wfn.org | Mission agency urges return to Middle East negotiations

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

April 19, 2002       News media contact: Linda Bloom7 (212) 870-38037New
York    10-21-71B{175}

STAMFORD, Conn. (UMNS) -- The United Methodist Board of Global Ministries
calls upon all parties involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to look
beyond historical animosities, stop all violence and killing and return to
negations immediately.

That call, approved during the board's April 15-18 meeting, also urged
access for the immediate resumption of humanitarian aid to the area.

Board directors are urging the Israeli government "to end its occupation of
Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the violence used to
enforce it," noting that the occupation violates both United Nations'
Resolutions 242 and 338 and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The directors also are calling upon Palestinians "to end every kind of
violent response to the Israeli occupation and to engage in nonviolent
strategies in the quest for full recognition of their human and civil
rights."

All governments should stop military aid to the region, according to the
board's resolution, which encourages the deployment of an
international-peacekeeping force to prevent more hostilities.

"We urge all United Methodists to stand in solidarity with heads of churches
in Jerusalem and other religious leaders in the area in advocating for a
just and lasting peace in the region," the resolution said. The mission
agency hopes to send a delegation to meet with those religious leaders.

The Rev. Sandra Olewine, a United Methodist missionary based in the region,
told board directors during a lunchtime briefing that the hostility between
Israelis and Palestinians has become so intensified that "it's really a
struggle now not to see everyone of the 'other' as an enemy."

She said she has found, for the first time, support for suicide bombing by
the average Palestinian on the street. Despite regret over the loss of life,
she explained, these Palestinians believe there is no other way to fight
back against what they consider to be the brutality of the Israeli
government and the fourth largest army in the world.

Palestinians do want an international solution to their situation, Olewine
said, but current proposals from various places are not connected to
international law. Because of the bitterness of the dispute and the
difference in power, she believes that "international law becomes the tool
in which you level the playing field."

In his address to directors, the Rev. Randolph Nugent, the board's chief
executive, spoke about the church's directive to be in mission to all
people, even in "a time in which we have been told that violence and
terrorism have become the order of the day."

With civilian populations increasingly becoming targets - both by terrorists
who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals and by government bombs
dropped from the sky - "the real common denominator is terror," he said.

The current focus on terrorism should not deflect attention from the victims
"painted with the convenient brush called collateral damage," which
supposedly makes the killing acceptable or at least understandable.

Nugent noted that "countless church members" live in nations where terror is
a daily reality. "If our mission outreach fails to encompass them and
embrace them, fails to understand them as people, no matter what their
condition, then we, too, become part of the community masking the reality of
the gospel claim. For some, the distinction between combatants and
noncombatants is not so clear cut as we might like it to be."

He characterized the current Israeli-Palestinian situation as "a conflict
led by two old men, neither of whom takes up weapons, but both of whom speak
words and commit actions which lead to death for the young and the
vulnerable. Compelled by the words and actions of these two persons and
their followers, the young take up arms and continue the disputes borne of
thousands of years."

It is to such persons, Nugent said, that "a word of peace, mission and
reconciliation must be directed."

He pointed out that the gospel is not driven by temporal realities, such as
politics or the emotions of the moment, but by the call to eliminate
suffering "by the one who suffered and died that we might have life." But he
added, some may misunderstand the call to reach out to all.

"The concern for the injured, on whatever side, does not condone the
destructive activity of either side," Nugent said. "Let there be no
suggestion that our legitimate concern, for example, for the Israeli people
condones the recent invasion of Palestinian territories or the long
occupation and oppression of those people or the killing in Jenin, or
destruction of homes with bulldozers, or even the killing of an unknown
number of Palestinians. Nor does our concern for Palestinian people and
their human and civil rights condone the acts of those few who engage in
suicide bombing directed at noncombatant Israelis."

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United Methodist News Service
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