wfn.org | U.S. Clergy Urge End to Palestine Rights Abuse

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5-February-1999 
99053 
 
    U.S. Clergy Urge End to Palestine Rights Abuse 
 
    by Religion News Service 
 
WASHINGTON--More than 900 clergy, including five former moderators of the 
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly, have called on President 
Clinton and the U.S. government to 
press the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority to end what the 
religious leaders said was violations of the rights of Palestinians. 
 
    "We condemn human rights violations by Israel and the Palestinian 
Authority, violations which preclude justice for Palestinians and security 
for Israelis," the clergy said in a statement delivered Jan. 28 to U.S., 
Israeli and Palestinian officials in New York and Washington. 
 
    The statement was signed by former moderators the Rev. Clinton Marsh, 
the Rev. Benjamin Weir, the Rev. Herbert Valentine, the Rev. John Fife and 
the Rev. Robert Bohl 
 
    The statement criticized both sides in the Middle East conflict and 
suggested the U.S. government too often reflected the views of the Israeli 
government. 
 
    "If President Clinton heeded Judeo-Christian values and international 
law, his policies would reflect the position of U.S. religious leaders and 
Israeli human rights groups, not those of the Israeli government and the 
Israeli lobby in the United States," said Edmund Hanauer, executive 
director of SEARCH for Justice and Equality in Palestine/Israel, a 
Boston-based human rights 
organization that organized the appeal to Clinton. 
 
    The clergy said the U.S. government should "support the rights of 
Palestinians as well as Israelis." 
 
    The group said its statement was based on reports from Amnesty 
International, Human Rights Watch and other private groups as well as the 
State Department and Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups. 
 
    In Israel's case, the clergy asked the Clinton administration to adhere 
to U.S. law barring economic or military aid to nations "engaging in a 
consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human 
rights."  But it also said aid should be withheld from the Palestinian 
Authority until it complies with U.S. law and international human rights 
covenants. 
 
    It said Israel continues to violate half-a-dozen articles of the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and seven articles of the Geneva 
Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, 
including torture, collective punishment, refusal of the right to return to 
one's country, execution without fair legal process, arbitrary arrest and 
denial of food and medical supplies. 
 
    Palestinian violations of human rights accords include the use of 
secret trials, torture and intimidation of political opponents and the 
media. 

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