A Bethel native joined a delegation in Israel as fighting intensified

Traveling across Israel as Hezbollah rockets fell to the north, Malinda Gilbert never felt scared.

But she saw fear.

During her two-week visit, the Bethel native never approached the north, where the terrorist bombs continue to fall. However, a visit into the West Bank showed her Palestinian poverty. And she watched as an Israeli police officer’s orders frightened people.

“People ran in just a dead run,” Gilbert said. “In a free society, no one is that afraid of the police.”

She even watched as an armed convoy protecting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice left the West Bank city of Ramallah.

“There must have been close to 20 police and escort cars,” Gilbert recalled Friday in a phone interview from her home in Boston. “What should have been a 40-minute drive for us took three hours.”

It was an unplanned event in a trip whose theme was meant to be peace.

Gilbert, 25, visited Israel as part of the group Interfaith Peace-Builders. The nonprofit group takes North American delegations of people – Christians, Jews and people who are nonreligious – to Israel and the West Bank. They talk with people on both sides, mostly those who are working to improve relations.

A typical trip would be interesting. There were worries that this one might get too interesting.

The 18-member group met in Washington, D.C., on July 15. One person dropped out amid safety concerns. The rest went on.

To Gilbert, a 2003 Bates College graduate who plans to study journalism this fall, the opportunity was too great to pass up. She called her parents, Rebecca Doncaster and Reginald Gilbert at home in Bethel. She decided to go.

The experience proved immediately interesting. When her plane landed in Tel Aviv, the usual long lines were shortened by the lack of travelers.

On the streets, she was struck by the overwhelming military presence, from armed soldiers to plainclothes officers with rifles slung over their soldiers.

“I get the sense that’s the way it is all the time,” she said. But the recent bombings seemed to weigh on people.

“I felt that everyone was upset and worried,” she said.

For two weeks, her itinerary was filled with visits with different groups, such as Israeli women who watchdog the treatment of Palestinians to make sure they are treated well at checkpoints.

Gilbert said she found extraordinary sympathy for Palestinians in the West Bank.

“The occupation isn’t working,” she said.

Laws restrict how Palestinians can move within the West Bank, where they can live and how they can express their views. They are prohibited from flying flags.

“I believe in the power of witnessing,” she said. “The laws are tearing up society there and perpetuating hopelessness.”

It’s a story that most Western media have either ignored or oversimplified, she said.

Not that the bombings in northern Israel and Lebanon don’t deserve coverage. The deaths sadden her, Gilbert said.

While visiting people in the West Bank, her group heard a rumor that bombs were falling on Tel Aviv.

She thought of the city where she’d been staying. When her group returned to Tel Aviv that night, they discovered the rumor had been false.

“We really were safe,” she said. “You learn to define safety different when you’re there.”

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