A prayer for friendship

Personally, I find the violence and stabbing spree going on in Israel and the West Bank agonising.

I’ve just returned from my umpteenth visit and I love that part of the world. Passionately. It’s hard not to. Jerusalem in particular.

And so do many of the people who visit or live there – across all nationalities and belief systems. In fact, I only know one person who doesn’t and he is mildly eccentric.

My trip started at the end of August and I stayed mostly in the Armenian quarter of the Old City. Co-incidentally I was due to return to South Africa shortly after the Jewish new year in mid-September.

I was not there to celebrate Roshashana. I’m not Jewish. But in the late afternoon I did walk down with some friends to the Western Wall to see the throngs of Jews – men and women wearing white – praying in their new year.

It’s quite a sight. Nonetheless, it was disconcerting. We were in a packed compound immediately below the al-Aqsa mosque where, just a few hours earlier, skirmishes had taken place between Arab youth and the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). Weapons and material to make pipe-bombs were reportedly found in the mosque.

I’d also been hearing, throughout the day, the familiar crack of tear-gas fire from the vicinity of the Temple Mount. A friend who was out shopping told me she had seen a youngster being carried through the cobbled streets by soldiers.

Standing there that evening, watching Jewish people pray, I wondered what they were praying about. Was it the trouble that had happened just a few metres above our heads? Was it the political turmoil generally – the fossilised effort to find a solution, the bankruptcy of options, the apparent inability or lack of will to do anything to shift the status quo towards peace.

Or, I wondered, had the devout perhaps manoeuvred themselves into a parallel universe, the kind induced by hope exhausted, the kind where one lets oneself think only of the here and now. Never tomorrow.

It’s not hard to get the feeling that many from this part of the world – across the religious spectrum – inhabit such a tired universe.

While standing there in the Western Wall compound, wondering if I would hear a ram’s horn, I remembered an earlier conversation with a shopkeeper in the Arab quarter.

We had been talking about his sad life, when he said: “Listen, something is going to happen here. Times are hard. People are unhappy and have no money. Something is going to happen. Take care.”

At the time I had assumed he was generalising. In hindsight I’m not so sure.

I left Israel in mid-September imagining things would settle down, on the surface anyway, once the Jewish holy days had past.

But the opposite has happened – with terrifying speed it has spiralled into a horror fest.

After the drive-by shooting in the West Bank last week where two parents were shot dead in front of their four small children, a wave of stabbings began. And now the incidents are replicating so quickly its almost impossible to keep up.

By yesterday morning 11 attacks targeting Israelis or Jews had been reported over the past seven days, several in the old city of Jerusalem. Then a young Jewish man stabbed two Palestinians and two Arab Israelis near the southern Israeli city of Dimonaa, in a suspected revenge attack.

The situation is horrific – and I have not even started on what is happening between Palestinians and the IDF on the West Bank or in Gaza.

The underlying causes are so complicated but it is useless anyway, to start apportioning blame. Except I will say I find it appalling that in the midst of such a crisis the Israeli government deems it fit to insist it will go on with the West Bank settlement programme and that the mayor of Jerusalem recommends the population carries guns in the streets.

Further, that Palestinian religious leaders have yet to condemn the violence and jihadii organisations are using the social media to incite suicide attacks. To the point that 10-year-old children are telling reporters they would “like to die as martyrs”.

It is my possibly unimportant opinion that most of the people who inhabit this world are sweet, warm, decent, hardworking, weary people, trying – really trying – to make their way through life. Trying to cherish and celebrate family. Trying to keep up the momentum of work or study or prayers.

And for all their ancient religious beliefs, these are the poor in spirit – all in desperate need of kindness.

I guess one reason I love Jerusalem is because it is so easy to make friends there. And this is entirely possible if one will just step beyond politics or religion and take time to get to know people.

It’s what I did, in all the quarters of the city. And because I do not want my friends to be butchered or blown up or shot, I say absolutely no to the violence! No to “#Jerusalem intifada”. And for God’s sake, will the grown ups do something brave to build peace.