Blessings and curses

Yesterday, I joined a group of American Christian tourists, mostly from Ohio and other neighboring states, traveling for 2 weeks in Israel. For the first time in years of existence, this specific tour included a day into the Occupied Territories and a visit of some biblical sites North of Jerusalem. Our first stop was Mount Gerizim by the Palestinian city of Nablus (biblical name: Shechem). Mount Gerizim is regarded as the historical place where Joshua entered the Promised Land with the people of Israel. In Deuteronomy 27:12-13 Moses explains to the people of Israel the ritual they need to perform upon their arrival on the other side of the Jordan River: half the tribes are to stand "on Mount Gerizim to bless the people" and the other half on "Mount Ebal to pronounce curses." Blessings and curses correspond to God’s commandments and Israel’s obedience to them and thus inaugurate Israel's life in the Promised Land.

When you stand on Mount Gerizim, you can see Mount Ebal in the near distance and below, in the valley, you see the city of Nablus/Shechem, where, according to Genesis 12:6-7, Abram "built an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him ... and had given that land to his descendants." Standing on Mount Gerizim, you are standing at the crossroads of many biblical narratives, central to the identity of Israel as a land and a nation. In today’s reality, it has become a place of tensions as one can imagine!

Our little group is standing on Mount Gerizim and facing Mount Ebal, one of the leaders of the group reads for us the curses and blessings listed in Deuteronomy 27:14-28:14, a mini reenactment of the biblical story. No one pays much attention to the broader landscape of this site: behind us, Har Bracha Israeli settlement (http://www.shechem.org/bracha/), below us in the valley, Balata Palestinian refugee camp (http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=109/).

Har Bracha (“mount of blessing”) is an ideological settlement, founded in the early 1980s; today its population approximates 1600 and it occupies 0.60 square kilometers. Its claim to the land is directly based on the biblical narratives of Genesis and Deuteronomy.

Balata refugee camp was founded in 1950 by the U.N. to give temporary housing to Palestinian families who had lost their homes in Jaffa; today, Balata is the largest refugee camp in the West Bank and, with approximately 30’000 people living on 0.25 square kilometers, it is the most densely populated too.

Our little reenactment goes on; the reading of each curse is accompanied by a collective amen as the biblical text requires. I am listening carefully to the curses: what does God condemn so strongly? And then comes the third curse:

Cursed is anyone who moves their neighbor’s boundary stone.
Then all the people shall say, Amen!

No one, I believe, can see the irony of reading such a curse while standing between an Israeli settlement built on occupied land and a Palestinian refugee camp built for people who have lost their land. No one, except for our Palestinian tour guide who, upon hearing this curse, answers with a loud amen ! And, as a small sign of support, I dare say amen with him!