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When I think of Palestine I like to remember it in springtime, when the weather is warm but not hot and the sun glints off the white stone walls and softens the air. Truth to tell, I love Palestine in any season, for the warmth of its hospitality, its beauty, its perseverance, its faith.

As I stood near the Gaza border, with the Erez crossing on my right and looking into northern Gaza, I experienced deep anger, bordering on rage, that a genocide was taking place before my eyes, and I could do nothing to stop it.

Especially in Gaza, but throughout the West Bank, every Palestinian is facing uncertainty. This was difficult and very scary for me to hear. 

Day by day, Palestinians resist. We have seen them do this in brave and creative and nonviolent ways. They still are there where they belong. They have deep roots and defiant hope, and hope breeds resilience.

In 2021, Israel’s Minister of Defence designated six Palestinian human rights organizations as “terrorist groups.” In a raid two years ago, Israeli soldiers badly damaged St Andrew’s Church in Ramallah, which rents space to Al-Haq.

Eustinus is over 80 years old, and for 44 years has tirelessly guarded the well and its setting. An illegal Israeli settler with an axe hacked his predecessor to death and tossed a grenade into the sanctuary.

Settlers will prevent a Palestinian farmer from harvesting, then soldiers will confiscate the land for being abandoned—and then will give it to the settlers. Absurd.

 Sderot is a rich agricultural area of orchards, vineyards, and irrigated fields of vegetables. In Gaza there is a genocidal engineered starvation. 

They said that during this war what gives them most hope is visitors like ourselves. We thought of how Jesus, travelling constantly, spent his ministry visiting people in their homes and neighbourhoods. 

He told us that, at his daughter’s birthday party in the playground, soldiers in the watch-tower sprayed the children with a noxious chemical known locally as ”skunk water” and they all ran screaming.

Each year, armed Zionist settlers will likely block Palestinians from reaching their groves. If a crop is not harvested, the authorities will say that the land is not being used, and will confiscate it, and give it to the settlers.

The farm is now surrounded by Israeli settlements regarded as illegal under international law. The Israeli government in 1991 declared this state land. The Nassars have been fighting ever since to maintain possession.

The war is devastating merchants and their families–Israeli and Palestinian–who are just trying to make a living. 

Today, a massive concrete wall blocks 58 Christian farmer families from their fields, and they have lost their livelihoods. And a new multi-lane highway, which Palestinians cannot use, now runs across that valley to join illegal Israeli settlements. 

He lives four miles away from where we are staying, but travelled 35 miles to meet us, due to closed checkpoints. He thanked us all for being here. “You can’t understand what it means to us when you come to us in this hard time.”