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Equal rights key to peace in Palestine
May. 22, 2009
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Palestinian waits to receive food aid from the U.N. relief team (CNS photo)
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As a member of a Catholic Worker Peace Team in Israel and the Israeli-Occupied West Bank, I asked everyone I met, “What will bring lasting peace?”
I asked this question in a Palestinian neighborhood in Jerusalem which is under an Israeli demolition order, in a refugee camp outside Bethlehem, in the Israeli city which has been hit with the largest number of rockets from Gaza, in a Palestinian village where a beloved local was recently killed by Israeli soldiers during a peaceful protest against the seizure of more than half of the community’s farmland, in the Jewish center of Hebron, the West Bank’s most contested city, in Israeli and Palestinian taxis, in the office of an Israeli human rights advocate, in a Palestinian farmhouse adjacent to the West Bank’s largest Jewish settlement, and in Bethlehem University.
I listened to soldiers, professors, doctors, farmers, border guards, children, parents, and grandparents. I expected wide disagreement. I found a remarkable consensus instead. In broad terms, everyone I interviewed agreed with Pope Paul VI’s advice, “If you want peace, work for justice.”
An Israeli soldier, who said that he had been ordered “to kill anything that moves” in Gaza, told me, “If you took away all the governments and just put people together, Jews, Muslims, and Christians would get along fine.” He opposes the Israeli wall being built in the West Bank, supports an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel with Jerusalem as a shared capital, and is convinced that “Hamas and Hezbollah are products of checkpoints and other oppression.”
Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, the Action Advocacy Officer for the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, detailed vast discrepancies in the treatment of Palestinians and Jews inside Israel and concluded, “We are creating conditions in which terrorism thrives. It’s that cynical.”
Fakhri Abu Diab, a Palestinian grandfather who unsuccessfully sought permits for his home for many years and is now one of thousands of Palestinians in Jerusalem, whose homes face demolition, said, “A Jewish settler told me, ‘This land is just for us. You can go to Lebanon or Jordan,’ but I answered him, ‘This land is for all of us…. Injustice drives my children to violence.” The grandfather welcomed the head of Rabbis for Human Rights to his home, “to show people in our village that not all Jews are against us. Like all people in the world, there are good and bad.”
Nomika Zion, an Israeli mother and member of Another Voice, a group which builds relationships with Gazans by telephone and email, said, “Israelis don’t know what it’s like to live in the biggest ghetto in the world. Gazans don’t have the freedom to live with dignity; to choose where to live in the world. I don’t have to worry about whether or not my children will have milk in the morning….
The only time I felt my government was actually defending me was when it negotiated a ceasefire with Hamas. Rockets stopped and I felt I could live again without fear, until Israel violated the truce and provoked Hamas.” She favors open borders, an end to military strikes, and a guarantee of the same economic and political rights for everyone.
Eyad Bournat, who has been tear-gassed, beaten, shot, and arrested for leading years of nonviolent protests against the construction of the Israeli wall in his village of Bil’lin, said, “When the Occupation is finished, when we have freedom and justice, there will be peace…. I support two states on the green line [the 1967 border]. Many Israeli friends come here to join our protests. We can live together in peace.” Bournat said this only three weeks after one of his best friends was shot to death at close range by Israeli soldiers.
Attah Jabbar, a Palestinian farmer who has suffered many attacks by Jewish settlers, whose land is now being deprived of water, and whose home faces demolition, said, “I never did anything against the Israeli government…. All the land is not for the Palestinians or the Israelis. It’s God’s land. We are guests here…. I need an easier life for my children, a life of peace, without confiscations, attacks in the night, without hate in the heart.”
Shadi, a young man from the Deheishe Refugee camp, who appeared in the film, “Slingshot Hiphop,” said, “Peace will come with the establishment of either a single state with equal rights for everyone or two states with open borders. Call the single state whatever you want, so long as everyone has equal rights.”
Orr Adam, an Israeli father of 3 from Sderot, whose home was hit by a Palestinian rocket, said, “When rockets fall here, most people say, ‘If they kill our children, we must kill theirs,’ but for lasting peace we need a reconciliation that does not ignore the rights of the other side.” His 17-year-old daughter is a member of Another Voice and even his 8-year-old recognized that Israeli attacks on Gaza only provoked rocket attacks on Sderot.
Writing on the wall in Bethlehem says it all, “Give them justice and they will reward you with peace.” Since Israel is the largest recipient of US military aid, Americans are specially placed to insist on that long-overdue justice for the Palestinians.
Some say that the Ethiopians
Some say that the Ethiopians have the Ark of the Covenant. Until there is justice for all, I cannot see it returning to Israel. If it does return, I don't see the Muslim authorities not grating some space for the reconstruction of some kind of Temple.
Thanks for this article. As
Thanks for this article. As one active in the Palestinian Rights movement I get the sense that after the Israeli butchery of Gaza in December/January the American public is more and more starting to raise its voice in protest of the profound inhumanity displayed with utter persistence by successive Israeli governments against the Palestinian people. This article is an example of this newfound voice of protest helping as it does to counter the deafening silence of the American main stream media in its complicitous role as supporter of Israel's savagery.
It's doubly heartening to see this article in a Catholic-orientated publication. American Catholics I've regrettably noted have virtually the most silent voices in the Christian environment when it comes to this social evil. The Catholic leadership , with very, very few episcopal exceptions, is basically missing in action despite the fact that American Catholic taxpayer money has through the years bankrolled a stupefyingly enormous arsenal of killing machines for Israel's use in the slaughter of the Palestinians and the theft of their lands.
