"Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, "Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." This is desert. So he arose and went."
–Acts 8:26,27
While our group went to the Dead Sea yesterday, we spent the day visiting some friends. It would have been a shame to have been so close and not gone to see T and K, so we made arrangements in advance. So close and yet so far. We were asked to send photocopies of our passport weeks ago to them, and they in turn submitted the necessary paperwork to the Israeli authorities, and we were approved for passage to Gaza.
T and K came to our hotel in Jerusalem and picked us up. We drove a little over an hour through the Israeli countryside, passing Ashdod and Ashkelon, two beautiful modern cities with ancient roots, until we reached the Eres crossing, the entrance to the Gaza strip. We parked in what looked like a construction site, and walked to the first office, one of many checkpoints. As soon as we left the car and began to walk, the security dogs began to bark, banging against their chain link fences. They were enormous, some kind of attack dogs, and just looking at them was intimidating. We went into the office, handed over our passports, and sat down to wait. After about fifteen minutes, we were cleared to go on, and began a walk into this very restricted zone. We walked down what was once a road, but now was a concrete block enclosed corridor, maybe a quarter of a mile long. There were electronically operated gates along the way, and a guard using a camera would activate the gates and we would advance. The next gate would not open until the one behind had been secured. The entry process took close to an hour, and T and K said that was fast! They have waited between gates in the corridor for up to two hours. I had the feeling of entering a maximum security prison. In fact, that is what I was doing.
We were finally met on the other side by H, a Palestinean Christian, who out of love for the people of Gaza has chosen to make this hellhole his home. He was born in America to a Palestinean father and South American mother, and bounced between Israel and California during his childhood.
We got in T’s car, and set off for their home at the opposite end of the Gaza strip. The roads are horrible, bombed out in places, but still accessible. We passed a restaurant K said they often liked to stop and eat in, but two weeks ago was bombed. All that was left was some tangled concrete. The Gaza strip is one of the most heavily populated pieces of ground in the world, and 43% of its 1.4 million inhabitants are under age 14. As we drove through Gaza we encountered huge crowds of school kids on their way home–so many kids everywhere!!!
There are two shifts for school, mornings and afternoons. They were dressed in their school uniforms, the girls were covered head to toe in their long black ankle-length jackets, and all were wearing head coverings, but underneath the jackets of every one of them you could see the blue jeans they were wearing, just like teenage girls everywhere. A few wore stylish denim long jackets instead of the black ones. Now and then you would see a girl with a face veil, just slits for her eyes. Some families are more strict than others.
We finally arrived at K and T’s house, a beautiful Palestinean style house that took ten years to build, and had never been lived in. Someone went to a lot of expense to build their home, and now, because they can, are living on the outside. They are renting it for a pittance.It is three stories, with a beautiful rooftop balcony, and six bedrooms. We visited the "kindergarten" they have started, a preschool with sixty children ages 3 to 5. They have only lived here three months, and it is amazing what they have already accomplished. They could fill another sixty spots tomorrow, they told us.
T and K have been well accepted in the neighborhood there and have made many friends. People can’t figure out why an American family would want to live there, and they are amazed at the explanation that T and K love the Palestineans and want to help them. Most Palestineans believe that Americans hate them and want to mistreat them. They have made quite an impact on the neighborhood by the way they have kept their own home. The surrounding neighbors have been stimulated to clean up their own yards and the street. They have secured an empty lot and are building a park–which will be the only park in all of Gaza.
We met a new friend, Dr. Zuhair, who was trained as a pharmacist in Libya and is currently the head of a NGO seeking to improve the lives of the Palestineans. His vision is to begin a cultural center to train young people to live in peace. He and T and K are working together to provide job training and jobs for the Palestineans, who currently live with 70% unemployment. His wife is a highly educated Algerian Palestinean, who under current laws can never leave the prison of Gaza, as she is not a citizen of any country and is unable to get a passport.
They have just moved into a nice house which they have been building for several years. There are surprisingly a lot of nice houses, and a startling amount of new construction. I don’t know, and neither did T, where the money is coming from for that construction. We drove by the Jewish settlements that were bulldozed last year when the settlers were removed by the Israeli government. (Addendum: Brian pointed out that the two houses I mentioned earlier were under construction for many years. How did I know that any progress was being made on the construction sites I now saw? Good point–I didn’t actually see ANY work being done while we were there.)
We had lunch in a restaurant, a really nice meal. We were seated in a private back room, where no one could see us. Brian mentioned later that it was probably for our security–we were keeping as low a profile as we could. We didn’t witness any sort of violence, but the air was thick with the tension of it. The restaurant provided water pipes for the clientele, and would bring you a pipe and take care of stoking it. The smell of tobacco burning in water pipes is nothing like being in a restaurant full of cigarette smoke, it’s much milder and nonoffensive. Dr. Z smoked one, it’s considered to be the way to end a good meal, like we enjoy our coffee.
We tried to visit the Baptist Church of Gaza (it wasn’t open on Saturday), where T and K attend Sunday services. They have just finished construction of a five story building, and it was dedicated last week by Brother Andrew of the Netherlands. They have a lending library for the community on the first floor, a medical facility on another floor. There is a mammogram machine stuck in customs that was donated by an American ministry–breast cancer is epidemic in Gaza and this will be a wonderful service. The church has 250 members after fifty years in Gaza, and is the only evangelical ministry there. There is also an Orthodox church in Gaza.
We were anxious to get to the border and back into Israel before dark–it’s more dangerous to be in Gaza after dark. Our crossing back into the real world was thankfully without incident, and I’m so grateful to have had a chance to visit this very needy part of the world. When I asked T and K their greatest need, they said WORKERS! So I am "beseeching the Lord of the Harvest to send out laborers into the harvest." May the Kingdom of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, come in greater measure to Gaza.