Church members urge intervention in West Bank

Key points:

• In a June 25 letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the California-Nevada Conference shared its concern about the ‘tragedy unfolding’ in the Holy Land.
• The letter was authorized by the annual conference last year when it passed a resolution calling for an end to Israeli annexation and occupation of the West Bank.
• Since 2009, the conference has supported Friends of Wadi Foquin, an organization that partners United Methodists with the besieged Palestinian village.
• A resident of Wadi Foquin said the relationship has helped the village survive.

Building on years of partnership with a small village in the West Bank, United Methodists in California and Nevada have appealed to the U.S. government to put a halt to the “spiritually bankrupt and catastrophic situation” unfolding in villages in the Holy Land.

In a June 25 letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the California-Nevada Conference acknowledges the need to end violence in Gaza and wars in Iran and Lebanon.

“But we equally share our urgent concern that the tragedy unfolding in the West Bank and East Jerusalem not be ignored as eyes are fixed elsewhere in the region,” said the letter from the Rev. Akesa Fakava, secretary of the conference.

“Representing nearly 45,000 church members in more than 280 congregations and fellowships in our region, we are gravely concerned about the intensified inequity and unsustainable reality for both Palestinians and Israelis,” the letter stated. “Immediate and effective U.S. political diplomacy can change this disastrous reality and salvage peace before more violence is shed and dispossession of Palestinian land is complete.”

The letter was authorized by the annual conference last year when it passed a resolution calling for an end to Israeli annexation and occupation of the West Bank, where the security situation of Palestinian communities is rapidly deteriorating.

Six people were killed in fighting July 24 when a settler militia attacked the village of Tell, near Nablus in the northern West Bank. In response, Israeli soldiers detained dozens of Palestinians, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, called for the villages in the West Bank to “be treated like Beit Hanoun in Gaza,” which has been devastated in bombing raids.

“While people’s attention is focused on Gaza, and rightly so, the annexation of the West Bank is accelerating,” said the Rev. Michael Yoshii, co-chair of Friends of Wadi Foquin, an organization founded in 2009 that partners United Methodists with the besieged Palestinian village of Wadi Foquin.

Located five miles southwest of Bethlehem, Wadi Foquin was destroyed by the Israeli army in 1948, but residents returned to the lush valley two decades later to rebuild. Today its population of just over 1,000 people is squeezed between the Green Line and expanding Israeli settlements of Beitar Illit and Tsur Hadassah. Besides having valuable farmland repeatedly confiscated by the settlers, sewage from the hilltop settlements flows down into the village.

The villagers have protested the land confiscations and abuse by settlers, but without success. As a June report by Amnesty International noted, “settler violence is not an aberration but an integral part of an organized state policy.”

Since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the situation has grown more desperate.

“Over recent years, whenever the situation worsens in Gaza, the land confiscations and raids on Palestinian homes in the West Bank accelerate. The facts on the ground combine with Israel’s version of Jim Crow laws to cement the annexation in place,” Yoshii told UM News.

Yoshii, pastor emeritus of Buena Vista United Methodist Church in Alameda, California, said his group is particularly worried about the Jerusalem Metropolitan Bill, introduced in the Israeli Knesset in 2025. It would annex huge settlement blocks, considered illegal under international law, into the city of Jerusalem, further squeezing Palestinian communities like Wadi Foquin and Silwan, an East Jerusalem neighborhood where the Israeli government has been demolishing the homes of Palestinian families to make way for a biblical theme park.

Supporters say the conference letter was timed to support a U.S. congressional effort to modify U.S. policy in the region.

“We wanted to bring the voice of The United Methodist Church into the conversation,” said the Rev. Emily Lin, a pastor on family leave who serves as co-chair of Friends of Wadi Foquin.

“We’ve been passing resolutions about settlements for decades. Our words will have more impact if we reach out to decision-makers and people who can actually influence the facts on the ground.”

The partnership was begun 17 years ago with help from Janet Lahr Lewis, then a United Methodist missionary with the Board of Global Ministries serving as the Methodist Liaison in Palestine and Israel.

“Janet believed that there were people there who would love to get to know us, and that we would love to get to know them. From that beginning, the relationship has flourished,” Yoshii said.

Over the years, Friends of Wadi Foquin has helped the village maintain a kindergarten and a covered football field. It has provided beehives and agricultural tools and created a playground in the center of the village where children could play safely. Several United Methodists have gone to Wadi Foquin to help villagers harvest olives, while, closer to home, some group members have worked to cut off weapons shipments to Israel.

Lin, a native of Taiwan who lived in Gaza in 1998 as a mission intern with Global Ministries, says the relationship provides a healthy model of mission.

“Our partnership with the village is a place of conversation, where we bring to the table who we are and our blind spots, and we often discover that what we think will be helpful may not be the best way forward. We’ve had hard conversations, but in doing so we clarify what the village is asking of us and how we can best respond,” she said.

According to one resident of Wadi Foquin, the relationship has helped the village survive.

“Because of our friendship with the United Methodists, we feel we have a voice. We have people who care about us, who are concerned about our safety, about our future, about justice in the world. When there is a crisis, we have someone we can call who will listen to us,” said the villager.

The person asked not to be identified for fear of retribution from Israeli security forces. “If you appear in the media you will be questioned or tortured or sometimes held for months, just for giving an interview,” the person told UM News.

In the almost three years since the Hamas attack, the villager said the West Bank “has become like a big prison.”

“We lost our freedom. We no longer have control over our property. We lost our jobs. Ninety percent of us have no income. There are more soldiers now and they search our houses whenever they want,” the villager said.

“And the settlers have become more aggressive. They do whatever they want, and nobody stops them. Nobody questions them. The settlers come and destroy our crops and cut our trees. They build roads all around us. And it’s accelerating, because nobody is watching what’s happening here. It’s a very small and minor part of the world compared to what’s going on in Gaza or other places. But it’s our home.”

The United Methodist partnership has helped the villagers know someone is watching.

“Our friendship is a matter of survival. They help us survive the occupation because they help us have hope,” the villager said.

Bishop Sandy Olewine, today the episcopal leader of the California-Nevada Conference, once served as a United Methodist missionary in Israel and Palestine. She said the mission model offered by the Friends of Wadi Foquin is founded on personal connection.

“People in our conference and in Wadi Foquin know each other by name. People have stayed in the village and have built a partnership with them. The struggles and the injustice that the people in the village experience are not random stories, easily forgotten, but rather stories of our neighbors, our family. We hear them with urgency because of that abiding relationship,” Olewine said.

Jeffrey is a freelance photojournalist who lives in Oregon. A former United Methodist missionary, he is a founder of Life on Earth Pictures.

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