wfn.org | RELIGIOUS LEADERS PROD MIDDLE EAST PEACE PROCESS

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Tile: Religious Leaders in Middle East Peace Process

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the 
U.S.A.
Internet: news@ncccusa.org

Contact: Wendy McDowell, NCC, 212-870-2227

128NCC12/4/98     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

RELIGIOUS LEADERS PROD GOVERNMENT FOR STRONG ROLE IN 
PEACE PROCESS

by Alexa Smith*

 WASHINGTON, D.C. ---- With a fragile agreement in 
place and potentially volatile talks yet to come, 
national Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders 
convened here to show support for peace between 
Israelis and Palestinians and for continued U.S. 
involvement in peace negotiations.

 Though there is little clarity -- and even 
downright disagreement -- among members of the U.S. 
Interreligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East 
about what peace ought to look like, there is real 
commitment to demonstrate that a carefully negotiated 
peace is what the majority of Middle Easterners and 
their U.S. constituencies want -- not unilateral 
pressure or extremist actions.

 Just to make the point, leaders from the National 
Council of Churches (NCC), the American Muslim Council, 
the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Center 
for Jewish-Christian Understanding, the Presbyterian 
Church (U.S.A.) and others gathered Nov. 22 at the 
Foundry United Methodist Church, the congregation where 
President Clinton and his family worship when they are 
in Washington.

 NCC General Secretary the Rev. Joan Brown 
Campbell, one of the Interreligious Committee's 
national co-chairs, said peacemakers in interfaith 
circles have been "slogging it out for years and years" 
on Middle East peace issues.  She said that mainstream 
Protestants have a strategic role to play in pushing 
the administration to stick with peace negotiations, 
because the Jewish community is so small.  "Without 
[our] voices," she said, "the government will not put 
as much energy into the peace process."

During her formal remarks, Dr. Campbell said that 
the group was gathered for "a very
simple reason: to give energy, strength and courage to 
all those who are peacemakers."   She said that a rabbi 
once told her that the term "neighbor" is not "a 
geographic term" but  "a moral term."  She closed by 
saying: "So let us go forth and love our neighbors as 
ourselves."

 "This administration - and other administrations 
before it - has been committed to helping the peace 
process proceed," said Ronald J. Young, the committee's 
executive director, citing vocal lobbies ranging from 
Christian fundamentalists to the well-established 
American Pro-Israel Political Action Committee voicing 
sole support for Israel.  "But there are pressures on 
the administration, pressures [from] the Congress that 
are almost overwhelming . . . and almost all the 
pressure is, essentially, to adopt the position of the 
Israeli government and get the Palestinians to accept 
it."

 Use of such  pressure is not how his committee 
wants to see the negotiations run.  Begun in 1987 to 
bring Jews, Christians and Muslims together for 
dialogue, education and peace advocacy, the 
organization defines itself as working to build bridges 
between faiths that share the Abrahamic tradition and 
to work for peace as a moral imperative.

 "We've got no real political clout.  We've got a 
voice, a significant voice," said Albert Vorspan, a 
vice president emeritus of the Union of American Hebrew 
Congregations who is one of the committee's three 
national interfaith co-chairs.  "We've got a voice that 
says the U.S. has to play a leadership role in the 
peace process, no matter where we may come out 
individually on the issues ... and we come to 
understand each other."

 "This is the only platform I've heard of where 
people of all religious faiths come together to share 
one commitment to peace in the Middle East. We never 
reach across bridges to the other groups."

 How hard that is was exemplified by the 
committee's program where two speakers - one a retired 
Israeli military officer, the other a female 
Palestinian politician and activist - articulated 
widespread support for peace within their 
constituencies in a painful 40-year sovereignty battle.

But on the sticky questions - such as control of 
Israeli settlements deep in Palestinian territory and 
on how to stop terrorism - common ground was harder to 
find, let alone, develop.