The person who wrote this
The person who wrote this article is unfamiliar with the history of the area. These so called "Peace teams" actually cause more problems for people living in the area. Talk to a few people, stir things up and leave. How pathetic and sad. The Christians in the areas not controlled by Israel are being driven out. Convents and schools have been destroyed. The problems between Hamas and Fatah result in horrible atrocities. We need to pray for all sides. However, these types of articles based on ignorance and prejudice do not help.
No - the author seems to have
No - the author seems to have a pretty good handle on what's going on there. Yes, Palestinean Christians are suffering, but that doesn't change the aparteid conditions that Israel imposes on the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas a problem? Israel created Hamas and it will create its own destruction if it continues down the road it is on.
We have strongly different
We have strongly different opinions. But we have the freedom to express them. Please look at what the Palestineans are doing to each other. For examples, the honor killings,the forcing of Christians to leave predominately Palestinean lands, and the fighting between Fatah and Hamas.
My concern here is what these so-called peace groups do to damange any chance of peace in the region. Often, with pre-conceived notions and little real understanding (which I still believe) they contribute to the destruction of the area. There is no balance in perspective.
Are there any true peacemakers in the middle east? In my opinion not right now. But to put the entire blame on Israel is not being honest about the regional dynamics and history.
The United States has continually has not understood the dynamics of the region. These are not recent problems.
The United States is not
The United States is not interested in the "dynamics of the region". Its sole interest for the past several decades has been making nice to an Israeli lobby - both foreign and domestic. Israel constantly nibbles away at the West Bank with new settlements and new restrictions on the movement of Palestineans. The two sides are now far apart and headed in opposite directions.
Has no one considered the
Has no one considered the concept of mission? Seriously, what is the one thing that keeps Christians from attempting to convert their Muslim neighbors in the Middle East (or anywhere else)? Is it evil US Corporations? Imperialist American interventions? Zionist tricks? No. It's the justified fear that some Muslim 'extremist' will kill the missionary.
It's fear of martyrdom. We want peace - just not that much. We believe in Jesus....just not that much.
So we COMPLAIN or PROTEST against people who won't threaten us (the US when there's a Republican President) and the IDF.... and we act as "nice" people to the Muslims who'll perhaps think they can use us as tacit allies in their eternal struggle with Jews, and we think we're 'making progress' when it fact we're only temporizing.
You want peace in the Middle East? Well, there's only one side causing terrorism and it's Muslim. Why not evangelize to them? Why not sit down, in public, with their top scholars and have a theological debate on the nature of God and the criteria for believing in ANY revelation?
Of course, you'll need a grounding in Aristotelian metaphysics and St Thomas Aquinas' Summa contra Gentiles to deal with Muslim scholars from Qom, but it's do-able. The only risk is martyrdom. But if they have to kill you to 'win' the argument, it's a tacit admission that they have no ultimate argument other than force. It's high time then that peace be established on truth, not force.
But who will go? Who will put their life on the line for the sake of peace?
I have been a peace worker in
I have been a peace worker in Palestine. I have been a witness to the excesses of the Israeli settlers and the protection they receive from the Israeli military. The Israeli settlements built on land confiscated from Palestinians are an affront to the Palestinians and a violation of the Geneva Convention.
I talked with a 14 year old Palestinian put in an Israeli military prison for throwing a stone, but when an Israeli settler kicked a Palestinian girl on her way to school, the Israeli military did nothing. Many Israeli settler actions are nothing more than terrorism against Palestinians under the guise of a religous mantel for reclaiming "God-given" land. Israeli practices of checkpoints, home demolitions and detention without charges for up to a year may even incite resistance from the Palestinians.
Palestinians are entitled to peace with justice. Israel will not allow that to happen since they place a higher priority on confiscating their "God-given" land. Netanyahu and Lieberman have clearly voiced their intentions to keep Palestinians a captive suppressed people. The Catholic Church needs to join with the political leadership of the USA and the EU in pressuring Israel to move towards peace with justice for Palestinians.
No one claims the IDF or
No one claims the IDF or Jewish settlers are innocent. But neither are the Palestinians. The tit for tat battle has been waged for generations. The problem with the 'peace' movement is one of myopia.
The violent minority on either side runs the political and military agenda. To ignore this is to commit grave injustice on the majority in the middle who are always victimized by these excesses.
So far the violent on the side of Israel have not proposed the annihilation of the Palestinians as their political and religious goal. Indeed, they've retreated behind defensive walls rather than stay and fight. On the other hand, the Palestinian leaders - the violent - have indeed made the annihilation of the Jewish people their stated political goal, and they have shown repeatedly that this isn't mere rhetoric. Mortars and rockets aren't fictions.
Finally there's geography. The West Bank is the high ground. The rest of Israel is coastal plain or relatively lower elevation (with the exception of the Golan Heights). Should Israel cease controlling the exterior border of Palestine, who here honestly believes the PA won't import mortars and rockets as their counterparts in Gaza have done - and used? One side has the military means but not the religious or political will to annihilate the other. The other has little - but growing military might and the religious and political will to annihilate the Jews.
Now which side is "peaceful" or seeking "justice"? In the end, we have to evangelize both sides....and that means the willingness to respect their religions enough to debate them and if need be, die a martyrs death at their hands.
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