Bethlehem at Night

Bethlehem at night still evokes the picture on the Christmas card. Because now the lighting in the houses is electric, it is easier to map in the darkness of night the clusters of homes and shops where women and men and children live their lives. Dots of light that sweep down from the hills, across the valley and up the slopes again in waves, are like some galaxy that mirror images the stars above.

And there, on the left of this panoramic view, is the brighter light of the Har Homa Israeli settlement. The lights go out one by one below and across the valley as night turns to sleep, for few people need man’s illuminations now. Yet up on the hill that is Har Homa, the garish glare of the security lights become the more incongruous. An eight-metre high concrete wall, a strip of open land so that the movement of any living thing can be observed, and then the harshness of brilliant light that seems to say, “We must be awake and watching all the time”- this all seems reminiscent of a prison.

But who is the prisoner? The Palestinian looks at his I.D. card which tells him where he may go and not go; and work and not work; it governs his life. He thinks of the long waits at the check points in the Wall. He longs for freedom. The Israeli seemingly has no such limitations. But the settler who relies on the Wall and lights is as much a prisoner.

In “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens tells of Scrooge and the Cratchett family –one is rich and one is poor. That is in material wealth. In terms of emotional wealth the Cratchett family wins by a mile. But both are prisoners of their circumstances, though it is Ebenezer Scrooge who has the power to bring about a transformation.

Perhaps the settler, whether he realises it or not, is a prisoner of the fear within himself? The transformation can come.

Let Tiny Tim have the last word, as he does in Dickens’ story – “God bless us, every one.”