west bank

The settler movement has spent decades pushing its views to the mainstream and building its political power.

“What does it mean to be church amid these very harsh circumstances?” asks Bethlehem pastor Munther Isaac.

“You’re welcome to take it back home with you,” my Palestinian friend said as I looked at the US-made canister in my hand. “Actually, take all of them.”

“How had I not heard these stories and met these people, living 30 years right next to them?” asks Hanan Schlesinger. “How could it be?”

Akram al-Waara sits in a refugee camp and makes art—out of tear gas canisters.

Nabeel Ashkar has worked for years to bring Western art music to Arab young people in Galilee.

The BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement against Israel, which has gained some traction in mainline denominations, raises hotly contested questions. (See, for example, my article “Boycotting the boycott” and the responses to it.)

A particularly salient one: Do ordinary Palestinians support BDS? Do Palestinians in the occupied territory want more separation from Israel or more integration with it?

The BDS movement posits that a just future for the Palestinians lies first of all in disengagement from and resistance to Israel. But does it?

Is the goal of Zionism a democratic Israel with a Jewish majority? Or rule of the entire land, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan?

In Jordan, reports are mixed as to just how good relations are between the Muslim majority and the Christian minority. What's clearer is that the stronger divide is between native Jordanians and the many Palestinian refugees.

The two locals we spent the most time with, our tour guide and our bus driver, represent both differences.

Palestinian parents don’t fret about drugs or drunk drivers. They worry that the Israeli soldiers will use their M-16s.