Dinner in the West Bank with a former Palestinian insurgent and his family

My new friend Haled is the largest Palestinian you will ever see, I’d defy someone to produce a bigger one in the West Bank. He is solid muscle, smokes like a chimney, has a voice deeper than Andre the Giant, and is also very kind and loves to joke around. The Shevet Achim building is at least 120 years old and Haled has been one of the primary fellows involved in restoring the property. After a few days of talking now and then he invited me out of the blue to his house for dinner; he lives in a suburb of Bethlehem in the West Bank. I had eaten a tremendous lunch but I couldn’t pass up this offer. After we got through the checkpoint we took some long windy roads to Haled’s house which he had built himself. The building wasn’t much but they seemed to be doing ok, they had a fairly new computer and cable TV. Their home was adorned head to toe with Christmas nic naks and decorations including a tree (Bethlehem is very proud of Christmas). I met his wife and two children then Haled, Jonathan (the founder of Shevet Achim who I needed to get back over the border) and myself ate dinner shortly thereafter.

His wife comes from Bagdad, so we had a large selection of fine Iraqi cuisine much of which I can’t remember the name off (or pronounce for that matter). The main course is difficult to describe, but it had the texture of pureed scalloped potatoes, and a milder potato taste. With that we had humus, schnitzel, vegetables, pita bread to dip in everything, and some sweet wine. We sat on the couch for a dessert of Iraqi tea and some home baked confections, and then Arabic coffee to top everything off. After having such a large lunch and now this early dinner I had eaten nearly to the point of being sick to avoid being rude. The dinner conversation was perhaps more normal than you would expect, as seems to be the tendency I’ve noticed in the West Bank. We talked about how he and his wife met, about how their kids were doing in school, about how he and his family became believers, all while their boys played Harry Potter on the computer. The only difference is rather than becoming a Christian and no longer doing drugs or being in a gang as in America, Haled gave up violent means of opposition to what is going on in Palestine. Haled talked about how he could no longer watch the news because it kept him awake at night knowing what was happening to people in Gaza in the same way any of us would if we knew friends or relatives in a warzone. The Palestinian people are the same as us, but their circumstances are much different.

Without taking sides myself I think a lot fewer American Christians would side so unilaterally with Israel if they realized how many Christians like Haled and his family there are in the West Bank and just how like them they are.