📝JOURNALS FROM JERUSALEM - A Day With the Mihtawish Bedouin

🚌On Saturday, the Bishops and delegates of the Holy Land Coordination travelled east of Jerusalem to visit the Mihtawish Bedouin community and the Comboni Sisters who have accompanied them for more than twelve years.

🐐The Mihtawish are a Palestinian Bedouin community living in the West Bank. Like many Bedouin families, they are semi-nomadic by tradition, organised around extended family, hospitality, and a deep connection to land and livestock. Most families live in simple, temporary structures and face severe shortages of electricity, water, sanitation, and access to public services.

🧑‍🏫For over a decade, the Comboni Sisters have remained close to the Bedouin communities of this area, accompanying families across 13 villages. Their work is rooted in long-term relationships and regular presence. They support five kindergarten schools, provide healthcare and social assistance, and run women’s empowerment programmes that foster dignity, resilience, and opportunity.

⛪Through their presence, the Comboni Sisters embody a Church that remains close to the marginalised and is attentive to the human dignity of all, values that Pope Leo calls us to commit to in Dilexi Te.

🧵We heard from women who have worked with the Sisters to learn skills such as sewing and embroidery, to study English, and to pursue educational opportunities ensuring they are protagonists in their own lives and agents of change in their own communities.

🏘️The hills where the Mihtawish live are surrounded by illegal Israeli settlements which continue to encroach in on the Bedouins causing them to fear they will be squeezed out. A new settler outpost has appeared recently within walking distance of their farm. While we were there, we saw settlers approach and observe the community from nearby hills (pictured) and we witnessed new settlement buildings under construction.

🪨The women told us they are afraid to sleep due to increased settler violence in recent months. Settlers have come in the nights and taken sheep and goats and during the day they often intimidate and harass the Mihtawish, throw stones, and there have been incidents where children were attacked. Community leaders explained how settlers have entered their land, photographed Bedouin livestock and presented these images to police as false claims of theft against the Bedouins.

❤️In the first image is Rhagad with her younger sister. Her name means “ease of living” or “comfortable life.” She is 10 years old. Rhagad deserves to grow into the future that her name promises. But the older women of her community shared their fear of what lies ahead: if the settlers continue to come, where will the Mihtawish go?

🕊️When asked what the women wanted us to tell people on their behalf, they said: "We want to live in peace. Tell your people at home that our people want to be free; we want to live freely and securely on our own land."

📸Image Credit - Marcin Mazur: Catholic Bishops' Conference (England and Wales)