Is Israel real...asks a potential Philistine in Palestine

On Friday 13th March I head off for Israel/Palestine. This is a visit arranged by the WCC affording a small group of religious media people an exposure to life in that area.

And as I sit here now, trying to somehow arrive at a point of preparedness, I wonder how possible that really is...

I was in Israel 25 years ago, and spent a year there. So my first thoughts go to what life was like then and how it will have changed for so many people - both Israeli and Palestinian, Jew, Gentile, Christian, Muslim or peoples of other faiths - will all have had to deal with changes in their environments which I cannot even begin to imagine.

We will be meeting with church leaders, with NGOs, with Palestinian people in Ramallah and Bethlehem and Gaza, as well as with Jewish authorities.

We will be trying to guage the extent of ecumenical and inter-religious initiatives at peace-building and reconciliation, recognising that for lasting peace to ever become a reality in the Middle East, people will need to be - and are - talking to each other and sharing in their common goals.

And so I wonder what lies ahead - I wonder if I can even do justice to the task at hand. I wonder what we here in KwaZulu-Natal can learn from these experiences and initiatives. In a province which not only bears the deep scars of political violence and unrest, but which also tends so often to simmer at the brink all over again.

Why is it that we, as people of faith or not, make choices which lead us to death and destruction, choices which move away from relationally-based alternatives?

What can we do to avoid making these choices over and over again? What new understanding of each other can we begin to cultivate and nurture which will invite us to make life-giving and peace-filled choices - offering everyone a home, a better life and a deeper acceptance of the differences between us?

I wonder.