 Startling some in attendance were remarks by 
Shlomo Lahat, mayor of Tel Aviv and president of the 
Council for Peace and Security, an organization with 80 
percent of Israel's senior retired military officers as 
its membership. He proposed that peace, which is 
necessary for Israel's security, includes: giving the 
Palestinian state its 1967 borders and, in the Israeli-
Syrian negotiations, withdrawing from the Golan 
Heights.  Peace, he said, also includes a commitment 
from Israel not to interfere in the return of refugees 
to the new state - ideas that go beyond what the 
Netanyahu government is offering.  Lahat insisted that 
the Palestinian government minimize terrorism, that 
settlements, exempting isolated ones, remain within 
Israeli hands, and that Jerusalem be the capital of the 
state of Israel, with guarantees of religious freedom 
for people of all faiths - freedoms that, Lahat said, 
exist now for the three faiths.

 Stepping up next to the podium, former Palestinian 
National Authority minister Hanan Ashrawi countered a 
Jerusalem that includes two different capitals for two 
separate states in one city is a possibility and not "a 
pipedream."

 "We must find a solution to do justice to 
Jerusalem ... and not reduce it to a spiritual place 
where people worship," she said, arguing that the city 
- despite Israeli rhetoric - is not open to people of 
all religions because of permits often denied to 
Palestinians and military checkpoints. "It must be a 
place where people can live."

 Ashrawi articulated what she called a "sense of 
outrage" that is "destroying the peace process" when 
the international community - most particularly, the 
U.S. - overlooks how Israel not only annexed the 
historically Arab section of  Jerusalem, but continues 
to build settlements on Palestinian land.  She said 
violating human rights to curtail terrorists will not 
end terrorism, but further the injustices and abuses 
experienced now by Palestinians and erode trust in the 
new Palestinian government. 

 Likewise, the two leaders spoke differently about 
the U.S. role in future negotiations. Lahat said the 
U.S. can take several roles in the coming negotiations, 
from aiding the Palestinian state in development to 
interfering when agreements are violated, but Ashrawi 
was more circumspect.  "So far, the perception is that 
the U.S. has taken sides," she said, urging that what 
has become a dangerously slow peace process should 
include Europeans and Arabs.

 "The need for an active, determined U.S. role in 
the coming months is absolutely clear," said Young. He 
added that whatever differences were articulated by the 
speakers, neither disagreed that a "morally logical, 
politically realistic" peace is wanted by majorities on 
both sides of the political divide.  "And, we cannot 
assume that the U.S. will play a role unless we 
demonstrate - as  unitedly as we can - that's what we 
want the administration to do.

 "Nor are we cheerleaders for one side or the 
other.  We are Americans," he said. "Our role is to 
push and support the administration to play an active 
[role] in helping the parties negotiate solutions ... 
that remain acceptable to majorities on both sides."

 The errors and abuses of all three faiths were 
singled out during remarks by Atif Harden, executive 
director of the Washington-based American Muslim 
Council, who asked each community to look at its own 
record during the centuries each took control of 
Jerusalem.  "Just as individuals are judged for how we 
live our lives, I also believe communities are judged 
 ... and one of the tests is: did we treat one another 
with justice?," he asked, using Jewish, Muslim and 
Christian history to raise questions about the future 
in what he called "holy land."

 "Whose reign," he pushed, "was most just, most 
righteous ... and who kept the land and the city of 
Jerusalem a city of peace?"

  Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Moderator the Rev. 
Doug Oldenburg told that gathering that the role of 
religious leaders is to "keep hope alive" in the midst 
of a process that tempts North Americans "well-
insulated from the problems"  to be discouraged or 
worse, apathetic.  "We've seen history open with 
unexpected surprises," he said, citing as the foremost 
example the collapse of the Berlin Wall. "And we must 
keep hoping and praying that the God we worship will 
bring about reconciliation. Our job is to keep hope 
alive."

 That energy has been Young's point since he 
founded the committee 11 years ago.  "We've got to hear 
each others' points of view.  We've got to adopt 
positions of advocacy that are sensitive to each 
others' concerns ... [and the government has] to help 
the parties work toward a solution, the outlines [of] 
which are beginning to emerge."

-end-

*Alexa is a staff reporter for Presbyterian News 
Service in Louisville, Kentucky

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