English February 4, 2021

 

Sabeel Wave of Prayer

 4.2.21

 

This week’s Kumi Now online meeting on Tuesday, the 2nd of February, at 6pm, (Jerusalem Time) will focus on the discrimination faced by Palestinian citizens of Israel. These citizens make up more than twenty per cent of the population of Israel, but are treated as second class citizens. Israel sees itself first and foremost as a Jewish state and affords fewer economic, educational and social opportunities to the Palestinians living there. The Israeli government has continued to support the restrictive Family Unification Law which deliberately limits the number of Palestinians allowed to hold Israeli citizenship.

 

•    Lord, we pray for an end to the discriminatory policies enforced by the Israeli government on Palestinian citizens. Lord, we turn to the words of Psalm146 in our prayers:

‘Blessed is he whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them,’ (Ps.146:5-6)

Lord, in your mercy... hear our prayers.

 

The United Nations’ Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, (OCHA), has reported a high level of violence committed by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the two week period from the 5th to the 18th of January 2021. Six farmers were injured in two separate incidents, near Nablus and Ramallah, as they were working on their land.

Settlers vandalised dozens of fruit bearing trees on Palestinian land and attacked Palestinian vehicles by throwing rocks and stones at them from the roadside.

·       Lord, we pray for an end to this spiral of indiscriminate violence launched by Israeli settlers on Palestinians without restriction from the Israeli authorities.

          ‘Blessed is he whose hope is in the Lord,...who keeps faith forever,’(Ps146:6)

          Lord, in your mercy ... hear our prayers.

 

A six-year-old Palestinian boy named Majd and his three-year-old brother, Jad, were injured on Thursday, the 21st of January, when they were travelling with their parents in their car near Ramallah. A group of masked Israelis flagged the car down on the roadside and started to attack the family, throwing stones at the windows and trying to open the car doors. Their father, Alaa Swafta, acted quickly to drive off at speed. The boys were cut and bruised and traumatised by the attack, but the parents had feared for their lives.

 

•    Lord, we pray for the protection of Palestinians and their children from racist attacks by Israeli settlers.

‘Blessed is he whose hope is in the Lord...who executes justice for the oppressed,’(Ps146:7) Lord, in your mercy ... hear our prayers.

 

On Wednesday, the 27th of January, Israeli forces uprooted hundreds of trees in the area of Einun, east of Tubas, in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli Civil Administration claimed that these trees, which had been planted several years ago, were uprooted because they were now deemed to be growing on land designated as a ‘military zone’.

 

•    Lord, we pray for an end to the destruction of thousands of trees on Palestinian land and for the threat to the livelihood of so many Palestinian farmers.

‘Blessed is he whose hope is in the Lord...who gives food to the hungry,’ (Ps146:7). Lord, in your mercy... hear our prayers                                  

 

 

Israeli soldiers escorted bulldozers to the mosque in the Bedouin city of Azwadeen, east of Yatta, near Hebron on Wednesday, the 27th of January. The mosque was demolished less than two weeks after demolition notices had been posted there and on a local school. On the same morning soldiers forced their way in to dismantle two shelters used by farmers for their cattle in the Khan al-Ahmar village, east of Jerusalem, without issuing any demolition orders.

 

•    Lord, we pray for an end to the demolition and destruction wrought on the Palestinian people by the Israeli authorities.

“The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;” (Ps146:8).

 Lord, in your mercy… hear our prayers.

 

Fu’ad Joudah was on his way to work in Israel with a group of other Palestinian men on Sunday morning, the 24th of January. As they were about to pass through a gate in the separation wall, Israeli soldiers fired tear gas canisters at them. Fu’ad inhaled the toxic tear gas, suffered a heart attack and then died. He was a young man with no health difficulties. He leaves behind a family of four children, the eldest of whom is ten years old.

 

•    Lord, we pray for the family of Fu’ad as they grieve his loss.

‘The Lord watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless,’ (Ps.146:9). Lord, in your mercy… hear our prayers.

 

•    We join with the World Council of Churches in their prayers for the countries of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Western Sahara and Tunisia. Lord, in your mercy… hear our prayers.