'Strife in the Middle East is Not Ancient'

by The Rev. Albert N. Minor
Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold is urging the Church to join with other Christian denominations to “Wage Reconciliation” in the Holy Land, believing if peace were accomplished there, it would have a significant effect on accomplishing peace around the whole world. Most of the strife in today’s terrorism and violence has its roots in the struggle between the Palestinians and the State of Israel. It is, therefore, vital to address this situation with prayer, earnest work, honesty and the efforts of reconciliation.

The strife in the Middle East is not ancient. Its history begins about 100 years ago when in those times just before World War I there was an outbreak of persecution against the Jews of the world. At the conclusion of the “Great War” the British “Balfour Declaration” of 1917 recognized that the Jews of the world would never know peace until they had a homeland. This began the contemporary vision of a state of Israel. In the area known as Palestine, Jews, Muslims and Christians had lived side by side in relative peace for almost a thousand years. This, then, seemed the location of the highest potential.

Following World War II, the new United Nations declared that a State of Israel was to be established in the Palestine protectorate (under Britain) which would be provided with a port (Haifa) to allow free migration of Jews from all over the world, and that Jerusalem would be an “open” city, the center of the three great religions in the world --Islam, Judaism and Christianity. The new Jewish state would be located in defined areas between the west bank of the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The arrival of Jewish populations became so intense that it overwhelmed the established Palestinian population. The Jewish state established a central government, in contrast to the system of clans and their relatively independent villages which had been the characteristic of the area. As Israel developed it began to displace the Palestinians, and control land ownership. The stresses increased. The United Nations could do nothing. The United States supported the statehood of Israel and turned a deaf ear to the cries of pain.

By the mid 60s a large number of Palestinians were simply driven off their lands to make room for the new settlements of Israel. Most of the families became refugees, migrating to Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, America and many other places in the world. The refugees -- the largest such population on earth -- became immense problems for many host countries.

The situation was so unacceptable to the Arab nations that Syria, Jordan and Egypt declared war on Israel and attempted to destroy the nation in 1967. They were totally unprepared for the surgical efficiency of the Israeli army (supplied with U.S. weaponry) and were soundly defeated with significant loss of land. After this military fiasco, the UN and the United States brokered peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan in return for the land that had been conquered.

The refugee problem has never been solved. The growing population, confined to special refugee areas, is now in its third generation of confinement in stifling conditions on the West Bank, the largest of which is the Gaza Strip, with others remaining in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt.

In the meantime, the flow of Jewish migrants increased. Those parts of the West Bank previously designated as “Palestinian” have been effectively shrunken and surrounded by Jewish settlements. The people there have faced severe restrictions of water and medical services; the destruction of arable farm lands; a reduction of accessibility to Israel where most Palestinians work; and the systematic blocking of the development of Palestinian government. Work is scarce, and life is controlled by the Israeli government.

The result has been the outbreak of violence. The Palestinian Authority under Chairman Yasser Arafat has limited ability to control the other factions in the Palestinian population allowing more violent groups such as Hamas to encourage terrorist attacks. Palestinian violence has been met with overwhelming Israeli violence, especially under the regime of the present leader former general Ariel Sharon. Government buildings have been destroyed, and suspected Palestinian terrorists arrested, imprisoned, and sometimes executed. Previous leaders had laid the paths of peace, especially in the Oslo Accords of 1993. It was thought that peace had at last been achieved. Both sides accuse the other of violating the agreements.

Another complicating factor is the Intifada --the offensive by children and young people against Israel sponsored and launched by Arafat. Children are taught to hate the Jews. They are mobilized to use stones as weapons while they are young, graduating to slings and firearms as they grow older, and encouraged to become suicide bombers, offering themselves as martyrs for Islam.

Any fair analysis will have to conclude that both sides have caused each other great suffering, great anger and deep hatred. Both peoples are suffering under a sickness of soul which can only be gradually healed by a cooperative work toward peace.

The struggle toward this end seems to be beginning. The leaders of the Arab world seem to be ready to recognize Israel as a nation as defined by the United Nations. Many solutions are being suggested. Sixty percent of Israeli Jews and 61 percent of Palestinians want the conflict to end by fair means, resolving the inequities of freedom and citizenship.

