Israel/Palestine

 
 
 
 


Hey all,

I apologize for taking so long to write a new blog entry. We have been really busy lately. We are back in Cairo and have been furiously writing final papers. Yesterday, my group had a debate on the topic of, Is Political Islam an obstacle to Democratization? We won and added some bonus points to our final grade! So once we left Israel and Palestine, we settled into academic work and now I am almost done with papers and free to relax in Cairo.

I want to provide a recap for the last week in Israel and Palestine. We had several good speakers throughout the trip, and I think acquiring high powered speakers is the strength of the program. We heard from Zionist Jews, ideological settlers, Israelis working for peace, former Israeli soldiers who dissaprove of the occupation, Palestinians who have fought in the intifada, professors who have written books on the conflict, representatives from both the U.S. and Israel side of the diplomatic relationship and a Palestinian archbishop. Throughout it all, I continued to formulate my opinion on the morality caught in the middle of the conflict, the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel, the obstacles to peace and how best teh Palestinians can work to acheive peace. By the end of the trip, I was just so overwhelmed by the daunting mass of the conflict and the inherent problems with it from 60 years of occupation. It is just a big tangled mess and peace is going to be so hard to acheive.

We did fit in some tourist stuff within all of our academia. We visited the Sea of Galilee and the entire region was so pretty and it looked like it could have been the exact same in Jesus day. It is truly one of the coolest things i have ever been able to see. In all the Christian landmarks in Jerusalem, Nazareth, Bethlehem and even in spots around Galilee, the Orthodox church has erected guady churches on top of holy sites, and it really ruins the spirituality of the place for me. I just want to see things as they could have been in Jesus' day and I dont like the huge shrines built over the places Jesus was. But the region of galilee is beautiful and it truly is the place that Jesus carried out his ministry. We even saw the synagogue of Capernaum (pictured) in which Jesus HAD to have been in once in his life. It was really amazing. We also visited Nazareth, which was one of the places that was "spoiled" a bit for me with churches and conflicts over which sites were holy. We saw the Golan Heights, which is the NE corner of Israel that is disputed as Israel took it from Syria in the 1967 War and is a huge bargaining chip in peace talks with Syria.

Back in Jerusalem, we went under the Wailing Wall and visited the tunnels that were built at street level back in Jesus' day, including a street that Jesus HAD to have taken as it was the public entrance to the Temple. There is a lot of archeological history under the Temple Mount and it was really cool to see it.

The last night before we went back to Cairo, we took a second trip to Bethlehem and had dinner with Palestinian host families and it was so cool to sit down to dinner with a Palestinian family and just see a little bit about what their life is like.

One thing became certain for me in our two weeks in Jerusalem: I really miss home and I am definitely geting antsy to come home. The Middle East is amazing and I will miss it for sure, but I miss the people close to me and cannot wait to be back in the States.

So, back in Cairo, we are tying up loose ends and its only 11 days until I will be back home. Thanks for your reading!