Young people here are amazing

I typed up this brief interview for a friend and I thought I would share it with you. These guys are awesome, and I wish the whole world could get to spend time with them the way I am lucky enough to do each week. Enjoy!


Johnny Ballout, Joanne Jamal, Najie Slaiby and Jessica Ballout have been friends for a long time. They come together weekly at the Wi’am Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center for trainings, trauma coping, workshops and discussion groups. Growing up in Bethlehem has taught them a great deal about the importance of family and friends, faith and hope, forgiveness and freedom. We recently sat together and talked for a little while about their lives. These four remarkable teenagers bravely and graciously invited me into their minds and hearts. I pray their words will challenge and encourage you – that you will be moved as I was, that you will embrace them and their experiences.

We began our conversation by talking about some of the difficulties and challenges that teenagers are faced with each day in Bethlehem.

Joanne (17) and Jessica (16) responded almost immediately that the curriculum they study in school is extremely demanding. Though they are on Summer vacation now, they tell me that during the year they do not have much free time. Their time away from school is occupied with studies. “All of my life is exams,” says Joanne, “we wake up, we go to school, we come home to study, we go to bed. And then we get up the following day to do the same thing all over again.”
Johnny (15) agrees that one of the most challenging things for youth is the monotany of the daily routine. “We have no where to go to have fun. We love our families and we don’t mind to stay at home, but we are teenagers. We get bored and we get restless.”
This pattern of staying home is also very much influenced by the current political reality. “Our parents are afraid for us to leave the home. Especially after dark, it is not a good idea to go outside.” Because the IDF enters the Bethlehem area daily, many teenagers here feel they must take extra precautions if they want to go out into the streets or even walk over to a friend’s house. One never knows when the army might appear. “My brother (who is 15) and his friends were walking around one night at about 9:30. The soldiers came and took him. They released him a few hours later, but still it was very scary for all of us.”
Najie (17) concludes, “We feel like we are in a big prison. We cannot go anywhere. Even to try to travel to Jericho is difficult. It is like we are running inside of a wheel – always running, but always the same thing in front of us and nowhere else to go. They say that it is only teenagers who are older than 16 who need permits to travel to Jerusalem. But even if we don’t need one, or even if we receive one we still have to find an adult with a permit who can go with us.” The boys last travelled to Jerusalem five months ago, but for the girls it was much longer – one year for Jessica and three years for Joanne.

Given these difficult circumstances, I asked them about their hopes and dreams for the future.

“People ask this question a lot, and it is good for us to talk about our dreams,” says Joanne. “First of all, we want to live in peace. We want our freedom, and we want to live like teenagers do in the rest of the world. We want to travel, to see how other teens live, to see what it is like to live with your freedom. It is hard to be hopeful here. Even though we dream to go to university, there are not that many opportunities after someone graduates here. Everyone graduates in all the same fields so it is really difficult to find a job.”
Johnny says that he wants to be an architect and he wants to study in Paris, “If we want to have more opportunities, then we have to go outside of the country.” Jessica says that she dreams of travelling too and that she hopes to travel one day. “But first we want them to take away the checkpoints so that we can travel in our own country. We want to visit other parts of Palestine,” she states. Joanne adds that she would love to go to the beach, to Haifa or to Eilat. And Najie replies, “Even this idea is difficult here. We want to go places, but we should go to the beach in Gaza. We have a beach and we don’t need to go to Haifa. We could be in Palestine and be at the beach. This would be better.”
“But I think the future will be very bad here,” Najie continues. “Even if we study abroad, we cannot come back here and work in our field. We do not want to go away, but what will we do here? Where will we work? I don’t really have much hope.”
Jessica adds one more important point before we move on to the next question, “We want people outside of Palestine to know that we are not terrorists. We are kind and loving and there are so many wonderful people around us.”

Wanting to hear more about their impressions of friends and neighbors, we concluded our time together by talking about faith – personal faith as Christians, and the relationships between Christians and Muslims in Bethlehem.

Joanne is the first to speak: “We are in the Christian family and it is all Christians together who teach us how to love one another. Our parents raised us to forgive each other. This is what we try to do. Sometimes it is hard because people do not realize that Palestinians are not just Muslims, but Christians too. But even though we are the minority here, our Muslim friends are kind people… and they are suffering just like us.”
“In our faith, justice is also important,” states Johnny. Jessica adds that all Christians in Bethlehem are very proud to live in the place where Christ was born. Najie explains that “many people need help here (in Bethlehem). We learn that the more that you give, the more that G-d gives. It is G-d’s will for us to help others… Most of my friends are Muslim and I like them very much. They help me realize how to face my problems and struggles. We learn from each other. Sometimes we place ourselve into groups of just Christians or just Muslims, but that is normal. We are all still friends.”
One last hope from Joanne expresses in a beautiful way the experience of these teenagers. “We hope that other people will have the faith not to kill us or shell us or shoot at us… that they will have the faith to stop arresting so many people. I hope they will have the faith to know just what they are doing… because we are human beings and we have our rights… We are human beings too.” I pray we will all encourage the hopes of these young men and women, and that we will work to create a new reality where hope will spring forth in abundance.

Peace from Palestine,
Ashley