The contribution of Christians in the difficult work of reconciliation, the struggle for peace and justice. In this sense “justice” means fairness, participation in government and, in a deeper sense, it means caring. That we care for those in suffering, deprivation, fear and unrelieved uncertainty on both sides, is the beginning of a hope for peace.

Our Presiding Bishop thus bids us -- pray and work for the peace of Jerusalem. That peace is linked to peace within the world and within ourselves.

The Rev. Albert N. Minor, Diocesan Ecumenical Officer, recently participated in a conference on Peace in the Middle East called by the Presiding Bishop. This article is his response to the conference and Presiding Bishop Griswold’s call for “waging reconciliation.”

Peacemakers in the Middle East Face Difficult Role

By James Solheim
(ENS-March 13, 2002) A day-long teleconference in mid-February from sites in New York and California highlighted the difficult role of peacemakers in the continuing conflict and confrontation in the Middle East.

Centered on the theme of “Waging Reconciliation in the Holy Land: Salaam, Shalom, Peace,” the teleconference pulled together a wide variety of Christian, Muslim and Jewish voices, many of them telling chilling stories of what the escalating violence is doing to life in the region.

Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold welcomed the participants in his opening comments at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City by reminding participants there and at All Saints Church in Pasadena that reconciliation means “repairing the world,” and that the church is called to be a reconciling community. Reconciliation requires a “deep encounter with the reality of the other,” he said, even to the point of “absorbing the fear and rage of the other.”

Video Brings Urgent Voices From Mideast

The voices of fear and rage and hope emerged from a video that pulled together recent interviews of those living in the cauldron of violence. “We knew we couldn’t do this teleconference without the participation of those most directly affected,” said the Rev. Brian Grieves, director of Peace and Justice Ministries for the church and producer of the video. “Their voices added a powerful sense of reality to the day, undergirding the urgency of peacemaking efforts.”

Bishop Riah Abu el-Assal of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem said, “We all know that this conflict is over a piece of land that some call Israel and others call Palestine—and I wait for the day when both parties join hands together and reconcile.” The root cause of the conflict, he said, is the Israeli occupation of land it seized during the 1967 war. Riah said that it wasn’t possible to talk about reconciliation without talking about justice, the right of Palestinians to self-determination.

Riah’s Lutheran colleague, Bishop Munib Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church serving Jordan and Palestine, agreed that the occupation “is a sin against God and against humanity. It is destructive—first to the occupier and then to the occupied. We want security for the Israelis but we want also freedom for the Palestinians. This symbiotic relationship is the only way for justice, peace and reconciliation.” Both bishops expressed a fear that violence and terrorism will have the last word.

“We are in a particularly dark period,” said Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom of Rabbis for Human Rights. “Fear and anxieties and anger between the two communities have never been worse.” In such a climate there is hesitation to consider root causes, he observed. “We have many Jews thinking they are going to create a Jewish society in complete disregard for the native population.”

Yehezkel Landau, director of a center for Jewish-Arab reconciliation, said that “at the heart of this long-term conflict and tragedy is, first of all, a clash of two nationalisms over the same shared homeland. So, if we are going to arrive at a single, inclusive standard of justice, which is necessary for any genuine peace or reconciliation, we have to make space in our hearts, first of all, and in our theological conceptions for the other community and other religious tradition, as equal partners in the consecration of what we say is a Holy Land. Otherwise we will continue to desecrate it by our partisan, self-serving agendas.”

The Rev. Naim Ateek, director of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem, said that lifting the occupation was the starting point, opening the way for reconciliation. “We are really looking beyond the present, beyond the gloom, beyond the despair to a time when there will be peace and there will be reconciliation among our people.”

“This whole process of reconciliation will have to go on within the Israeli community as well,” said Jeff Halper, coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. “One side is the occupier, the other side is occupied. So just to talk about violence and to ignore all those power differentials is simply misleading, it’s not helpful, it’s distorting.”

Jonathan Kuttab, a Palestinian attorney and human rights activist in Jerusalem, said that “the situation is very ripe for reconciliation because there are a lot of good, decent people on both sides who have legitimate concerns and desires and goals and hopes that somehow need to be reconciled with one another.” But he added that for Palestinians “violence is not just the gun. The worst violence is the bulldozer that uproots our trees, destroys our homes, blocks our roads, and prevents us from living a normal life. Somehow people don’t see the violence of the occupation, they only see the violence of those who resist.”

