By Jeanne Connerney
Keeping the Faith in the Occupied West Bank
“There are no rights to live. There are no rights to move. There are no rights to learn. There are no rights to play. There are no rights to travel.” With these words, the pastor at Christ the Redeemer Church describes life in his village of Taybeh, Occupied Palestine. After celebrating the 4:00 Saturday afternoon mass at Saint Susanna’s Roman Catholic Church in Dedham on June 28, Father Bashar Fawadleh, spoke to a crowd of 50 – 60 people about remaining hopeful under Israeli occupation, the constant presence of the Israeli army, and the threat of settler violence. I then continued our conversation.
With a declining population of only 1,300 people, Taybeh is the last remaining entirely Christian village in the West Bank. Known as Ephraim in the Gospel of John, Taybeh is where Jesus went with his disciples after raising Lazarus from the dead and where he sought refuge prior to his crucifixion.
Taybeh was one of the three West Bank villages attacked by Israeli settlers only two days before Fr. Fawadleh’s visit to Dedham. More than 100 settlers attacked homes and lit a fire at the village entrance. In the nearby village of Kafr Malik masked settlers set fire to cars and homes and shot at residents. Three were killed and nine were injured, one fatally, although it remains unclear whether by settlers or the Israeli army. The violent gang also set fire to a Palestinian home in Jericho. On July 4 settlers once again set fire to Taybeh, allegedly backed by the Israeli forces.
Settler violence is nothing new in Taybeh. Shortly before our conversation, a settler outpost was erected in Taybeh on the site of a farmhouse on vital agricultural land whose inhabitants had been displaced a year ago. Outposts are Israeli settlements in the West Bank, constructed without authorization from the Israeli government. Often, they are retroactively legalized, however. Both outposts and settlements remain illegal under international law. Supposedly deployed to the West Bank to quell the violence between settlers and Palestinians, the Israel Defense Forces often either look the other way or actively assist settlers.
The previous week, settlers brought their sheep and cows to graze on Palestinian crops; the animals ate all the wheat and barley being grown for food and for sale. Last month settlers broke into 14 homes in Taybeh the middle of the night as people slept, and last harvest season, they prevented people from harvesting olives on their own land and stole their water tanks. In addition, settlers erected billboards in the region which read (in Arabic) “There is no future for you here.” Because of these events and others like them, 30 – 40 Taybeh residents keep watch each night to protect the city. “We’re under occupation and now we’re under the attacks of the settlers and we are in danger,” says Fr. Fawadleh. “We are terrified.”
Recently, Israeli soldiers erected iron gates at Taybeh, gates which are randomly open or closed by Israeli soldiers at whim, resulting in the impossibility of traveling on a schedule and massive delays in conducting any daily activities. Fr. Fawadleh pointed out for example, that 150 students come to study in Taybeh every day, and their journey from Kafr Malik, normally 15 minutes, now may last three hours. Since October 7, 2023, “flying checkpoints” appear randomly along the roads, causing further delays and dehumanization.
As of January, settler attacks across the West Bank average four per day. Meanwhile, since October 7, 2023, there has been at least a 100% increase in arrests in the West Bank; and according to the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner Society, over one-third of prisoners are held in administrative detention without charge or trial. Many are children.
Since it occupied the Palestinian West Bank in the 1967 war, the number of Israeli settlements has steadily increased, continuing to defy international law with impunity. Following unilateral recognition of the Palestinian state by Ireland, Norway, and Spain in 2024, Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich pledged that a new settlement would be built for every country which joins them and promised one million new settlers in the West Bank. Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz said that the state must deal with the West Bank the same as they do with Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents. Later, he amended his statement, saying that Palestinian residents would not be allowed to return. Last year saw the highest number of Israeli land seizures in three decades and more than the last 20 years combined. Each settlement decreases the likelihood of a future Palestinian state, given a higher percentage of Israelis who live on the land.
Born during the first intifada (a word which means uprising in Arabic) in 1987, Fr. Fawadleh’s father carried him door-to-door as a baby while distributing political literature and medicine to residents. As a young teenager, he was interviewed on Palestinian television about growing up in the West Bank. Fr. Fawadleh describes the seven years after 1993, when the Oslo Accords were signed, as peaceful. That peace was shattered when Ariel Sharon entered the Al Aqsa Mosque in 2000 and the second intifada began. He was ordained in 2014 in Ramallah on the same night Israel attacked and occupied the city. Since 2021, he has served as parish priest in Taybeh.
“I love Palestine,” he says. “I choose to live in Palestine. I was born in Palestine. I put the cross on my shoulder and follow Jesus to Golgotha. Golgotha is not the end…We are waiting for the third day.”
Residents have been leaving Taybeh both because of fear and lack of economic opportunity. Besides decimated crops, the decline in tourism and pilgrimages since October 7, 2023 has taken an economic toll. Fr. Fawadleh emphasizes that all Palestinians in the diaspora feel that Palestine is their homeland, but unfortunately circumstances have led them to emigrate for the safety and well-being of their children and families.
Fr. Fawadleh asks us to continue to pray. He invites us to “come and see” the situation firsthand, to stay at the guesthouses in his village, and to support his attempts to create more jobs, to prevent further emigration. He requests that we pressure the international community and our government to arrest the settlers and let Taybeh live in peace. “We don’t need anything else. We want to live in peace in a calm situation.”
Despite the immense hardships of occupation and settler violence, Fr. Fawadleh is bursting with a hope born from his faith, a hope he mentions repeatedly throughout his descriptions of the dire situation. “I’m sharing my story, not because I’m a political man, but because I’m Palestinian and I’m a priest whose vocation was born inside the intifada, and my ordination was during the attack of Israeli soldiers in Ramallah. This is the point that I use always, that what I see from the darkness is the light and from death is resurrection and life.”
“Amidst the suffering, everything is born,” he says. “I resist in faith…We have to put in the hearts of the people faith, hope, love. Believe in ourselves, our hearts, our mentality that we can arrive one day…the hope never fails.”
“I hope that one day we can arrive and seek peace together: Palestinians and Israelis. We have no problem living together; we did before…Our problem is the occupation. That’s all.”
In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul writes that “what abides is faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.”
“That’s wrong,” says Fr. Fawadleh, recalling the words of one of his teachers in the seminary, a priest from Gaza. “The greatest of these is not love; it is hope.”
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Jeanne Connerney is a member of MAPA; Watertown Citizens for Peace, Justice and the Environment; Pax Christi; and Irish-Americans for Palestine, Boston.