Between Two Fires

I received a call one day from my friend Jack Kincaid of Banner Communications. His company uses satellite TV channels to present the truth of Jesus Christ through hundreds of indigenous TV programs, children’s shows and movies in Arabic, Turkish, Urdu and English. Jack told me he was heading back to Israel, and he wanted me to come along to meet people in Palestine and help them tell their stories.

Palestinians? The enemies of Israel? I was shocked. Many of my friends were messianic Jews.

I had a lot to learn.

And what I leaned on that trip became Between Two Fires, the first book that gave a voice to Palestinian Christians. Until then, few people knew they existed, myself included.

Oh, did I mention that we went during a major Israeli invasion of Palestine?

Yep, we arrived during the Second Intifada. Both Gaza (just 25 miles long and 6 miles wide) and the West Bank were overrun with Israeli tanks, armored personnel carriers and armored bulldozers. Attack helicopters roared overhead. Israel was enforcing a 24-hour curfew. People couldn't get food or medicine. Rebels attacked wherever they could (including Mosab Hassan Yousef, who I would meet years later and wind up ghosting his book, Son of Hamas).

To meet with Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem, we had to drive far into the mountains and connect with Rev. Nihad Salman, who risked his life by coming out into the open, driving through heavily patrolled streets to meet us and bring us into the city--all the time with all the windows open, listening intentely for the clanking treads of the more than 150 tanks that patrolled the city. If we were seen in the streets during curfew, the soldiers would not ask for passports or explanations. We would be given no opportunity to convince them that we were not terrorists, that the car was not packed with explosives. It would be over in seconds.

Chunks of concrete were everywhere. Skeletons of cars lay twisted and charred. Trash uncollected for more than a month smoldered in a field. Pasted on doors and walls were color posters of those whom the Palestinians considered martyrs. Faces of adults and children killed in the conflict stared at us as we drove through narrow alleys, down a stony hill and across a field into a tiny parking area behind the Bethlehem Bible College. The building sits on a hill with the front at street level and the back even with the basement. Moments after we left the car, a Merkeva tank, mounted with a 105 mm gun, thundered over our heads, and we stepped gratefully inside the cool, ancient walls.

Looking back, two things were of particular importance to me. First, the book enabled the voices of Palestinian Christians to be heard for the first time.

Second, my perspective changed radically. I came to love both Israel and Palestine. I saw firsthand that both were wrong, locked in an endless state of payback.

Most important, I saw how much God loved them both. And now I did too.