Somehow our trip to the Negev desert was rescheduled to fill a full Sunday. I was sorry to miss church, but at least we shared eucharist at Sabeel in Jerusalem on Thursday (with Naim Ateek, CPTers, Mordechai Vanunnu and others --but that's Another blog).
Our guide to meet Bedouins now located in Israel was Angela Godfrey Goldstein from the International Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). She was inspiring and exhausting.
In the desert we drove into a new development of houses & a daycare center-- clearly being built to be there permanently. Around it are fields of recently planted trees -- as I said, in the desert. Angela explained this is called something like "the Canadian Ambassador's forest."
We left the development and went down the road a short distance, then pulled off the road, driving on a barely visible track across the desert.
Finally, in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere, we stopped and got out. There was a tarp over a simple wooden frame, with some mats on the ground under the tarp. Angela remarked that she was sorry we had forgotten to bring our host something like a bottle of water.
Then we met the man who lives in this "tent" -- Nuri Al-Okei. He is the person who owns this land. He has the papers to prove it. While most Bedouins simply lived on their lands with an understanding and mutual trust about who belonged where for centuries, when Israel was first established Nuri's family followed the protocol Israel established to formally protect their legal status as land owners. The new development we had just seen was built on his land. The residents of the development are trying to get him to go away; they are affluent squatters creating facts on the ground. It's an illegal occupation within Israel itself.
Nuri has been living in this tent alone in the desert since 2006. Well - not THIS tent --because whenever he leaves his tent, such as to go to get food or water or to see family, the squatters destroy the tent. This happened as recently as last week -- he showed us the charred remains of the previous tarp. They even burned his trash bag!
Then they plowed furrows in the area so there was no flat space to set up his tent again.
Friends came and helped clear the spot and helped him put up a new tent.
This is the land which has been in his family since pre-Ottoman times and he does not want to leave it. He owns it. He has the papers. But the development continues to build on his land. He really does not seem to be crazy - he is just fighting for justice.
On the frame of the tent are a few nails which hold his food - a bag of pitas on one nail, a bag of fruit & onions on another. On the ground are bottles of water. This appears to be all he has for his day to day subsistence -- this and cell phones and a laptop!
Our group of eight sits uncomfortably on the mats on the ground, hearing his amazing story, wondering how he survives, while the heat and long-legged ants are enough to make us feel even living here a single day would be too long.
Then he gets out some cups -- this man who has practically nothing in the desert -- and he gives us his water. We Are thirsty -- yet we know he has so little.
As we share his water I remember it is Sunday morning.
This is our communion.