Huwaida Arraf of the International Solidarity Movement said that the violence was “atrocious—and it breeds more violence. It’s a cycle that’s become very hard to break because of the anger building up in people.” Claudette Habesch, who works with Palestinian refugees, stressed the importance of “seeing the human face in this conflict, the continued human suffering, not just the political issues.”

Panel Explores American Perspective

The Rev. Ed Bacon, rector of All Saints in Pasadena, introduced a panel of Christian, Muslim and Jewish scholars who summarized the issues at stake in the Middle East. Dr. Laurie Brand, a professor of international relations at the University of Southern California, said that “This conflict goes back just over a hundred years. It is not an ancient blood feud.” The 1948 war created a flood of over 300,000 Palestinian refugees—and a major obstacle to today’s peace efforts. She said that today there are 3.9 million Palestinian refugees who are still in 59 camps, half of them in Jordan. Israel is deeply concerned that any significant return of those refugees to Israel or a Palestinian state would end the Jewish character of the state of Israel.

Daniel Sokatch, executive director of the Progressive Jewish Alliance and a participant in Jewish-Muslim dialogue, said that the big question is “How do we talk to each other—and how do we deal with issues?” He argued that “legitimate criticism of Israel ought not be understood as anti-Semitism,” although he acknowledged that it has sometimes been a cover for anti-Semitism. “We are critical because we love it so deeply.”

Sokatch said that “we must begin by acknowledging the faults on both sides” through the difficult work of listening. And he added that the American Jewish community represents a broad range of views on the issues, with over half associating with a dove position, a full 60 percent ready to abandon the settlement policies and a third ready to share Jerusalem as a capital for both Israel and Palestine. He concluded by saying that it is possible to be pro-Israel and at the same time in favor of human rights and peace. He invited the audience to begin by understanding the fear of Israelis.

The terrorist attacks of September 11 “exposed America’s role in the world,” a role that has not always been constructive, said Dr. Laila Al-Marayati, a physician who is past president and spokesperson for the Muslim Women’s League. She was not optimistic that a solution was in sight, a pessimism shared by Kamal Abu-Shamsieh, a Palestinian who is community relations director for the Muslim Public Affairs Council. He is convinced that the lack of any progress towards peace is due in part to the response of the international community. Using the Israeli settlement policy, he said that American ambivalence towards the policy over the years was “undermining America’s image in the Arab world.”

In responding to the panel, Griswold said that it was important to “build authentic friendships” that enable us to move beyond the issues and make listening and understanding easier. Bishop Riah Abu el-Assal of the Diocese of Jerusalem stressed the need to deal with the root causes of the conflict—occupation. He said it was possible that the Christians in the region, although their number is dwindling, could serve as a bridge. In the meantime, “we continue to carry the message entrusted to us,” he said.

The Hard Work of Reconciliation

In his keynote from California, Naim Ateek said that “reconciliation is the business of the church,” that Christians “are called to be ambassadors for God with the message—be reconciled to God and be reconciled with each other.” But he warned that reconciliation is actually “the last stage in a sequence that begins with the establishment of justice. When justice is done, it produces peace, and peace sets in motion the process of reconciliation.” Christians must keep an eye on the ultimate goal, pressing on for reconciliation “because it is the only way that can restore both sides’ humanity and bring healing and new relationships and open a brighter future for both.

In his blunt comments, Ateek said he doubted that Israel is prepared to allow creation of a viable Palestinian state. “It will never be totally sovereign or independent. It will be under an Israeli style of apartheid.” The current Israeli government knows that increasing the repressive measures “will prompt immediate reaction by some Palestinian groups. Israel in turn would accuse them of being terrorists. Israel’s deceptive tactics are clear to many of us but to most people in the West they only see and hear about the so-called terrorist Palestinians.”

Ateek welcomed “courageous Israeli voices,” like the recent announcement by members of the Defense Forces who said they would not enforce policies in the West Bank and Gaza. “They confessed that they were ordered to assassinate Palestinians, to expel them, to destroy their homes, to close their areas, to starve and humiliate them. They considered these actions as war crimes against a whole people.”

“We have begun something new today,” said Bacon in his closing remarks in Pasadena. In his comments, Griswold said that it was important to look for common ground with Jews and Muslims “to get to a better place.” He also urged participants to “be faithful to God’s drawing us into God’s own project of reconciliation.”

James Solheim is director of Episcopal News Service.