A Possible Solution to the Israeli and Palestinian Conflict
By Dennis Sansom
There are many ways to characterize the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians—the three major wars, the two intifadas, the borders clashes, conflict over water, the political rights and lack of, etc. I want to illustrate this conflict by telling of some of my experiences in Israel, while I stayed at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute of Jerusalem from the end of January to the beginning of May, 2011. Though the place and people are incredibly complex and long on memories of death and grief, I think a model of peace exists in Israel.
On March 23rd I was returning on a bus with about 30 people from Tantur from two days at Mount Sinai in the Egyptian desert to the desert town of Mitzpe Ramon, which is in the middle of the large and beautiful Negev desert of southern Israel. About thirty miles from Ramon, Israeli soldiers stopped us with a roadblock. We were told to wait on the side of the road but not given an explanation. After about an hour, we were released and made our way to Ramon. There we heard that missiles had been fired out of the Gaza strip, most likely by Hamas, about 40 miles to the west, aimed for Israeli school buses.
The next day we headed up to Jerusalem but were stopped again outside the city. The military had halted all traffic in and out of Jerusalem, for a bomb had gone off at a bus stop near the Old City, killing a woman (a Scottish University student). After about two hours, they opened the roads, and we drove back through Jerusalem to Tantur.
The whole country was on edge. 13 days earlier a family of five had been stabbed to death in the Jewish settlement of Itamar, in the northern section of the West Bank. Three were young children and the three-month old baby was decapitated. Suspicion at first fell on some foreign workers, but after several days, a nation wide manhunt went out for Palestinian terrorists. Eventually two teenage boys from the nearby Palestinian village of Awarta, associated with the terrorist group Al-Asqa Martyrs were arrested. They confessed, gloating of their accomplishments, vowing to do it again if ever released.
I read while in Jerusalem that during the Second Intifada (which lasted from September 2000 to November 2006, with the worse years during 2001-2004) that the number of Israeli civilians killed by terrorist bombs (and most of them were suicide bombers) relative to their population would equal relative to our population 50,000 people.
Most Israelis live in fear of another intifada, and in fact, due to the changing political relationships with the Obama Administration, Turkey, and the European Union, the Israelis are more fearful than ever. They want security.
From our back door we look upon the infamous checkpoint 300, the entry from the old Hebron highway into Bethlehem. Over the four months at Tantur, I crossed the checkpoint probably two dozen times to go to various places and events in Bethlehem. One Friday morning, Beverly, my wife, asked me to walk with her a ways into Bethlehem so that she could join a group at Bethlehem College discussing issues in English literacy. I walked with her about one mile in Bethlehem and then turned back toward the checkpoint. I came by the 25 feet tall cement wall, which imprisons Bethlehem into the West Bank, and read again for about the tenth time the poignant and alerting graffiti along the way.
As I neared the checkpoint, which was designed to resemble a prison house, I notice hundred of men lined up to leave the West Bank for Jerusalem. Based upon my previous experiences at the checkpoint, it was unusual to see so many men. Then I realized that it was Friday, prayer time at the Al-Asqa Mosque. Israel allows a certain number of Palestinian Muslims to leave the West Bank to make the four-mile trek to the Haram al-Sharif (“The Noble Sanctuary”), where the Al-Aqsa Mosque is located, but to do so, they must have official papers issued by Israeli police. The line was long and slow. The men were anxious and pushy. I was the only Westerner in the line and felt, not threatened but definitely in their way. They were eager to get to the Mosque by the allotted prayer time, and the Israeli young guards at the four check points in the station, where at each point I had to show my passport and the Palestinians their official papers, deliberately, it seemed, made the process slow. The longer I stood in the line, with men leaning on me and cutting in front of me, the more I sensed their desire to move through and make it to the Mosque. I felt like I was in prison, moved about like cattle.
On March 31st, I joined with six others for the day to journey to Hebron to visit the Shrines of Abraham and Sarah. Hebron is a vibrant Palestinian, Muslim city of about 50,000 people with a Jewish settlement in its center. It was a moving pilgrimage to the shrines of the patriarchs and matriarchs, visiting both the synagogue, built on top of an impressive Herodian wall, with its famous scrolls and the mosque where the horrible massacre committed by an American Jew turned Zionist militant occurred in 1994. On the way back to Tantur we stopped at the Tent of the Nations, about 15 miles south from Bethlehem. It is a plot of land on a hilltop owned by the Palestinian, Christian family, the Nasser’s. They have legal documents of ownership dating back to 1916 when their grandfather bought it and registered it with the Turk, who occupied the territory at the time. It is surrounded by Jewish settlements, who want to take the Nassar’s land for more settlements. The Jewish settlers insists the land belongs to them, because God had given it to them when Abraham, 4000 years earlier, settled there, and they have tried every way possible, save killing the family, to force them off their land. The Nassar family refuses to leave, reduced to living in tents below the ground level, and their cause has become internationally known, and thousands of people yearly come there to work and camp to express solidarity with their plight against the settlers. The Nassars pledge nonviolence and use what donations are given to work through the legal process to secure their family land. But their prospects grow dimmer each day, and the nearby settlements keep encroaching.
