I've done my day's hard labour at the Tent of Nations Farm. This is an amazing place www.tentofnations.org. I caught a taxi out of Bethlehem and the driver took me as far as he could, towards the gates of a Jewish Israeli settlement. He was visibly nervous as we approached the settlement and said that he couldn't go any closer in case the guards caused him trouble. I got out of the taxi and followed my directions down a small road alongside the settlement, and I came to these road blocks, apparently put there by the Israeli military. I climbed over the road blocks and reached the farm. It's owned and run by a Christian Palestinian family who have lived here for three generations. The farm covers 90 acres of land including this hilltop. The Nasser family have fruit and olive trees, which they harvest every year, it's a working farm, all manual labour. But the land is wanted for a new Israeli settlement. The surrounding five hills all have Jewish Israeli settlements on them, all built within the last ten years. The settlements are security fenced and with new roads. There is a small Palestinian village on the slopes of the valley below. As I approached the farm I could see that the battered steel gates were chained and padlocked. Hmmmm. Then I voice shouted hello from amongst the fruit trees, yippee i thought, there's someone here. George Nasser welcomed me and asked if I wanted to come in, he was pruning fruit trees. So I said that I had come to help and he took me to a group of typically Palestinian buildings, this was the farm. There is also a cave which is where the family live. He set me to work helping him and told me the story of the farm. They have good crops of fruit, grapes and olives. Last May hundreds of their fruit trees lower in the valley were bulldozed one week before harvest by the Israeli military. I can't begin to imagine how this felt. But here's the thing, the family say they refuse to be anyone's enemy, and you see it in the way they go about their work and their business. To remind visitors, this is what they have painted on stones along the pathways. And there are many visitors, last week it was a group of Rabbis. There are children's camps on the farm during the summer for families of all faiths, where the theme is peace and reconciliation. Two brothers work the farm all year round, and another brother and two sisters come to help at harvest. They also do social work with some of the women in the Palestinian village. It was a great day, and I was well tired at the end of it : )
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AuthorCommunity Priest at St Barnabas Church on the Moss Rose Estate, in Macclesfield Archives
September 2015
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