When Jon Rice, Adjunct Faculty and Buildings and Grounds Supervisor at Meadville Lombard, planned his trip to the Middle East for last summer, he thought he had an idea what to expect. He didn't.

There were armed checkpoints and getting in and out of the towns was never easy. "There was a 25-foot wall around most Palestinian towns, with very limited access for the people who live there to food, jobs and just the outside world," said Rice.

Rice traveled to Gaza, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron, and other Palestinian settlements and refugee camps. While there, he lived in the camps, sharing the living experiences of the people who are forced to live their.

He traveled alone, but as a part of a group from the Mideast Children's Alliance (MECA). It was not safe for this coalition to travel in one group. Rice says a group would have raised suspicions and would have been prevented entrance to the camps.  In fact, only seven of the twelve in his group were ever allowed entrance to Gaza. Rice visited before the Israeli pull-out of the region and he described it as a volatile place with 1.5 million people.

The trip opened Rice's eyes to the brutality of apartheid, which is how he describes what is happening to the Palestinian people under Israeli rule. Palestinians are not allowed to travel on the same highway as Israeli's and it can--and usually does--take hours to clear through one of those armed check points.

"It's a forced, military segregation," said Rice. "If the US government sided with the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s, this is what you would have in Mississippi right now.  The two sides are hostile and one side has a preponderance of the economic and social power.  It is so in contrast to what we have here in our American society.  We are so carefree.  There, there are soldiers everywhere, always carrying automatic rifles and they are ready to shoot."

Rice went to bear witness to the struggles of the Palestinian people, to tell their story in hopes of bringing about real change in the region that honors all human life.

Rice went to the Middle East with a gift of $700, raised by the Meadville Lombard community, for the children of the refugee camps.  "I didn't go empty handed," said Rice.

Rice doubts he will ever return to the region under its current political climate. He was detained at the airport and nearly missed his flight home after being interrogated for hours. It was an experience that still haunts him.