On April 8th, Beverly and I joined with several people to listen to a Swedish College Choir touring Israel at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church of Bethlehem. Inger and Kjell Jonasson, who work for the Swedish Lutheran Church, aiding the World Council of Churches assistance to Palestinians in the West Bank gave us a ride back to Tantur. They told us about Palestinians they had known over the years who had died in their fifties to heart-attacks, especially men who were fathers and husbands. These men had seen the Israelis build the wall in the middle of their family land, taking their heritage and livelihood away from them. Many of them became separated from family members and from their family cemeteries, and because they were considered threats to the Israelis, they were not given papers to cross into Israel. The grief and humiliation became too much to them, and they suffered, some dying prematurely. Others told us the same.
The Palestinians want their land, their family inheritance.
These incidents, and many more, illustrate the stress that permeates Israel and the West Bank. The Israelis want security and the Palestinians want their land back. Each knows beyond a shadow of doubt in their minds and hearts they are right and just in their grievances and claims against the others. Because the Israeli think the land belongs to them and they feel under attack by the Hamas, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs, Hezbollah, etc., they restrict the movement and civil rights of the Palestinians. Because the Palestinians have lost three wars with the Israelis, and because their two intifada have actually made their plight worse with the Israelis, and because they have had their land taken from them and are continually losing more land to the new settlements, they are desperate to stop the expansion of the Israelis. One side uses the force and violence of the army to gain security, and the other side uses the threat of terrorist violence to revenge their losses and regain their land. Each is intransigent in their positions and their attitudes. They are at an impasse.
We heard an Israeli security officer speak to us in early April that the Israeli people are fearful of others and insecure of the future. We heard from a Palestinian that they are exhausted and weary, knowing that both direct negotiations with Israelis and the two intifadas failed to bring about real change. They do not know what to do.
Frankly, I think in such a volatile situation any political, military solution to this impasse will only make the matters worse. The more Palestinians use violence to enact their aims, the more Israel will lock down the West Bank and, if need be will siege the West Bank with tanks. The more Israel tries to drive out the Palestinians by enlarging existing settlements and starting new ones, the more they enrage the Palestinians and diminish their moral authority in the eyes of the world.
One could say that Israel is a powder cage about to go off. Yet, I believe there is hope and that there is a model of peace to follow.
On Thursday evening of Holy Week we attended a Maundy Thursday worship service at the Sister’s of Zion church, Ecce Homo, the place where Pontius Pilate sentenced Jesus to death and the beginning of the 14 stations of the Via Dolorosa. It was a beautiful liturgy, though being the only Protestants there, we were not allowed to share the Eucharist. Afterwards we were invited to eat dinner on the top floor of the building complex with the Sisters and a number of priests, who had come there for Holy Week from around the world. It was a great evening and encouraging to hear their stories and experience their warm hospitality. After I ate, I walked onto the rooftop patio, and as I did I heard the muezzin from the Al-Aqsa mosque call Muslims to prayer. The Mosque is about four blocks away, and as I looked down the roof onto the road I saw about six ultra-orthodox Jews, dressed in their unique clothing and hats hurrying down the road to make their way through the twisted streets to the Western Wall to start their prayers before the sun sat. And I thought, “No place but Jerusalem could this happen.” I had just come from a liturgy remembering the great sacrifice of a Jew who died for the sins of the world and who is the messiah of Israel, hearing the distinctive call of the muezzin to the Muslim faithful to turn their lives devotedly to the God of all life, and seeing descendants of Eastern European Jewry who had survived the holocaust intent to pray where Jews have prayed for thousands of years for their souls, for Jerusalem, the Holy City, and for the coming of the Messiah and the messianic age.
These three faiths and people live side-by-side in Jerusalem and for hundreds of years have worked out a complicated informal set of rules, some unseen and unknown by outsiders, of coexistence and, sometimes, with a modest measure of mutual respect. It is very common in Israel to see Palestinian Muslim and Palestinian Christian sharing Holy Days, some saints (like St. George) and certain religious celebrations (like Advent and Christmas). They’ve been doing it together for 1300 years. It is very common to see large Christian groups at the Western Wall singing hymns, praying out loud, and weeping at the Wall. On Fridays, as thousands of Muslims come to the Al-Aqsa mosque to pray, the Israeli police and military provide traffic control.
Though there are profound differences among the three religions and the history they share is not a sanguine one, in Jerusalem they have found a way to respect their religious activities enough to give each other room and respect to pursue what their scriptures and traditions determine. They have learned to live next to each other because each seeks God in their own way. When the Jew prays at the Western Wall, and the Christian at the Holy Sepulcher, and the Muslim on the Haram al-Sharif, they are creating a political reality of co-existence and, at times, mutual respect.
