What is life like in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory?
This activity sheet is for youth and children’s workers. It contains a variety of activities for meetings or church services. Please mix and match as you like.Activities, such as the word search or Lord’s Prayer, are for the children to complete. You will need the latest Commitment for Life mini magazine story from Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, see or email for a hard copy.
It’s not fair
Roll the dice game.
Aim: To illustrate the theme of injustice and the need to help each other out of unfair situations.
Needed: You will need a normal die and one with only fives and sixes on it for each pair. You will have to make a special die by covering a cube with stickers and adding your own spots. Make three sides with five spots and three sides having six spots.
How to play: In pairs, one has the ordinary die and one the special die. Both roll their die five times. The person with the highest score wins.
Discuss who won, why, how the loser felt and how the game could be played more fairly.
Is this like real life?
Here are some facts about Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory
Children in Israel and The occupied Palestinian territory have always known violence.
Almost half of Palestinian children are refugees. They can’t return to their family’s old homes.
If you are a Palestinian over the age of 12 you can be arrested, tried and sent to jail for certain offences just as if you were an adult.
Is that fair?
Is life fair for Abed?
Read the story of Abed
Can you imagine a single event in Britain in which more than half the population participated? That is what the olive harvest is to Palestinians.
There are an estimated 10 million olive trees in the occupied Palestinian territory[1]. Olive picking is manual and labour-intensive. Whole extended families get involved every autumn. Not only is the olive harvest an important part of the Palestinian economy, it holds a central place in Palestinian culture and identity – and has done for centuries.
Palestinian farmer Abed Rabin’s description of his orchard is evocative: ‘I grow everything – olive and plum trees, lots of different vegetables. In summer you can smell the mint and the thyme and the sage in the air. I love my land; I’m 49 years old, but when I’m on my land I feel 16.’
But like many farmers, Abed faces increasing difficulty in accessing his land due to movement restrictions imposed by Israel, which has occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1967. ‘It’s so hard to get there now because of the checkpoints and the wall’.
Israeli restrictions impair access to fields, processing centres and markets, damaging the olive industry and the income of more than 100,000 families who depend upon it[2]. In addition, more than half a million olive trees have been destroyed since 2001[3], by the Israeli military to way for illegal Israeli settlements and the separation barrier, or by extremist Israeli settlers, who sometimes also attack the farmers as they till their fields and orchards.
Christian Aid partners the YMCA and YWCA are working to support the farmers and their trees. Their Olive Tree Campaign seeks to replant olive trees in areas where they have been uprooted and destroyed, or in areas where the fields are threatened to be confiscated by the Israeli military or by settlers. They also bring international volunteers to help with the olive planting in the spring, and the picking in the autumn – joining in this ancient tradition, and providing protection by presence.
Abed explains the support this has been to him: ‘The YMCA was and still is the spirit to my body. They gave me olive trees and helped me to plant. They provided resources to build a well on my land. Many people from around the world have come to help me – from the USA, Britain, Austria, Holland, Canada, Japan.. There are also Israeli peace activists who come.’
‘When I receive such help, I feel that the world is good, and that there are people in the world who believe in justice and peace’.
On post-it notes write down:-
Three things you would ask Abed about his life?
Three things you would tell him about your life?
Stick these around the large poster of Abed or a picture of an olive tree and look at what each of you has written. How different is his life from someone here in the United Kingdom?
Bible verse
The Bible tells us: Those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also (1 John 4: 21)
Who do you think your ‘brothers and sisters’ are?
By helping someone in a small way you can help them change their whole life. How can we show love to people in the poorest parts of the world?
Do you think it is fair that some people are very rich while others are very poor?
So what can you do?
Pray for Abed and the Young Men’s Christian Association and the Young Women’s Christian Association. Cut out olive shapes in green and black paper and write your prayers on them. Hang them from a prayer tree.
Learn more about Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory. Tell your church about Abed and how he has been supported by the YMCA. Get a jar of olives and charge people to guess how many olives in the jar, then send the proceeds to Commitment for Life who tries, through working with Christian Aid, to make life fairer for all our ‘brothers and sisters.’
Word search
These 10 words are hidden in the word search.
They could be backwards, forwards or diagonal.
brothersister
Godlove
justicecommitment
lifefairness
givechange
Prayer
Thank you for your wonderful world and all the people who live on it.
Help me to remember those who do not have what I have.
Help me to find new and better ways of acting and giving,
so that everyone can have enough for their needs
And know your unending love.
Amen
Here is a Palestinian version of the Lord’s Prayer. Why not copy it and
then decorate the page?
Abana alathe fi sama
Great God in heav’n, our guardian,
Your holy name be reverenced.
And may your kingdom be bought in
And that your will for us be done;
And may this be not just in heav’n,
But also here upon this earth;
And day by day all through our lives
Provide the bread to give us life.
We ask that you forgive our debts
As we forgive our debtors faults;
And keep us from the time of trial,
And save us from the evil one,
Because the kingdom is yours,
And all the glory and power
For evermore and evermore.
Amen
source unknown
For more stories and resources visit
Statistics UNICEF, UN, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Commitment for Life 01702 315981
[1] UN OCHA 2008.
[2] UN OCHA 2008.
[3] YMCA-YWCA Joint Advocacy Initiative