Greetings from our Ramallah Monthly Meeting!

Located in the heart of downtown Ramallah, the Meeting has been a welcome part of and witness to the Palestinian community for 95 years. Recently, we have made a new investment in hope.

It is with heartfelt gratitude that I share with you the very good news that, after many years of being unable to use the building due to damage from regional conflict, the restoration of our meetinghouse is complete; furthermore it was re-dedicated and re-opened in a very touching ceremony this past March.

Friends, we have invested in hope not just by renovating the historic meetinghouse itself, but also through the establishment of the Friends International Center (FICR). The Meeting will continue with its commitment to inclusive worship. However, through the programs of the FICR we will be enabled to offer a more concerted ministry of hospitality and dedicated safe space for a diversity of groups to gather ­groups who share the common goals of building a culture of peace and non-violence.

The FICR is a mutual ministry of the Ramallah Monthly Meeting and an international steering committee from the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, the Baltimore Yearly Meeting and other Friends. And it is a blessing to work together with each other!

As you may know, our Quaker community in Palestine is numerically tiny; most of us have emigrated due to the harsh travel restrictions, economic conditions, political and cultural repression, direct violence and human rights violations. In all my years, life has never been so hard as it is today in Palestine.

And yet, the testimony to our Quaker faith and practice, through weekly worship and the programs of the FICR, is an enormous witness and an enormous investment in hope. And it is multiplied many times over as hands are linked with a rapidly growing number of non-violent activists in a part of the world that has known overwhelming violence, dispossession, oppression and occupation for well over half a century.

I am so pleased to report that since our inspiring re-dedication ceremony, hundreds of internationals visitors and locals (both Palestinian and Israeli) have used the Center to gather, inform and strengthen their commitment to peace. The richness of weekly meeting for worship is moving, as worshipers gather in silence and song from across the globe, across traditions, across cultures and even across religions and political persuasions.

So many of you have stood with us during both joyful and very difficult times. It cannot be underestimated how key your accompaniment has been to the continuation of a Quaker presence in Palestine. With the moral support of so many of you around the globe, I remain steadfast and have made the personal commitment to stay in Palestine, living out the situation and believing that righteousness will someday overcome injustice. Indeed, our accompaniment of each other has empowered me personally and our Meeting, in general, to persevere in some of the most difficult and dangerous of circumstances and it is what will see us through to the day when truth, justice and peace truly do embrace.

Friends, we need each other in this journey to end violence and restore our commitment to our common humanity. Indeed, it is so often the individual relationships of mutuality that we forge, as we work together to do so, that embolden us to take the necessary steps to hold each other in the light, support one another, and promote global understanding and peace.

My prayer is that we may be both humbled and strengthened by the embrace of our One God. You have so often offered to us a refreshing drink of support and solidarity, and likewise please know that many of us, in Palestine and in the Diaspora, pray we might offer to you, the sustenance and courage that is required of you at this point in history. Indeed, it is a privilege to affirm all that is possible when we link hands and hearts, service and witness.

May our ministry together continue to grow and may we continue to sow the seeds of peace.

In grace and great gratitude,

Jean Zaru, Clerk
Ramallah Friends Meeting
Ramallah, Palestine