Onward Christian soldier..?

BY EOIN MURRAY IN GAZA, PALESTINE

I spent the weekend with Christians in the West Bank. I state this fact not by way of indicating that I have undergone a road to Ramallah style conversion, been blinded by the light or have been "born again".

No I am telling you this so that I can introduce an important fact about these Christians. They have different coloured skin to me. They are brown, they are arabs. Shock horror, they are even Palestinian... and further shock horror they are also victims of abuse by the Israeli occupation.

The shocking rise of Christian zionism represents the ascendancy of one of the most horrific diseases of the Bush presidency and the conservative USA it represents. It manifests itself in an abhorrent belief that the old Testament statements regarding the Jews and the land of Israel allows the godless, secular, zionist state of Israel to act with impunity while it butchers and demolishes the people and land of Palestine. (on the godless injustice of the Israeli state check out www.nkusa.org for some interesting Jewish perspectives from devoutly religious Jews).

You don't have to know me very well to be aware of the fact that god and I are not exactly on first name terms, that he wouldn't be first on my list of people to call for a birthday party. But I cannot shrug off, nor do I want to, the fact that my constructed heritage is Christian. I can not resist the idea that "whatever you do the least of my people you do it to me".

So let us recall that in light of the Christians of Ramallah.

Ramallah is a pretty town of around 30,000 people, 25% of whom are Christian. To the West are the bright lights and calm sea of Tel Aviv (which Palestinians are not allowed to travel to any more). To the east are the rolling, slumbering dinosaur-backed hills of the Jordan valley. Despite the heavy construction work through the town and its hinterland you can still taste the biblical charm of Jesus' walk to Jerhico through the winding roads, roads beset on all sides by olive tree plantations. See this and you can understand where the metaphor for the "stony ground" came from.

Ramallah functions in many ways the way Dublin does, perhaps on a smaller scale. You can have a beer, or a whiskey or a glass of wine in one of the many bars. You can go to the cinema or attend a music festival. It is at the polar extreme from the conservative Gaza. It almost appears normal.

But even still, the citizens of Ramallah and its hinterland are deeply affected by the ongoing belligerent occupation of their land by Israel. Yasser Arafat's compound stands in the centre of Ramallah as testament to that. Its bombed out buildings lie in a heap, protected by high walls, razorwire and policemen trying to look interested. Around Ramallah, the main roads have been sealed off so that the direct route to anywhere is impossible without travelling through the Israeli checkpoint. Citizens of Ramallah cannot drive through this checkpoint but must instead walk through the metal detectors and face the soldiers. They submit themselves to this humiliation each time they want to leave their city to go to work in Jerusalem or visit family in nearby villages.

So where are the Christian zionists now? Why do they not express solidarity with the fate of their fellow Christians who are being attacked, willfully killed, arbitrarily arrested, victims of collective punishment? No, instead they are happier marching down Jerusalems Via de la Rosa, waving Israeli flags and crosses as if somehow that exonerated them and the secular Israeli state from these barbaric breaches of international law, not to mention God's law. Who would Jesus bomb?

I am reminded of John Kerry's convention speech during the week in which he quoted Abraham Lincoln, "I will not persist in claiming that God is on my side rather I will pray that I am on God's side".

And thus ends this week's sermon... Well, almost.

It would be a little neglectful if I didn't recount the story of my return to Gaza through the ever eventful Erez Checkpoint.

The area around Erez, Beit Hanoun, has been the scene of an Israeli incursion, which has been ongoing now for 26 days. I won't labour the point about the numbers of people killed and land demolished, all unreported (or "under-reported" as one Dutch journalist described it to me). The area beside Erez, where once there was a normal road, has now been completely demolished and makeshift Israeli positions have been set up. It is a scary walk through the artificially desertified land past the netting and heavy machine guns to find my taxi to Gaza City.

On Saturday morning, as I was passing through, a large group of women, visibly unarmed, marched down the now beaten dust track to Erez in an attempt to gain access to Beit Hanoun. Their black hijabs contrast with banners and flags in all colours protesting at this ongoing humanitarian disaster. The assembled media, local and international, stand on top of one of the many artificial sand dunes now blocking the road. As I've said before the first rule of crowds in Gaza is to walk the other way — it generally means trouble. And so trouble came, trundling along, blowing up a massive sandstorm, in the form of two Israeli tanks sent out to disperse the crowd. The noise of the tanks rips across the barren land. The Israeli soldiers dug into a small makeshift camouflaged position are more attentive now. When I passed them ten minutes before they were reading the newspaper. Now they turn and train their machine guns in this direction. Everyone's state of alert is heightened. The masses of taxi drivers and people at the makeshift market, with their donkeys and carts, begin to flee. I am already walking up the hill when a guy with a donkey cart urges me to hop on, which I do until I see a friend from the BBC.

He assists me in abandoning my search for my seemingly lost taxi driver as we head out of the area in an armoured-plated TV vehicle. The potential is there for it all to go a bit "Rafah"... But thankfully no reports have come through of the Israeli soldiers firing on these women, exercising and defending their rights to free speech and assembly.