Introduction

12 of our parishioners visited the Holy Land in 2003, and other groups from this and other local Catholic parishes have made numerous pilgrimages since then. There we met many people who are suffering greatly as a direct result of the political situation. It is easy to forget that many Arab families and communities are Christian, and that many have been so since the time of Christ himself. As well as raising our awareness of the suffering there and increasing our prayers for peace, the visit opened our eyes to poverty of an extent that tested our Christian hope. Many Christians are emigrating to get away from the increasing spiral of hopelessness. They feel abandoned by the Christians of the West and their cry is: “Please help us!”

As St Paul reminds us, when one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers with it. In the face of such suffering we felt we had to respond. The question is: “How do we respond?”. The Holy Land project is an opportunity for all of us to join in supporting our Christian brothers and sisters in the Holy Land.

Many Holy Land Christians, faced with the apparent hopelessness of their situation, see their continued presence there as becoming more and more difficult. For many of them, the only future they can see is one lived in a country other than their own. The exodus of Christians from the land where Christianity began is an increasingly worrying development. The magnitude of the problem was soon apparent to us, as was the contrast between the limited resources which we could hope to offer and the many overwhelming needs of the people.

Members of the groups who have visited the Holy Land are very willing to come and speak to your club, society or organisation. We see raising awareness of the situation as a vital part of our response. Please to make the necessary arrangements.
 

• There is an unemployment rate of over 70% in the Palestinian Territories

• There are severe economic problems in regard to state infrastructure (buildings, roads, public services, education and healthcare)

• There is mounting pressure on the social fabric of society

• For every one adult in employment, 9 others depend on that income in order to live.

• One in five children is chronically anaemic, leading to severe restriction in development of their immune system and cognitive function.

• The United Nations has identified the malnutrition of children in the Holy Land as a problem as serious as that in the Congo or in Zimbabwe.

• One woman we met had no food in the house and 5 children to feed. She was reduced to boiling stones in a pot while telling the children their food was cooking. She carried on the deception until the children fell asleep.

The village of Aboud is about 15kms from Ramallah on the West Bank. It is a Christian/Muslim village with a population of 2000. The Christian component consists of Orthodox and Latin (Catholic) communities living and working together. Food is very scarce and incomes for most families are severely limited.

School fees become less of a priority in these circumstances and so the education of the children – along with the future of the school – suffers. The lack of funds to pay teachers’, salaries or for equipment and maintenance leave the finances of the school in peril. A standing order of £20 p.c.m. will pay for a child to attend school for a year.

There are 104 children attending the school, which has a staff of 15 teachers. The annual running cost of the school is $150,000. Presently 80 % of the children in the school are Christian and 20% are Muslim. Fr Aziz, the former Parish Priest of Aboud, estimates that there are about 200 children who are presently unable to attend the school as their parents are cannot find the money to pay the fees.

Fr Aziz says: “We are in great need. Many of our men are unemployed and their families suffer the consequences. I try to use any money we get not only to improve our lives and our village; but I use it to employ local men on any work we do. Your help and support is so vital to us. We are constantly 'locked in' by road blocks - only a few days ago many of our people did not arrive back in the village until after midnight due to being stopped at military checkpoints.”

After our first contact with the village we felt as a parish that we should put our relationship on a firmer footing; as a consequence we have twinned our parish with the parish in Aboud. This twinning involves regular contact and visits, in February 2006 several members of our Youth Group made a visit to the Holy Land and stayed in Aboud for three days, staying with families, meeting the young people and spending some time in the school.

In July of the same year we hosted a visit of six young students and teachers from Aboud.

On our various visits we have listened carefully to the people who live in the village, to their concerns and needs. Whilst we cannot easily solve the political problems, we have made a huge difference to people’s lives by the small projects that we have involved ourselves in. We have raised over £3,500 to provide books for the school library.

Another project was to provide internet access for the school.

A third was to complete the building of a garden as a playground for the children of the village, both Christian and Moslem.

Our aim is to make life a little more bearable for people who live under very difficult circumstances. We are presently supporting a project that provides transport from the village to the secondary school in Ramallah. This is done by employing one of the taxi drivers in the village, and so not only do the students benefit but assistance is given to the local economy as well.

The present difficulty for the villagers is the construction of the Israeli security wall. 35% of the village land has been forcibly taken to build this wall – even though Aboud lies 14km to the east of the 1967 border between Palestine and Israel. Thousands of olive trees – the main source of income for the villagers – have been uprooted, with devastating impact on their livelihoods. Despite appeals and pressure the illegal construction continues, cutting villagers off from their land and from the main water source for the village.

We are exploring the next project, and Fr Paul will be visiting the village again in May 2008 with a group of parishioners.

The link between our two parishes has given both communities a focus outside their normal horizons and made us aware of our belonging to an international Church. We also raise the awareness of the situation among our families and friends and on the political stage, believing that peace in that part of the world will have far-reaching positive effects on the lives of us all.

Here are some images from Easter, 2006, in Aboudh.
 

The young people of Aboud have put together their own web site, which can be found at: www.hcsn.org/aboudyouth. This is still a 'work in progress', and a few of the internal links are either broken or lead to pages with Arabic text, but there is a great deal of local information on the site.

A number of other Holy Land-related links are to be found on our Links page.
 

• Join in a Diocesan pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Mgr.Tony Rogers and Fr. Paul Maddison have led a number of 8 day pilgrimages to the Holy Land. If you would like details of future pilgrimages, please see the notice in the St. Ives Church porch, speak to Fr Paul or contact him on 01480-462192 or by.
   

• The next pilgrimage is in May 2008 but all places are filled, however why not put you name of the 'Reserve' list.
   

• Set up a monthly Standing Order which will authorise a regular donation. This can be applied to any one of the four specific areas of need which we have outlined, or it can go into the general fund which will be equally split among these areas. Please for the appropriate form, or download it (in Adobe® PDF format) from here.
   

• Make a one off donation. Cash (in an envelope, marked "Holy Land 2003", please) or cheques can be put into any collection at St. Ives, put through the Presbytery letter box, or sent to 19 Needingworth Road, St Ives, Cambs PE27 5JT. Please make cheques payable to: "Holy Land 2003".

• However you make a donation, if you pay UK Income Tax, completing and signing one simple form will allow us to reclaim tax on your donation at the rate of 28p for every pound you give. Please for the appropriate form, or download it (in Adobe® PDF format) from here.
   

• Save your 5p coins. Put a jar in the kitchen or near the phone and put your coins in each day. When your jar is full, bring the coins to us and we’ll count the little devils for you!
   

• Fundraise. You might like to hold a garage sale, cake stall, car wash, coffee morning, sponsored something. You may have a gift or talent that you could use to raise some money – we have already had a ballet concert for the fund.
   

• Download and print out this information leaflet and give it to your friends, work colleagues, and other family members. The more people know about the need and respond to it, the more help we can give.