wfn.org | Palestinian pastors decry excessive use of force by Israel

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Note #6216 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

13-October-2000
00355

Palestinian pastors decry excessive use of force by Israel

"They are using missiles against us ..."

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- In the early evening darkness, the Rev. Magdi Sirayni can
see how machine-gun fire is lighting up Bethlehem.

	He's in a neighboring town, just a few miles from Jerusalem called Beit
Sahour, where he is the priest of a Latin Catholic congregation.  But today,
he's staying inside the rectory, watching the gunfire from the windows,
hearing the helicopters overhead, listening to the rockets explode outside.

	"They're shelling us all over the place," Sirayni told the Presbyterian
News Service by telephone, joking, at first, that he has plenty of time to
talk since he can't do much else, but ending the conversation more soberly. 
"For the first time in my life, I am scared and terrorized.

	"I was here in the Gulf War.  During the whole Intifada, I was here.  But
the Israelis were never so uncontrolled.  They are showing a horrible face. 
And we are defense-less," said Sirayni, who is also the legal representative
of the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem -- a city that he cannot enter these
days since soldiers are turning back traffic from Palestinian areas.

	That's what is becoming the mantra that Christian pastors on the West Bank
are repeating over and over: We are defense-less; or, as one pastor put it
more graphically, "arm-less," meaning, of course, without weapons.  And
scared.

	That's the second part of the message.

	"They are using missiles against us," said the Rev. Audeh Rantisi, a now
retired Anglican pastor who once worked for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
in Sudan -- and whose voice kept rising as the conversation wore on.  Shells
fell the night before last only one mile from Rantisi's Ramallah home as the
Israelis retaliated for the beating deaths of two soldiers who were inside
the borders of an area governed by the Palestinian Authority.

	"We are an arm-less people.  What is this? ... They use missiles, why? 
Israel has all the means, even nuclear power.  We don't even have an army,"
said Rantisi, who didn't hesitate to say that U.S. Christians need to start
speaking up about the use of excessive force by "bloodthirsty Zionists"
against even civilians and about what he calls the U.S. government's
uncritical backing of Israel no matter what.

	"Why," he asked, "is the (U.S.) church so quiet?  I do feel the church
should speak up . ...  I do feel the church is one church.  Presbyterians. 
Anglicans.  We are one body of Christ and we should love one another, care
for one another."

	It is estimated that 56 Christians are among the thousands of Palestinian
wounded.

	The National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. (NCC) and its
relief arm, Church World Service and Witness (CWS), did put out a statement
Oct. 11 calling all parties to stop not only the violence, but provocations
to violence.  "All must pull back from the brink of uncontrollable violent
confrontation, where every incident and each life lost only fuels further
violence and loss of life," it read.  It condemned the severity of the
Israeli response to demonstrations following Knesset member Ariel Sharon's
entry into the walled compound in Jerusalem's Old City known as to Muslims
as the Noble Sanctuary (Haram al-Sharif) and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

	The NCC said that the present outbreak of violence was "provoked by a
heavy-handed demonstration of Israeli power and assertion of Israeli claims
to exercise exclusive sovereignty of Jerusalem ..."

	Sirayni -- whose congregation is partnered with First Presbyterian church
in Houston, Texas — couldn't agree more that Israel's use of force has been
heavy-handed.

	  "They're shelling from apache choppers, using machine guns.  They don't
care if they kill kids, women, young women.  It is not a question of whether
you are in the streets.  What matters in Palestine is: ‘Wherever you are, we
will get you.'"

	He says that Israel's message over the past few weeks is simple and
clear-cut: "Arabs don't count.  If we want to kill you, we'll kill you."  In
fact, he said, that's a loose paraphrase of what one general said on Israeli
television.

	 And that is why, Sirayni said, he does not counsel Palestinian young men
to get out of the streets.  Or others to do lobbying.  Still others advocacy
work.  He is especially reluctant to do so after watching negotiations
collapse during the last couple of weeks -- when he was hoping a just
agreement would come to the table and put an end to the killing of
Palestinians and Israelis.

	In fact, he said, the killing of the two Israeli soldiers who were inside
the Palestinian Authority's borders was not acceptable.  "Everybody here is
saying it was horrific," Sirayni said, describing the town's talk.

	What troubles Rantisi is that the focus is always on Israel's dead, which
is how the international community seems to justify Israel's retribution --
no matter how much force the nation uses.  Israel's  munitions, he is quick
to point out, come from the United States.  He said is it mind-boggling to
listen to diplomats defend excessive violence because three Israeli hostage
were taken or two Israeli soldiers killed.

	"They forgot that thousands of Palestinians are injured and no one has
spoken a word.  What is this?" he asked, wondering why no one ever asks what
motivates young men to go into the streets and throw rocks at armed soldiers
-- and when they die, how it only perpetuates the cycle of hatred that has
trapped two cultures for too long.

	"We've been suffering from the longest occupation in the world ... There's
no work. There is no food to eat.  Where should we turn?  Where should we
turn?," he asked.

	It is a question that Sirayni asks too.

	"You have to understand the reason behind the rage," he said, remembering
the dislocation of Palestinian families, the lost property, the dead sons,
the ongoing threats of more land losses and killings.  "And, they have
shelled Ramallah four times. Yes," he said, since the two Israeli soldiers
were killed brutally. "They have shelled Gaza.  They have shelled Nablus. 
And everyday eight to 10 men are killed on our side.

	"Why?"

	It was a question that Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem,
tackled in an ecumenical prayer service yesterday at St. Stephen's church
inside Jerusalem.

	"We are gathered here today to pray, he said, "to see before God why all
these troubles took place and what we have to do?  Why did the Palestinians
revolt?  To say: enough to promises and to the delaying of promises ... The
question today is not a question of mere troubles or public disorder which
should be tamed.  This vision will only make violence a permanent fact in
this Holy Land.  The true question is that of a people kept ... hostage who
(are) asking for ... freedom.

	"According to this vision, measures should be taken, with the true courage
to give back the required freedom.  This is the way to start a new era which
corresponds to the vocation of this Holy Land," said Sabbah, who then asked
for God's mercy upon those who have died, for their families, for the Jewish
people, for both Israeli and Palestinian political leaders.  "May God," he
said, "inspire them with the light to see the core of the problem and the
right ways to deal with it.

	"May He give them courage and strength to implement what God inspires
them."

	The Rev. Naim Ateek, the director of the Sabeel Ecumenical Theology Center
in Jerusalem, took the plea for prayer one step further.

	  Ateek issued an appeal to "all people who believe that peace based on
justice is the only answer to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict" to do
several things: To hold prayer services, to urge governments to put pressure
on Israel to end "the massacre" and to insist that United Nations
Resolutions 242 and 338 -- which call for an end to the occupation -- be
implemented, and to ensure that media portray "the truth of the current
situation ... with honesty and objectivity, and without bias."

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