NO bright star over Bethlehem. Christmas was cold, wet, and cheerless.

New Year and the bleak wretchedness of a Middle East in crisis continues with prospects for peace as distant as ever.

This time last year, South Lakeland humanist Sue Rhodes lay down in front of Israeli tanks, protesting against the long-running occupation of Palestine.

Engines revved, gun turrets rotated and soldiers took aim at the terrified, determined woman, choking on a cocktail of tear gas and filthy dust.

Hours later, still covered in mud, Sue was whisked off to eat a strawberry lunch with Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian leader had heard of her bravery and wanted to meet the heroine of another day's hell in the disputed West Bank territories

Returning to the turbulent region in time for Christmas 2002, Sue is to devote the next three years working as a Christian Peacemaker Team member, putting herself in the front line against terrorism.

The physiotherapist could be comfortable and safe at home in Grange-over-Sands, or still running the gift shop she had in Ambleside for 16 years. Instead, she has chosen a dangerous, heartbreaking life, which sees risk and suffering and gross inhumanity every single day.

She first encountered Israeli occupied Palestine back in 1963, while travelling on an overland trip to India.

"I was so horrified at the situation. People being told to leave their homeland and settle somewhere over a green line was something I could not come to terms with. I decided I would one day go back and do what I could," she said.

We met in December, the day she was heading back to the Middle East. Sensible, stoic Sue was under no illusions about the next three years.

Her protesting days are over. A new role beckoned, as a peacemaker, the first full-time Brit to work with occupied, repressed communities which, she says, have been badly wronged.

"I want this to be my life," she stated.

Completing tough training in Chicago, Sue said she felt confident. Survival lessons have already been learned around her Hebron base.

While baby wipes and raw onion offer some protection against tear gas, nothing could really prepare her for the daily grind of wanton destruction and humiliation.

New Year's Eve, Sue e-mailed me to explain about how it was in Hebron.

Without warning, the Israeli Army bulldozed a Palestinian family's newly-built home, completed just a week previously, wrote Sue. They said the devastated family with five children did not have the correct building permission.

Sue posed in the rubble to have her photograph taken, and stayed on to comfort the 15-year-old who returned from school to find her home gone and parents and grandparents wandering in the ruins in numbed disbelief.

"When I was in Palestine in 1963, two young lads took me on to a roof and showed me the house where they had lived. It had been taken by an Israeli family, without payment or explanation," said Sue.

"I've been back several times since, and all these years later find myself between kids and soldiers acting as a human shield. Nothing has changed, it only gets worse."

Sue spent 12 weeks in Hebron last year, doing what she could for Palestinians caught up in a twilight existence of curfews and conflict.

"Children can't get to school. Families go for days without food. One of our main roles is to get supplies through to them.

"We wear red CPT baseball caps and talk noisily in English. People cry out to us, asking for baby food or bread.

"Palestinians have big families, with ten, even 14 children. Kids are shut up in rooms, sometimes 24 hours a day, up to 14 days at a time, then let out for a couple of hours. People can't get to hospital because of the curfews.

"Even the Red Cross is not allowed into Hebron's old city.

Israeli soldiers say God has given their people the land and they want Palestinians out. But they have nowhere to go.

"They terrify Palestinian children and humiliate their parents. Many are injured every week."

Sue talks about a 12-year-old child she befriended, once a regular puppy-owning kid who now says he's going to be a suicide bomber.

"He told me his beautiful red cocker spaniel had been stolen by the Israeli settlers' and was distraught. He really loved the little animal.

"When I went back to see him, the lovely little puppy had been thrown back into his garden riddled with bullets. The boy was hysterical, screaming with his fists. That was the day he pledged to become a suicide bomber.

"Like so many of his people, he is now filled with hatred. He has no hope, no future. At 12, he says his life is no longer worth living."

Sue says violation of human rights is commonplace.

"The whole infrastructure has been destroyed. The violence is awful. Aid agencies are reduced to us and a few other peace groups."

The quietly-spoken, gentle Quaker, who spent her childhood in Southern Rhodesia, came to England in 1963 and went by bus from London's Victoria Station to India. Her encounter with Palestine en-route was to shape her life.

"It is the only country in the world to have been occupied for 30 years," she sighs. "Generations have not known freedom. I speak to people aged 30 who have never been to Jerusalem, 20 minutes away, which takes three hours of road blocks to get to."

Sue explains she feels confident there will be some changes in the next three years. She has her faith.

"For me, this is a calling. I want this occupation ended."

l Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical initiative which helps cut violence around the world. Visit its website on www.cpt.org.

January 9, 2003 15:00