wfn.org | Ken Sehested of Baptist Peace Fellowship tours West Bank war zone

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

Ken Sehested
-------------------
6 May 2000
For more information contact: Ken Sehested, Executive Director
Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America
Phone: 828/627-0975 (home office); Internet: ken@bpfna.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Sehested returns from tour of West Bank war zone

  On a recent Sunday afternoon, Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America
Executive Director Ken Sehested climbed the Mount of Olives, across the
Valley of Kidron from Jerusalem, and stopped in the Dominus Flevit
Chapel which marks the traditional site of Jesus weeping over the city
before his final entry: "Would that you knew the things that make for
peace" (Luke 19:42)

  Unfortunately, it was closing time and the priest in charge had just
locked the door. "But when he saw us," Sehested said, "he shrugged and
said in a thick German accent, O.K., just two minutes. So my friends
and I took a quick look. As we were leaving, the priest asked if we were
from the U.S. When we said yes, his scrunched his face and said, Why is
your president such a cowboy? He is much to blame for our suffering!"

  This time the weeping would not be over Jerusalem but over Ramallah,
Bethlehem, Hebron, Jenin and Nablus where, beginning March 29, the
Israeli Defense Force (IDF) began an unprecedented invasion of all of
the major towns in the West Bank which, along with the Gaza Strip,
Israel has illegally occupied since the 1967 war.

  Sehested visited the region as part of an April 15-29 Christian
Peacemaker Teams (CPT) delegation to support the latters permanent team
based in Hebron. CPT is an ecumenical organization committed to
nonviolent intervention in situations of civil conflict and draws much
of its support from the historic peace churches: Mennonites, Church of
the Brethren and Society of Friends.

  Israeli troops have since withdrawn from most of these locations, but
the fighting was still underway in most of the places the delegation
visited. Delegation members were among those who attempted to get food
and medicines to those trapped in the besieged Church of the Nativity in
Bethlehem; accompanied Palestinian children to and from school in
Hebron, to protect them from harassment from soldiers and stone-throwing
Jewish settler children; accompanied a welding crew in Dura, sent to
repair the water pipe leading into the city which had been damaged by
bulldozers operated by Israeli soldiers building a road block; helped
Palestinian farmers in Jatta harvest a barley crop, providing a
protective presence against random shooting by soldiers and Jewish
settlers; and surveyed the damage in several cities caused not only by
the fighting but also by deliberate acts of vandalism by Israeli
soldiers, something which the IDF has since admitted.

  "Here in North America, our ears have been thoroughly trained by
popular films and the mainstream media to associate the word
Palestinian or Arab with the word terrorist," said Sehested. "We
never hear that 726,000 Palestinians lost their homes and ancestral
lands when the nation of Israel was founded in 1948; or that Israels
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is patently illegal and that
the U.N. has multiple resolutions demanding they withdraw; or that the
U.S. subsidizes Israel to the tune of $10 million daily30% of our
annual foreign aid budget.

  "Is the situation there complicated? Yes, it is. Doesnt Israel have
the right to secure borders? Yes, it does," Sehested said. "But the
Palestinians also have rights. And this is what were missing. The
first and worst violence, according to Uri Avnery, former member of the
Israeli Knesset, "is the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land."
# # #

Note to editors: At the end of an article reflecting on his trip ("House
to House, Field to Field: Reflections on a peace mission to the West
Bank," to be printed in the July-August issue of The Other Side
magazine), Sehested concludes:

There are many and diverse things to be said, however humbly. The
following is my top-ten list of things needing to be highlighted.

1. The nation of Israel was created as a refuge for Jews escaping
Europe's holocaust ovens, an episode unparalleled in the history of
human savageryin its systematic intention and implementation if not in
sheer magnitude. Indeed, the brutal legacy of anti-Semitism (in which
the Christian community shares responsibility) in many parts of the
world is well-documented. Nevertheless, the Jewish safe-haven that is
Israel was built on the backs of an indigenous population, one that is
also Semitic, 726,000 of whom were displaced from their homes and
ancestral lands.

2. Theological claims that the land of ancient Palestine was promised to
the Jews by God may be emotionally satisfying but cannot be privileged
in a world where gods, like gang leaders, inhabit every other block.
Palestinians (both Christian and Muslim) and Jews each have legitimate
claims to the land, which if not shared could become a perpetual killing
field, maybe even trigger an international nuclear exchange.

3. I am among those raised on "cowboy and Indian" movies in North
America, where the latter were stereotyped as barbarous, untrustworthy
and bloodthirsty savages who prey on the weak and innocent. A similar
portrait of Arab peoples has been painted by modern movies and news
programs. Until that field of vision changes we will continue to be
clueless in reading history and in charting a redemptive future.

4. The so-called "Oslo Accords" is utterly inadequate in its projected
division of land between Israel and Palestine. The proposed map of the
Palestinian nation is more like a patchwork of reservations, each
encircled by, and thus controlled by, Israel. Jeff Halper has noted, the
fact that 95% of the Occupied West Bank would be part of the new
Palestinian nation is a grossly misleading statement. Inmates occupy
some 95% of a prison. It's what happens with the other 5% that matters.

5. There is significant and growing evidence that Israeli leaders have
no intention of returning illegally occupied lands to Palestinian
control. Such policies of encroachment (particularly with the expanding
settlements) amount to ethnic cleansing.

6. It is certainly true that Arab "terror networks" exist and must be
stopped (just as there have been Ku Klux Klan and other terror networks
here for over a century). However, addressing terrorism by military
means is, in the words of John Paul Lederach, like trying to kill
flowering dandelions by hitting them with a golf club.

7. The violence of Palestinian terrorists doesnt occur in a vacuum.
"The first and worst violence," according to Uri Avnery, former member
of the Israeli Knesset, "is the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land."
Virtually every major human rights organization (including Human Rights
Watch, Amnesty International, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, and
even Btselem, the leading Israeli human rights body) insist that
Israeli demands for Palestinians to "stop the violence" actually turns
reality on its head.

8. Many statements, from governments and non-governmental bodies
(including churches), have been made decrying the violence on both sides
of this conflict. Such statements are actually disingenuous in that they
ignore the dynamics of power in the conflict. If both sides were to
immediately cease all hostilities, the resulting "peace" would leave
Israel in an overwhelmingly dominant position. Any peace agreement that
refuses to acknowledge the imbalance of power is destined to harden the
realities of injustice and thereby sow the seeds for the next war.

9. The recent plan approved by the Arab League, acknowledging both
Israeli and Palestinian rights to exist within secure borders, must be
affirmed as the framework for a just peace. It is not unfair to ask if
Arab nations are sincere. But there is only one way to find out.

10. Finally, while the United Nations is the proper forum for
negotiating a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians, numerous
national and regional governing bodies will have distinctive roles to
play. Among those must be a commitment by the U.S. to leverage its
massive financial aid to Israel as incentive for good-faith bargaining.
###

[A full copy of "House to House, Field to Field" will be posted soon on
the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America website: www.bpfna.org

Founded in 1984, the BPFNA is a network linking Baptists involved in
justice and peace issues throughout North America. Its board of
directors is composed of members affiliated with 12 Baptist conventions
and five racial/ethnic groups in Canada, the U.S., Puerto Rico and
Mexico, plus representatives from Baptist convention peace and justice
offices. The organization has no official sponsorship of any convention.
Its primary purpose is to encourage greater Baptist involvementat
local, national and international levelsin justice and peace concerns
and to help clarify understanding of such involvement as essential to
Christian discipleship.