Tent of Nations

One of the highlights of my journey around the Holy Land so far was my visit to Daoud and Daher Nassar's farm near the village of Nahali. When the IDF first came to their door in 1991 they were served an order to vacate three quarters of their family's land, but being one of the few families to have been issued and retained their title deeds from the Ottoman era, they've managed to hang on until now.

Meanwhile, illegal settlements surround the farm, and Daher told me they never leave the farm unattended. If a settler managed to park a caravan on their land the legal wrangling would become a whole lot harder. Settlers have occasionally vandalised their property. On one occasion, settlers uprooted 250 trees, but a Jewish organisation in the UK supplied 250 saplings to replace them.

Their story of living under a territorial sword of Damocles is by no means unique here, but their response really is. As you enter the farm there is a sign saying "We refuse to be enemies". They host children's summer camps, reconciliation work with Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals, and run a women's centre in the village down the hill. For these activities they have called their farm the Tent of Nations.

All of this is in the context of a sense of interdependence with the land. It is this reconceptualisation of the struggle to retain land, not simply as territory or property but as the very source of life, that strikes me as particularly profound. In the Christian narrative, the bond with the land is one of our few fundamental human callings, and it's something that the Nassars proudly fulfil. I believe anyone who senses that the modern world has torn them from the land could learn a way of living at Tent of Nations, the 'political' ramifications of which could be transformative anywhere. But in Palestine it is the gospel.