Why beer matters.

Our day begins with a trip outside of Jerusalem to the "capital" of the Palestinian west bank area, Ramallah. On the way though we stop in a small christian Palestinian village where a brewery has been started as a Palestinian enterprise. This Palestinian family wanted to start a business to bring the brothers back from the foreign countries they had moved to to be educated etc. They desperately wanted their children to come home and so together they started a brewery to make a local beer that would compete with the only other local beer that is Israeli . The challenge is though, that 98% of the area is Muslim and therefore prohibited from drinking ! They have done an admirable job in creating a good beer and getting it into the market. They have worked with local farmers and are trying to contribute to the local economy to build up resistance to the occupation in tis way. Beer tasting at 10 am...an excellent start to the day!

We also toured around the village of Taybeh and visited the remnants of an orthodox Byzantine church ( again commemorating a site Helena designated on the pilgrim route) . Also in the village is an old house built many centuries ago in the style that hadn't changed for hundreds of years and is similar to the kind of houses that were around in the biblical times. Basically the living area is built up on top of and into a cave structure and the animals live below and the humans above. This house was only abandoned a inhabited home for centuries, in the last decade.

From here we go to Ramallah, a huge thriving city in many respects and we meet up with Cathy Bergan who has been connected with Palestinians through the Mennonites church for over 3 decades. She speaks to us about her love of the land and it's people and the sorrow she feels in the slow process of justice and human rights being extended to the Palestinians . She tells more stories about what it means to live here in the midst of the occupation. For example, in the summer, in order for the Jewish settlements to have all the water they want and to continue to play control games with Palestinians, water is only turned on to flow to Ramallah for 2 days a week...sometimes on a predictable schedule, sometimes not. This means that the population must find ways to store water for daily use for the 5 days in between. Thus all Palestinian homes have large black water tanks on their roofs to fill up to use for the 5 days each week there is no water. This includes businesses as well. It just one of many ways Israel controls the daily lives of Palestinians. This is a story we have heard many times from many in the occupied territories.

Again the journey to and from has us having to negotiate the Wall and the numerous check points set up by Israel.

In the evening we head back through the wall to the Bethlehem area to see a concert put on by a children and youth choir and orchestra. They perform beautifully and it is moving to see them involved in music to the depth and degree that they are. The atmosphere is joyous, the theatre built by the Palestinians is amazing and new. In the music there is both a cathartic expression of the pain and the hope by those on stage. Yet overshadowing it all is a new threat to annex the land and the development here by Israel even though it is all on Palestinian land.

Tomorrow we head to Hebron - a volatile area .