UPDATE ST GEORGE'S COLLEGE JERUSALEM 11 MAY 2002 Yesterday was spent going into Ramallah with a convoy of food, and I recount it only because it was so normal. Ramallah is only about a twenty-minute drive from here, but it took all day long. We were scheduled to leave at 7:30am, but some folk did not make it then so we were an hour late leaving. Then one car strayed from the convoy and we waited 30 minutes for it to rejoin. Before we could reach the first checkpoint into Ramallah (on a route dictated by the Israeli Defense Forces) the IDF called our leaders and told us to go to another. We arrived at the other one and waited forty-five minutes before being told to go back to the first one. Then it was another half hour wait to go through. It was about 11:45 when we finally arrived at our drop site, and it took the fifty or sixty of us about an hour and a half to unload the food, blankets, and whatever. There were 1200 boxes of food, each sufficient to feed a family of five for seven to ten days. We stopped by the Red Crescent Society (Islamic version of Red Cross) to hear their story and then waited another hour and a half at the checkpoint coming out. There was actually a second checkpoint both directions, but it was very brief. I did not return to the College until after 4:00pm. This happens every time, no matter what the task at hand. Everything takes much longer to accomplish because something always changes.

The story is illustrative of more than my own frustration, but also of the extent to which the normal societal workings have been disrupted by the closures of Palestinian cities. It is easy and justifiable for us to get upset at all of the casualties and war damage that make so much news. I too am appalled, and my trip into Jenin was a very emotional experience. Nothing justifies the damage I saw there. Nothing justifies bulldozing houses with people in them. Yet those things are only the tip of the iceberg as we watch a whole people being denied human and civil rights, being deprived of the economic means of livelihood, and any protest being labeled support of terrorism. This does not mean the real terrorist tactics, such as suicide bombers, are justified either. I publicly condemn and abhor them and they have hurt the Palestinians more than any other thing.

Surely Arafat, Hamas, and the others will eventually realize that terrorism is a dead-end street, but my experience in the first paragraph has been typical for years. There has been absolutely no regard for Palestinian ownership of property, economic structures, family life, education, etc. Prime Minister Sharon is now in the process of building another Berlin Wall, though it will never be a single fence. We drove alongside part of it yesterday. We may soon see the Palestinians restricted to fenced reservations with no means of support or freedom to leave. The Gaza Strip is already the most densely populated area on earth and the poorest per capita. There may soon be more of them.

The Christian Church throughout the world has been quite consistent in its condemnation of events here, with the exception of the Christian Right in the United States. Practically speaking, the US government is now Israel's only defender. Why is that so?

Dean Ross Jones