What about the special plight of children living under occupation?

As Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip enter their 54th year under Israeli military occupation, lack of stability and violence continue to affect many Palestinian children. While living under military occupation causes suffering to all Palestinians, it is especially hard on the children. They face persistent, serious human rights violations and violence, and they suffer from physical and emotional trauma. Generations of children in the West Bank and Gaza have grown up living in refugee camps and behind walls. Generations of children have waited at checkpoints to go to school and return home. Generations of children have seen young Israeli soldiers humiliate their parents. Generations of children have seen their families’ homes or businesses ruined, their land stolen, their farms and orchards destroyed. Generations of children have been arrested by Israeli forces and prosecuted in an Israeli military detention system known for its widespread mistreatment of children.

The witness of Scripture grants children a privileged place in the embrace of Jesus and the vision of the beloved community. Jesus welcomed children and blessed them; he called us to become childlike in our reception of the Realm of God. Jesus himself was born in Palestine under Roman occupation and, according to Matthew’s Gospel, escaped the slaughter of innocents by becoming a refugee in Egypt before returning to the land of his birth where he came of age. To read the Gospels is to become aware of both the blessing and the vulnerability of children. It is to know that God’s love was revealed in a child and, in particular, a child facing injustice and violence.

Those who falsely see Israel and Palestine as military equals are standing in the way of justice and peace. They refuse to acknowledge the gross imbalance of military and police power between Israelis and Palestinians, or to recognize that occupation affects the occupied more than the occupier. Those who see the failed peace processes in Israel and Palestine and give up on a solution are acting as if God is impotent and historical change is impossible. To those who don’t have the vision or energy to pursue this issue of justice, we respond, “With God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).