Holy Land: "tell people at home what you've seen"

(Vatican Radio) Bishops from across Europe and North America are Thursday concluding a visit to the Holy Land during which they visited Syrian refugees in Jordan along with other suffering and vulnerable people. On Wednesday they visited "The University of Bethlehem", the only Catholic University in the West Bank. Veronica Scarisbrick is travelling with the Bishops and sent this report.

"Be truthful, tell people at home what you have seen here". That was the heartfelt appeal of a young student from "The University of Bethlehem", the only Catholic University in the West Bank. A message addressed to his audience: a delegation of Bishops from Europe and North America.

"But what is the truth?" someone in the audience asked.

"The truth he replied, is that we are under occupation, struggling to live in our land where even freedom of movement is denied us". And another student piped up :"Israeli's",she said, ” paint us as terrorists but we are Christians, we are human and we have rights."

The university these students attend, was founded in the aftermath of Pope Paul VI’s visit to the Holy Land in 1964, is supported by the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem , run by the De la Salle Brother , is open to all faiths.

No surprise then to discover that Christian students, here in the little town of Bethlehem where you wake up to the muezzin’s call for prayer and where the Mosque stands opposite the Church of the Nativity, are a minority.

But while the students highlight the bonds of friendship and understanding that develop amongst the members of these two monotheistic faiths at the university, when pressed to describe their relations with the third of these faiths present in the Holy Land the answer is not so positive.

As one student put it: “How can you be friends with our Israeli peers? I haven’t met any and anyway what would happen when I’d encounter him at one of the check points?...

Clearly the world these students encounter is one of barriers, where human rights are trampled on.

But the good news is that there are people on the other side of the wall who have made it their mission in life to defend human rights. Among those I met with the bishop’s delegation is Daniel Sherman, an Israeli from the human rights organisation B’Tselem which recently documented on video, evidence of human rights abuse. Abuse taking place in the West Bank where two and a half million Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation. While all the while settlers live in enclaves of Israeli law within the same territory.

The so called “apartheid wall” here as well as the settlements on Palestinian land that have stepped up since Palestine recently became a non- member observer state at the United Nations are among the more visible aspects of the spiral of violence here in the Holy Land where Jesus was born , died and resurrected.

Clearly all parties here wish to live in peace but how do you stop that spiral of violence? The call, of the Apostolic Nuncio of the Holy See to Israel, Giuseppe Lazzarotto, to the delegation of the Holy Land Coordination Coordination on their 13^th annual pilgrimage echoed that of the students at Bethlehem University. The call to bring the news of the Holy Land back home with them. The Holy Land the Archbishop stressed, needs the support of the international community. Listen