Bethlehem University - BU News Winter-Spring 2003

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ISRAELI INCURSION BRINGS BU TO A STANDSTILL AGAIN

It was almost too good to be true: nearly eleven weeks of uninterrupted classes; classes with almost perfect attendance; research projects going forward; mid-terms successfully completed; and the dates for the second unit exams set. This could have been a university anywhere in the world, a few transportation problems aside. Then it happened. Thursday, November 21st saw students and staff leaving the university wondering when they would see each other again. A wave of panic buying and stockpiling of goods hit the neighborhood stores in Bethlehem and its environs. The night saw an early eerie, apprehensive silence spread over the city. And, according to expectations, the army returned. Tanks and jeeps patrol the streets regularly, broadcasting the all-too-familiar announcement: “It is forbidden to leave your homes.” From Friday morning, November 22nd through the third week of December, there have been only ten liftings of the curfew, sometimes for as little as four hours. The normally crowded campus is now home only to the Brothers’ community and a few security guards. Dates for examinations pass with tests untaken; the dates proposed for assignments and class activities on syllabi pass without teachers and students meeting. Courses continue on in an imperfect fashion, with those students lucky enough to have the technology communicating with their lecturers via e-mail or telephone. Hardest hit are those programs which offer in-service training for teachers and catechists. Since these courses ordinarily meet on Friday and given that November 15th was a national holiday, a full-month‘s hiatus will be the best teachers and students can hope for. All courses and programs are compromised in some way by this invasion. Imagine the difficulty of trying to progress in English when prevented from practicing the language. Try learning advanced mathematics without the assistance of an experienced and knowledgeable instructor. Fieldwork in all pre-service programs like Nursing and Social Work has become impossible. Academic issues notwithstanding, students must try to keep their minds on their work while confined to crowded homes, wondering if their supply of food will last until the next lifting and whether the night to come will bring armed soldiers to their doors. “ Quomodo sedet sola civitas”-a line from the old Latin service of Tenebrae for Holy Thursday comes back to us: “how lonely sits the city that was full of people.” It was an image the Book of Lamentations used for the abandoned Jerusalem of Jeremiah’s day. It is all too appropriate also for the Bethlehem of December, 2002.

BU News Winter-Spring 2003

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