Cemeteries on the Mount of Olives, there's no living peace here. I'm stood below the city walls in East Jerusalem, which is called a Palestinian area. Jewish settlers are moving into houses here. In the left foreground is a new path with Jewish markings on it, in the left middle distance there is an Israeli army post, overlooking the new path where the Palestinian path joins it. Coaches are parked on the road in the distance, bringing Israeli tourists to the neat but highly-fenced Jewish graves on the Mount of Olives. In the bottom of the valley there is a rough path with jumbled and broken grave stones and shell-damaged tombs, these are Muslim. The rough path leads across the hillside on the right to a Palestinian village. In the distance to the left is the Church of all Nations. For me this image represents Jerusalem. I stood looking at it for a while, feeling the tension. I decided to drop down into the valley and walk along the old path towards the Palestinian village. I had got about a hundred metres when I heard children shouting, "No No, No go here". There were two boys waving at me, I ignored them............for a while. Then stopped and turned back. They came towards me and met me on the path. They told me I would get stoned or worse if I walked along here, I didn't know wether to believe them or not. "I am Baka", "I am Sharaf, we have been to America" we shook hands : )
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AuthorCommunity Priest at St Barnabas Church on the Moss Rose Estate, in Macclesfield Archives
September 2015
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