On Palm Sunday of Holy Week I joined thousands (perhaps close to 20,000) to walk from Bethphage to Jerusalem, reenacting Jesus’ famous trip on the week before he was crucified. People from all over the world were part of it. For the first time in years the Western and Eastern calendars converged, and so Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and many other Christian groups joined together to start the most holy of weeks in Christianity. It was amazing to experience such an ecumenical and international religious activity. People sang, prayed, laughed, meditated, hugged, danced, and wept for joy as we neared the famous Lions Gate, which opens onto the Via Dolorosa. The processional passed through two Muslim villages, and there was no mocking or slurs from anyone. The Muslims seemed interested and in a way quietly respectful of this unique and distinct Christian activity. The Muslims there for centuries had witnessed many Christians come from all over the world to Jerusalem to worship.
However, not all religious activity in Jerusalem contributes to peaceful coexistence. The Christians who come to Israel to support the Zionist principles of Israel are aggravating the political tensions between the Israelis and Palestinians, and they are insulting and contributing to the persecution of the Palestinian Christians, who are lumped together by the Israelies with the Palestinian Muslims. Not only are the Christian Zionist misunderstanding the biblical descriptions of the New Jerusalem and the Return of Christ, they are extremely naïve about the political machinations and cruelty that go on in Israel under the banner of Zionism, activities that no Christian who follows Jesus’ command to love the neighbor and the enemy should ever condone and advance. In fact, I believe every Christian organization should publicly reject Christian Zion as counterproductive to real peace in Israel and contrary to Christian principles of peacemaking.
Also, many of the Jewish settlers in the West Bank theologically justify their taking of Palestinian land. It is common to hear them say “God gave us this land. You don’t belong here. Only Jews belong in an undivided Israel.” I believe the number one problem in Israel today is the presence and expansion of the Jewish Settlements in the West Bank. After the Itarma massacre, Israel announced they would build 500 more units in the area. It is obvious that Israel intends not only to gain more security by building more settlements but also to discourage the Palestinians, Muslims and Christians alike, to the point that they will leave the West Bank. Many Jewish Zionist groups have stated that they not only want to cleanse Israel of non-Jews, they want to cleanse Jerusalem of Muslims and Christians. To attempt this would be an utter disaster, setting off immense, international conflicts, and would blight Jerusalem as a holy city, crippling it from playing its vital inter-faith and ecumenical role. The Israeli government must not let Zionism control the city. In fact, I believe every religious Jewish organization should demand Israel not only to stop increasing the number of settlements but to start returning the stolen land back to the Palestinians.
And, of course, any mullah who during Friday prayers incites others to drive Israel into the sea, is a fool and sends others to their death. In light of Israel’s history, they will destroy any concerted effort to use violence against them by the Palestinians, and the Mullah’s call to violence will only lead to more dead Palestinians and no return of their land. In fact, I think every Muslim group who wants to keep the Al-Aqsa mosque central to the worship life of Muslims should call for non-violent negotiations with Israel, working with other countries and the United Nations to secure Jerusalem and to keep it open for all Muslims.
Furthermore, it was wrong of the Palestinian President Abbas to say before the United Nations in September that he represents the land of the ascension of the Prophet Mohammed and the birth of Jesus and not to mention that the same land is the land of Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah the Jewish prophet. Though, I think, Abbas is right to ask from the U.N. official recognition for statehood as a way to force negotiations with Israel rather than to start a Third Intifada, but he willfully ignores the obvious fact that the Jewish Second Temple was in Jerusalem approximately 650 years before Mohammed and that Jews have been worshipping the God of Abraham in that very site ever since the time of King David. Abbas’ comment was more political than religious, and for that reason it only exacerbates the problem.
My conclusion from these observations is that Jerusalem as a Holy City is the model for peace in Israel. This runs contrary to received wisdom in some people’s minds that religion is the cause of the problems in Israel, that if they were all secular, then they would be more likely to have peace there. This view, I believe, is misinformed about the real causes of conflict in Israel and too divorced from the real life of the situation to be helpful. Politics, calls to violence, land and water conflicts, the desire for revenge are the real causes of the tension in Israel. In Israel, political solutions usually entail and require violence or its threat to work. I do not think they will find a political, military or terrorist agenda that will make the Israelis and Palestinians live peacefully with each other. They already live together peacefully, when they are at prayer and worship. Holy places draw people away from their local and temporary restrictions. Of course, they do not erase these problems, but they do show when people are left to their best efforts to seek God, that though others may not understand or agree with the content of the differing theologies, they tolerate and on occasions respect the sincerity and devotion of the others.
I do not have a final answer to the political problems in Israel, and in fact, we should be suspicious and doubtful of anyone who says they do. “There are no straight lines in Israel,” as I was told there. I am confident that a disastrous war would break out if any group tried to impose a political solution upon everyone involved in Israel. My contention is that whatever Israel and Palestine decide about their many issues, they should focus on keeping Jerusalem holy, for it has shown that when differing people come in their own ways to seek God, a form of peaceful co-existence can happen.
Dennis Sanson is Professor of Philosophy at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama
