25 photograph of Bethlehem Bible College)
Shireen is Director of Shepherd Society, the charitable arm of Bethlehem Bible College, providing meals, food packages and job creation in Gaza and the West Bank. Since October 2023 their existence has become more difficult with some donors falsely accusing them of being connected with Hamas and stopping funds; in addition, the Israeli government has blocked other donated funds from reaching them. The morning that we met her, she had just received news that the emergency department at the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, which Shepherd Society helped to rebuild after an airstrike, had been bombed again. Since we returned from the West Bank, we have seen daily reports of aid seekers being killed by Israeli and American forces. Significantly, two leading Israeli human rights organizations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, now also report that Israel is committing genocide. B’Tselem, based on analysis of the attitude and behaviour of the Israeli government, warns that the genocide won’t stay in Gaza.
At Bethlehem Bible College we also met Yousef Al-Khouri from Gaza, one of a group of young Palestinian theologians. Theology is in crisis over the genocide in Gaza and the apartheid in the West Bank: churches and theologians have remained largely silent while the Bible has been weaponised against Palestinians. Christian Zionism has conflated the term ‘Israel’ in the Bible with the current nation State of Israel. Palestinian liberation theologians, Mitri Raheb and Naim Ateek, amongst others, have published multiple books and articles critiquing the ways in which the language of Exodus and ‘chosen people’ has been used to oppress them in their own land, the land of Jesus birth. Palestinian theologians are inspired by biblical passages that speak of resisting Empire and seeking justice.
Now, a new generation of Palestinians, whilst grateful for the work of their predecessors, critique their approach of appealing to Western sources and writing for Western audiences. The younger generation is doing theology from the ground up: contextual Palestinian theology written by Palestinians for Palestinians. From the depths of their suffering, they use the olive tree as a metaphor to produce a lived theology in conversation with sources from the Global South and their experiences of colonialism. Daniel Munayer, executive director of Musalaha (which means reconciliation) speaks not of co-existence but of co-resistance: Palestinians and Israeli Jews coming together to resist the occupation. His work and that of his brothers John and Samuel, as well as Yousef’s, and Palestinian women Lamma Mansour and Shadia Qubti will be published in a new book this autumn, The Cross and the Olive Tree.
Ramallah
We ended our journey into churches and theology by meeting Rev. Dr Munther Isaac at his installation in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ramallah. Munther’s ‘Christ in the rubble’ nativity scene at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem went viral in December 2023. Since then, the global Christian community has not acted to stop the genocide. Munther told us that he no longer speaks of hope; Palestinians are crying out in despair.
(fig. 26 photograph of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Ramallah)
Ramallah, just a few kilometres north, felt different from Bethlehem and Jerusalem; the call of the muezzin rang out clearly and there were no bored teenagers with assault rifles stationed on every street corner in IDF uniform. Ramallah is controlled by the Palestinian Authority whose headquarters are based here. With this relative freedom, locals greeted us with a cheery welcome from car windows, and enterprising children set up a stall outside our hotel to sell us bracelets and other Palestinian merchandise.
(fig. 27 photograph of a yellow military road barrier that the IDF locked shut after we left)
Yet, we could still see expanding settlements in every direction curtailing the city, and water tanks on the roof tops. Services are depleted; schools lack resources and rubbish collects at the sides of the road until it is burned. Ramallah is still in the occupied West Bank and Israeli forces swoop in and carry out violent raids here, including, in September 2024, raiding and shutting down the offices of the Al Jazeera news network. In fact, three days after we returned to the UK, when Israel started bombing Iran, it effectively annexed the West Bank, locking barriers across the roads in and out of the towns, turning Bethlehem and Jerusalem into open air prisons.
Palestinians have been trapped at work or at home, unable to travel between them, forced to crawl under these barriers to buy food or carry sick relatives out on stretchers. At the start of 2023 there were already over 550 barriers across the West Bank; after October 2023 a further 100 were quickly added and this number has continued to grow rapidly. By the beginning of 2025 there were 898 barriers across the West Bank; 898 barriers in an area that is about 5,640km2; only 75 miles long with a varying width of approximately 10 to 30 miles. (By comparison, Wales is more than 20,000km2, 3.68 times bigger than the West Bank. The population of Wales is around 3 million, similar to the number of Palestinians in the West Bank, but that’s not including the nearly 700,000 settlers now living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem). Illegal settlers share with Israeli citizens the right to travel on tarmacked highways, shielded by the separation barrier from the dust roads and tunnels under the Israeli highways that have been assigned to the Palestinians.
(fig. 28 photograph of Israeli highway and separation barrier)
Our hosts guided us carefully through the many checkpoints instructing us on what to do and say so as not to antagonise the IDF. Palestinians live with the constant threat of humiliation and intimidation, arrest and imprisonment, injury and martyrdom (the term ‘martyr’ in Arabic refers to those whose lives are cut short; in Palestine, this is often those who are killed by Israeli forces). We met a family who have been arrested more than once, held indefinitely without charge, tortured, beaten, left cold and hungry, and sexually assaulted by Israeli guards. We cannot share their names or the details of their firsthand accounts, because this could put them at further risk of rearrest and reprisals, but accounts such as theirs were reported to the United Nations by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory just two months before we met them.
(fig. 29 photograph of surveillance cameras in the West Bank)
Israeli forces have arrested at least 12,000 Palestinians since October 2023; the average sentence is eight months but some are held for years; more than sixty prisoners have died, often from the horrific treatment, in prison since October 2023, their bodies then held captive by the Israeli authorities and not released to the grieving families. Palestinian men, women and children are punished for existing, punished for being Palestinian, and watched all the time. We noticed the constant surveillance everywhere: multiple cameras on posts pointing in every direction, recording every aspect of Palestinian lives at close range; cameras record their movements and conversations, inside and outside their homes, using AI technology to identify and profile them and their visitors.
Yet, despite the persistent attacks and dehumanisation, every Palestinian we met – Christian and Muslim – advocated active and creative nonviolent resistance. The Palestinians we met told us that they are determined to retain their humanity by not hating. They told us that it is an act of love to prevent their aggressors from acting in dehumanising ways. They want a just peace, which means an end to their oppression; an end to genocide, occupation and apartheid. It is our duty to stand in solidarity with them and to act to free Palestine.
(fig. 30 photograph of free Palestine sign on olive tree at Issa’s house)