Keep Praying
An update on his personal reflection by David Nelson of Wetherby Baptist Church
Photo: trying to hold on to home. Mural in the Aida refugee camp, Bethlehem.
I wrote a piece in Autumn 2025 for YBA news on Israel-Palestine, trying to reflect on 4 visits I’d made to the land since October 2022. I used the phrase ‘it should be impossible’ throughout that earlier article which might help you to recall it. And I used the phrase deliberately to suggest how what was happening should be outside our ability to cope with, our ability to comprehend, our ability to accept.
Since I wrote that piece, I have travelled out there again. It is a huge privilege to do so, not simply because I have freedom to travel where and when I wish, but because of what people say to me, how they always want me to know their personal stories, the way their lives run, the things they are involved with day-to-day, the sense of how life-affirming it is within their company. Yet that privilege brings with it the most enormous responsibility for me to return and tell others.
What those 8 days in the West Bank told me is that everyone, and that’s absolutely everyone, has their own story of how the Israeli occupation challenges their lives in ways we cannot imagine here. I have been to the West Bank before in the past few years, but the intensity of this last trip was shocking. Every day, many times every day, people told my friends and I in the most matter-of-fact way, about things that left us shaking our heads, or crying inside, or crying outwardly on occasion.
Yet, since leaving the West Bank, in just the past few weeks since returning, I have heard more and that’s what I particularly want to share. Each of these four simple and individual stories links to aspects of the trip we made and I use them to illustrate what is happening - and to illustrate what shouldn’t be happening, because it is all indefensible.
· We drove through a small community in the West Bank called Deir Jarir on 7 November. It is adjacent to the Christian village of Taybeh (was Ephraim). Just a fortnight later, Israeli settlers attacked Deir Jarir, yet the IDF came and shot dead a Palestinian, just 20, who was studying at the nearby university.
· There is just one playing field/football pitch in the Aida refugee camp which is right behind the Separation Wall, on the outskirts of Bethlehem. We spent an hour or so on 10 November, walking by this area and chatting to the local children. The IDF has pasted notices on it saying the football field is to be demolished (remember, this is even not in Israel anyway). Something to do with not having the right permits… apparently… even though this space has been there for the camp for decades.
· On 6 November we visited Birzeit University and spent some time in the Faculty of Arts speaking with students and lecturers in their studios and offices. The IDF has now raided those very rooms early in the morning, causing a lot of damage and harm. Just because…
· My friend Taqi Spateen was here in Leeds in May 2024 painting a hopeful mural on a wall near the East Street Arts building in Mabgate in Leeds. We corresponded with him to arrange to meet before we travelled to Bethlehem last month. His nephew Abed had been taken by the Israelis into prison on administrative detention (ie. without charges) in June 2025 and now his death has been announced. He had no prior health issues. He was just 21.
The phrase ‘it should be impossible’ still resonates, doesn’t it? My friends and I were out there at the same time as the Archbishop of Canterbury and from some of the things I’ve read, he has come back with a dozen and more stories of tragedy and impossibility, just as I have and would tell you if space allowed.
Please continue to pray hard in this New Year for Palestinians, all of them. There are plenty of Christian churches (4 in Taybeh alone plus one that is more a ruin on a hillside), but it is the entire community that needs our support and encouragement, Christians, Muslims, others. Those in towns and those in villages and those in refugee camps.
What is happening is very very wrong. Pray too for those in churches within Israel, often Baptists and often within towns with a greater Arab population like Nazareth, Haifa or Ramla. Pray for those who bravely stand up within Israel to pursue a new way for their politics and against so much that is entrenched, but also for a change of heart for those who are part of the vast majority who refuse to see the Palestinian as a neighbour.
Pray to know what each of us might do, what God might be calling us to do, and where to act. And if you feel a push to go and visit, please do so because the privilege is huge and the wonder is great.
If you’d like to ask more or would like to find out more for your church, I’d be happy to come and share with you. Just let me know - the YBA office has my contact details.
Published 19/01/2026