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Daily Life on the West Bank...
As someone once noted, “The Christian Arabs are squeezed into a very tough position. They are not respected or trusted by the Israeli Jews because of their Arab ancestry, and they are despised by most fellow Arabs who believe they (the Christians Arab) have abandoned the Muslim religion. The situation for the Christian Arabs living on the West Bank is critical and sometimes life threatening.”
For those living on the West Bank, you wake up each morning wondering whether the entrance in and out of your village has a roadblock or not. The is important to know because a roadblock will prevent or delay you from taking a bus to your work place or shopping trip or school. For the women, shopping for the necessities of life becomes an uncertainty where you never know whether the trip will take 30 minutes or 3 hours.
When you do make it to your destination, you need to be quick with your purchases in order to get home to feed your family. For the men, they are away most of the day working (if they are fortunate to find work). Jobs are scarce, with 75% unemployment, and if you are able to find one, you never know how long it will last.
Medical resources are scarce and expensive with little or no health insurance to my knowledge. Winters in some areas can be quite cold with the added burden of inadequate or costly heating.
In the backdrop of these uncertainties and deprivations, life continues in an adaptive and inventive way. Here in the USA, we have the freedom to live and plan our lives. There on the West Bank, it is not so much living from day to day, or even hour to hour, but more essentially from minute to minute.
Weddings, on the other hand, are a big family affair and often relatively lavish whereby the whole family clan gathers together and pays for the cost of it. As a rule, the couple cannot be married until the husband has first built or purchased a house. With the bleak financial situation, this process can take many years. Lifeline Outreach is committed to reaching out to these people in ways that would alleviate to some extent the harshness of daily living in a land in political turmoil. Though just a drop in the bucket, Lifeline sees this as an opportunity to share something of the heart of God in reaching out to a people who would not otherwise necessarily receive such a helping hand. |
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