Catholic Relief Services
Holy Land situation's 'solution involves everybody'
Marylynn G. Hewitt, SFO of The Michigan Catholic
Published March 9, 2007
Photos b Marylynn G. Hewitt, SFO
Bader Ali and Fatima Mostafa Al-Adarah, with three of their four children, lived in a cave before this 344 square-foot home was built on their property in Bani Naim near Hebron. CRS worked with a brick factory that donated bricks in exchange for laborers for new homes as part of the food-for-work program. | Jerusalem — Thomas Garofalo fingers the scar under his left eye he got when he was 3. He tells of falling down his grandmother's stairs when his parents and four older siblings were volunteering in Appalachia with the Christian Family Movement. The scar is one visible impression that time had on him. His life's work is another.
"The stories they told were so rich for me," he recalls. "Hearing my brothers and sisters talking about this experience and how it opened up their minds" encouraged him to do likewise.
Now 41, he's the Catholic Relief Services representative in Palestine and oversees offices in Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank cities of Bethlehem and Hebron. The annual collection in the Archdiocese of Detroit for Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops' international relief and development agency, is March 17-18.
This area is called the Holy Land, a sacred place to Catholics and other Christians, and to Muslims and Jews. It is also in turmoil.
Some of the things we see on this trip are standard evening news fare — clashes between Israelis and Palestinians and between the Palestinian factions of Fatah and Hamas.
And other things we see in the areas where CRS is working seem to get little or no attention in media outlets:
- the plight of those whose villages have been taken over and who now live in densly-populated refugee camps;
- fencing over the walkways in the old city of Hebron to prevent garbage thrown from Israeli settlers who live atop Palestinian shops and dwellings below from hitting pedestrians;
- the compassion of some of the Israeli human rights organizations working to educate others on the difficulties caused by the separation wall and checkpoints;
- the hope of youth empowered to address issues of concern for them in their villages;
- the look of pride on the faces of parents who had been living in caves and now have a small home made of concrete block; and
- a computer lab for a cyber-bridges projects where young people in refugee camps stay in contact with youths in the United States.
Wire fencing runs atop the market area in Hebron's old city catching garbage tosses from Israeli settlers who live above the Palestinian shops and dwellings. | "We get so focused on the clash of cultures idea and international terrorism and we're terrified of that," says Garofalo. "We have to be able to see the face of other people — and we're just not seeing it," in the media. He adds, "I get the privilege of seeing them every day."
He's been serving here since Sept. 11, 2005 and was with CRS in Cuba 1998-2001 and in Serbia 2001-2005. Working in the Holy Land has its own challenges, Garofalo says. "The most distressing thing is how the situation is not understood or even an issue of concern for some people outside. It's changed a little bit. I think some people are realizing that the situation is very dire." He refers to a recent study conducted by the U.N. that states 49 percent of Palestinians in the territories are undernourished and are living on less than $2 a day.
"I don't think people would accept that with such equanimity as they do here because the conflict has made it somehow OK to put that humanitarian situation on a second tier of concern somehow."
Thomas M. Garofalo of CRS talks to guards at a site where the separation wall is being built. Fr. Firas Arideh, pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows in Aboud, listens and worries since the wall will prevent some of his parishioners from reaching their olive orchards. | Catholic Relief Services, who assists based on the need-not-creed philosophy, is feeding 125,000 people a month in the southern part of the West Bank and Jericho and Palestinian section of Jerusalem.
Emergency food aid is only a small part of the CRS work. They are also concentrating on development issues with a network of other agencies having similar goals. "Together you can effect development," Garofalo says. "It's not so important, for example, that we have a project with youth, it's more important how it connects to other things that are also supporting development in civil society and the cultivation of democratic values among young people."
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CRS
The annual collection for Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops' international relief and development agency, is March 17-18.
What: Humanitarian assistance in 99 countries on five continents.
Mission: To assist the poor and disadvantaged, leveraging the teachings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to alleviate human suffering, promote development of all people, and to foster charity and justice throughout the world.
For more information:
Visit www.crs.org. | "This is not a religious conflict. It's about politics," says the New Jersey native and lifelong Catholic. "'Our primary participants in the programs are Palestinian needy people but the solution involves everybody here.
"It's not just CRS, but the Church's mission too to foster this kind of connectedness and solidarity."
Involvement in this area of the world is critical, he says. "As the official overseas relief and development agency, we have a duty to represent the 65 million Catholics in the U.S. in these concrete projects of development and humanitarian response. It's because there are so many other organizations that we can partner with and that we can work together on advocacy that makes this have a hope of success in terms of actually providing aid and in also in presenting a united front on what the realities are to those in the U.S.
"There is so much work to be done."
Editor's note: Marylynn G. Hewitt, SFO, was one of four journalists traveling to the Holy Land with Catholic Relief Services as a winner of the Egan Award for Journalistic Excellence. The trip was to let journalists see the work of CRS.
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