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Challenging the occupation one shopping bag at a time
by Susan Mark Landis
July 21, 2004
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Our Father and Mother in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
our daily tortillas,
our daily rice or beans or manioc.
Forgive us our sins,
our debts,
our trespasses,
as we forgive those who sin and trespass against us,
as we forgive our debtors.
Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil-
for yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory
forever, Amen
In a land where simple daily chores make a political statement, my Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation to Palestine invited neighbors to shop for justice.
We stayed in what used to be the thriving Old City of Hebron. Our road and many nearby streets of the market resembled a ghost town. As we North Americans walked down the middle of the street to reach our apartment, inaccessible by taxi because of roadblocks and cement barriers, we commented that we felt like cowboys on a Western movie set. Shops were tightly closed and no one crossed our path. The silence was creepy. For the most part, shoppers are unwilling to face the hassles of the military checkpoint and settler animosity to buy groceries. A few shopkeepers open their doors and set out their goods, to maintain their self-respect.
A Hebron Palestinian group, Library Without Wheels for Nonviolence and Peace, invited CPT to join them in creating a festival day for shopping to help bring new life to the Old City. Our delegation put up posters and passed out fliers with information. On the shopping day, we helped count people entering the Old City, and people carrying shopping bags as they left. We also enjoyed the festive atmosphere as we selected a few items to bring back home with us. A local shop owner provided us with stools and traditional hot mint tea. Many people stopped us and offered their thanks for bringing a bit of normalcy back to their shopping and business lives.
The news in North American media about the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians often dwells on suicide bombings and home demolitions. Our delegation never confronted this type of behavior from either side. Rather, we observed the insidious activity of a psychological war as the Israeli government makes life unbearable for Palestinians, hoping they will leave the land of their birth and their ancestors, the only land they've known.
I wonder if the story of my trip would be more compelling if I had stood in front of a bulldozer, or had given first aid to a Palestinian shot while trying to walk through a checkpoint, or ridden on an Israeli bus line after another bus on that line was suicide-bombed, or if I at least had been tear-gassed. Such hostility commands an audience.
I found the violence of not being able to shop where one has for years quieter and harder to understand. Perhaps that is why the world community hasn't much to say and despair haunts Palestinian daily tasks.
After helping to provide a simple witness of a pleasant shopping day, the prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread" will have new meaning for me. It will bring to mind the beaming face of a Palestinian woman trying to explain to me in Arabic her joy at returning to the Old City for just one normal day.
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