Ramallah Meeting 2010 Epistle and report

Below is the report from Kathy and Colin South of Mid-Essex AM on their trip to Ramallah in March 2010 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the dedication of the Meeting House and a copy of the consultation Epistle of Ramallah Meeting for 2010

Ramallah Friends Meeting Consultation Epistle 2010

To Friends everywhere

Friends in Ramallah have been celebrating the 100th anniversary of the dedication of their meetinghouse, with the participation of Friends from Norway, Palestine, Sweden, the UK and the US. This was followed by a consultation on the work of the future direction of the Friends International Center in Ramallah. We, the group that has taken part, are deeply grateful for the opportunity to meet for worship in a meetinghouse filled with people from Ramallah, el-Bireh, Jerusalem, and neighboring communities, and filled with the spirit of thanksgiving for the Meeting’s witness in the past through the longstanding work of the Friends Schools, Amari Play School and the American Friends Service Committee.

We were moved in Meeting for Worship to see young Friends enact an episode from the life of John Woolman, in which Woolman, though thirsty, hungry and tired refuses to take drink, eat food or sleep in a bed prepared by a slave. Woolman’s example spoke to the condition of all present, mindful of the painful realities of life under occupation and caught up in conflict.

Woolman’s example continued to speak to us as we met in consultation to discern how to sustain and develop the work of the Friends International Center in Ramallah in partnership with the Ramallah Friends Meeting. 

We heard from Palestinians who are struggling to further democracy and seek consensus among themselves in the face of forces that would divide and disenfranchise them. 

We heard now and earlier from Israelis who are struggling to tell the truth about the occupation to their fellow citizens and the world. 

We heard from Palestinians and Israelis who are working together to end the occupation, lift the siege on Gaza and restore their human and civil rights by nonviolent means.   We have heard in particular calls to international solidarity with these efforts through a nonviolent programme of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

We are filled with gratitude and hope by the witness of these Palestinians and Israelis and are resolved to do our utmost to further the witness and work of Friends in relation to Ramallah, Palestine and Israel and the wider region. 

As Woolman was resolved not to acquiesce to slavery, we are resolved not to be complicit to the many evils of the military occupation. We call on Friends everywhere to uphold and pray for the ongoing witness of the Ramallah Friends Meeting, and to join us in this witness. We ask Friends to discern what, in their own circumstances, they can best do to support those working to end this conflict and bring peace and justice to this troubled region. We ask Friends to consider adopting boycott, divestment and sanctions as we may be led to do, individually or corporately. 

Ramallah, 10th March 2010


On the occasion of the Centenial of Ramallah Friends Meeting House

March 7^th 2010

It was a privilege to represent Britain Yearly Meeting on the occasion of the centennial of Ramallah Friends Meeting House. For us it was a homecoming and a chance to catch up with friends and ‘family’. We noticed the recent building development following the injections of international assistance in the twin towns of El Bireh and Ramallah following our departure in 2004. We had lived and worked in the community for a period of four years in the most challenging and most personally rewarding of times. It is worth putting Friends work in some perspective.

Since the seventeenth century, Friends have been interested in and have visited the lands surrounding the Mediterranean including Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Friends have been concerned to speak the Truth about the Love of God that they had known and experienced through the Light that comes from God and from Christ and was available to all. They were imprisoned, badly treated and abused and led George Fox to read the Quran and know it well enough  to reference it when writing to the Great Turk to ‘call his people to stop oppressing and inhumanely using the English people whom you take captive’.¹

It was with a similar imperative to those early Friends that enabled Eli and Sybil Jones to ask their Meeting in China, Maine, USA in 1867 to liberate them for service in Europe and the Holy Land. They set out in April for Britain on their way to the Middle East. They travelled widely in Britain. Their concern for the Middle East led two Friends, Alfred Fox of Falmouth and Clare Miller of Edinburgh, to join Eli and Sybil Jones in their mission. This party arrived in Beirut in October but following a winter in the Lebanon the party had to return to England in February 1868 for Sybil to recover her health. Palestine, however, had been their goal and Sybil’s health restored, they travelled to Palestine arriving in May 1869.²

In 1869, Ramallah was ‘a Christian village of about three thousand inhabitants’ and in May of that year the women of the village asked for a school for Girls. Boys could be educated at either of three small schools for boys, at the Anglican³, Catholic or Greek Orthodox schools, but there was no provision for girls’ education. London Yearly Meeting agreed to support a concern for providing education for girls in village schools surrounding Ramallah. Meanwhile London Yearly Meeting supported an existing school outside Beirut founded by Theophilus Waldemeier, a German missionary who became a Friend as a direct result of contact with the same travelling party led by Eli and Sybil Jones.

The Friends community in Ramallah in those early years grew as a direct consequence of mission activity sponsored by British friends and was led largely by British Friends until 1888. In 1888, the responsibility for Ramallah Friends schools was given to New England Yearly Meeting to help share the responsibility for mission in the region as London Yearly Meeting’s interest in Foreign missions grew.  American Friends were encouraged to found a Girls School in Ramallah running along the same lines as the existing school in Brummana, Lebanon.

