My soul looks to God as a nightguard watches for the morning. – Psalm 130:6
I used to think the night guard was watching for the dawn with eagerness, excitement, and trepidation.
I just did a night shift watching out for army vans and settlers in the village of Umm al-Khair.
Now I know that the night guard simply greets the dawn with a weary sigh.
The last time I was here, we came to see the ruins of their destroyed homes. After we left, settlers and military shot at them.
In the short time since, the settlers have ramped up their aggression. They come in large, fanatical groups to terrorise the neighbourhood.
Night is a time when they feel most at risk. They also now have the added fear that the army, which is now entirely comprised of military reservists from the Hebron settlements, will come and carry out late night arrests.
So the locals stay awake, watching. They say they cannot sleep anyway. If they shut their eyes, fear is waiting in the dark.
The Talmud teaches that there is a state that is neither asleep nor awake. A rabbinic colleague once compared this to breastfeeding a newborn in the night. Now I know another version of this non-sleep. Fear.
I could not sleep either. We were supposed to sleep in shifts of a few hours. I lay down for about four hours.
A local boy stayed up with us to practise his English through the night. He wants to go to university. He hopes he will have passed his exams, but he’s worried, because he was distracted during the maths test, as his house had just been bulldozed.
We watched for every vehicle, every sign of activity, praying that the night would be “boring.”
When dawn broke, the children flooded into the playground where we had been camping out. I spun them round on the merry-go-round and pushed them on the swings.
A five-year-old came up with a cheeky grin and wanted to tell one of the international activists something. She took out an app on her phone that translated for hi.: “Gaza is my family, they are being bombed by Israel.”
In the light of day, I could see the human impact of the occupation. Kids – normal, sweet kids – who already know they are under siege.
Destroyed homes. Murals on walls professing the village’s resilience. Women cooking breakfast and men pouring cups of tea for activists who stayed the night.
Dawn will come to this sacred scrubland.
I know that morning will one day come, after decades upon decades of occupation and war.
But daybreak will not be the moment when all is set right. It will simply be when we take stock of what happened in the night.
In the daylight, we will see all the bodies of repeated catastrophes and finally be able to mourn them.
When dawn comes, we will see all that has been destroyed, and we will realise how much work has to be done to heal and repair.
I will wait for morning to come to Palestine-Israel just like the night guard waits for the first rays of daylight: restlessly, anxiously, hoping there will be enough remaining to begin the processes of reconciliation and rebuilding.
Dawn will surely come, but that will only be the beginning.
Wait, O Israel, for God, for God holds love and redemption. It is God who will redeem Israel from all their sins. – Psalm 130:7-8
Sim Lev 