‘A local Friends meeting was already growing in Ramallah but with the advent of the newly created American Friends Mission Board (later through various metamorphoses to become Friends United Meeting), a house was purchased and a monthly meeting organised in 1890 with a membership of thirty-five people. It was laid down within five years as Friends did not feel equal to the task. It was however revived in 1903 and has carried on continuously since that time, it is the only monthly meeting that has ever been set up in Palestine’⁴

The great great grandson of the American Quaker missionary, Timothy B Hussey, who purchased the land for a new stone Meeting House, dedicated on the sixth day of the third month, 1910 was present at the centennial celebrations of that same Meeting House on 7^th May, 2010. His name is also Timothy Hussey. His great great grandfather in that same place had been seventy nine on that same day one hundred years ago.

The banner inside the garden wall of the Meeting House visible from the gate on the main road states ‘Ramallah Friends Meetinghouse – A century of witness: working for justice and peace.’ This is ‘a picture in smoked glass’ of a community that lived through the last days of the Ottoman Empire, the First World War, the British Mandate, the Second World War, United Nations partition, the First Israeli War, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Israeli invasion in 1967, the Israeli occupation and the first Intifada, the Palestinian National Authority under Yasser Arafat, the Gulf war, the Second Intifada, the rout of the town under Operation Defensive Shield and the latest Palestinian struggle for representation in the West Bank. Some of the stories of service to the Community within the walls of the Meeting House are told in ‘Stories from the Ramallah Friends Meeting 1869-2010’ published this year by the Friends International Centre in Ramallah.

Through the worst days of the Second Intifada, the Meeting met in a beautiful room with an arched roof in the Friends Girls School as the Meeting House was in very poor repair and the Meeting House roof was in danger of collapse. Jean Zaru, as Clerk of the Meeting, Nabil Ajlouny and Violet Zarou were the mainstays of the Meeting at this time and loyally met each Sunday when not prevented by illness, travel or curfew. Internationals working at the Friends School, Friends serving with EAPPI or the many international visitors from the USA and Europe frequently an d sometimes regularly bolstered numbers and helped keep the meeting vital and alive as they exchanged news of the latest events and ministered out of love and compassion, faith and hope. For British Friends, Colin and Kathy South, the Meeting was a lifeline during the most difficult of these days.

From 2002 onwards, Jean Zaru and her sons Saleem and Walid with the strong backing of Philadelphia and Baltimore Yearly Meetings brought the old  Meeting House back to life, refurbishing the roof and basic structure, re-establishing the beauty of the stone work, replanting the garden and including a small flat for a resident manager of the newly established Friends International Centre to be based at the Meeting House. Now with the continued support of the Yearly Meetings, it hosts a programme of hospitality to visitors, culture and the arts and a place where meetings can take place to discuss issues of importance to the international community and to the NGO community in Israel/Palestine. It is proving a great venue for concerts and the Centre and Meeting House provide an opportunity for continuing service for Kathy Bergen as Manager who has given many years of her life to working for peace and justice in Palestine.

Sunday March 7^th saw a semi programmed Meeting for Worship well attended by the many internationals who hold the Meeting in affection who Jean refers to as the Meeting’s ‘international members.’ The local Friends’ families were present too. Alas Violet Zarou was not there in body having died in Amman four years ago but her memory was very much alive. Violet who would from time to time search in her handbag and read a quotation that she had been thinking about that week which was always apposite and poignant. Joyce Ajlouny , daughter of Nabil and Violet Ajlouny, is a member and able to be a regular attender as Director of Friends Schools, Ramallah. So Joyce and her three children now help to sustain that core of local Palestinian families that comprise the local Meeting. Ziad, her husband, although not a Friend, offers stable and sound support.

The Meeting began with ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind... ‘a well known hymn with words from the American Quaker poet, John Greenleaf Whittier and ended with A Song of Peace by Lloyd Stone. There was special music written by a local Arabic lyricist and sung by a Palestinian soprano which to a beautiful and haunting melody gave expression to the pain and frustration of this community’s history ending with ‘ My eyes are opened – I find the way, The raging conflict is at peace within my heart, wounds are cleansed with my tears. And in my eyes, you ascend O God, for I know why you have created me’

Greetings from Britain Yearly Meeting and other Yearly Meetings were read as part of ministry in the Meeting during the period of ‘Open Worship’ where our Friends, John and Marjorie Scott, were remembered with affection having served in Ramallah and in Brummana in effective ministry responding with conviction to God’s leadings. The letter of Greeting was given to the Clerk, Jean Zaru at the end of that Sunday gathering.

In the Local Meeting’s epistle to Friends everywhere on the occasion of the 100^th Anniversary, the final paragraph reads

‘As Woolman was resolved not to acquiesce to slavery, we are resolved not to be complicit to the many evils of the military occupation. We call on Friends everywhere to uphold and pray for the ongoing witness of the Ramallah Friends Meeting, and to join us in this witness. We ask Friends to discern what, in their own circumstances, they can do best to support those working to end this conflict and bring peace and justice to this troubled region, We ask Friends to consider adopting boycott, divestment and sanctions as we may be led to do, individually or corporately.’
 

1. ‘Quakers Relations with Muslims in 17^th Century’, Galen R. McNemar Hamann 12.15.09. Galen quotes George Fox (Fox, Vol 6, 85)
2. ‘Friends in Palestine’, Christina Jones, Prinit Press, 1981.
3. Christina mentions two local boys schools…there were in fact three local girls schools..she may not have known about the Anglican Boys School (1857) ref. Riwaq Centre for Architectural Conservation – Ramallah.
4.  ‘Stories from the Ramallah Friends Meeting 1869-2010’ , FICR, 2010