This is the second of two articles on the 2011 Churches for Middle East Peace Advocacy Conference. To read about conference speakers’ assessment of the “Arab Spring” revolutions, click here.
Set against the backdrop of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before a joint session of the U.S. Congress, members of a church coalition convened May 22-24 in Washington, D.C. to advocate about Middle East matters.
Approximately 200 people took part in the Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) fifth annual advocacy conference. Themed “For the Peace of Jerusalem”, the conference concluded with participants visiting members of Congress and staff representing 26 different states to lobby for policies that they believed would promote a “just, lasting and comprehensive” resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We will continue to be committed to Israel’s security, but say that Israel’s security is threatened by dispossession of Palestinian land,” said Former Ambassador and CMEP Executive Director Warren Clark, who added that the “U.S. and Israel relationship is not made in heaven,” and must be a “two-way street.”
The coalition of churches, which includes mainline Protestant, Orthodox and Roman Catholic groups, has been accused by detractors as having an anti-Israel bias. Critics have said CMEP focuses on a path to peace that is centered on Israeli concessions and which overlooks Palestinian transgressions.
“Second Class” Citizen
While CMEP urges “major compromises” by both sides, the church coalition’s record suggests Middle East peace is to be obtained mainly through U.S. pressure on Israel. Palestinians are portrayed as aggrieved victims awaiting justice.
The conference was opened by Melkite Greek Catholic Archbishop Elias Chacour of Galilee, an Israeli Arab who said his major concern was how to slow the emigration of Christians from Israel. Chacour lamented that major Palestinian Christian populations were now found in western cities such as Melbourne and Toronto.
“We don’t want to see them there, but that is the way it is,” Chacour said, stating that Palestinians became refugees when Israel became independent.
Chacour, who describes himself as a Palestinian Christian citizen of Israel, retold his story about establishing a successful parochial school and of his advocacy work with former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker in order to advance the project.
“I wish that I stop being [a] second class citizen,” Chacour said, noting that he had been in Israeli courts 37 different times, always attempting to get building permits related to the school project. The Catholic archbishop said that 1.3 million Israeli Arabs had citizenship, and that of those 150,000 were Christians – making up one quarter of the total Palestinian Christian population, when combined with West Bank Palestinians. Chacour’s presentation buttressed the narrative that Christians chafed under Israel’s government, but the Arab archbishop did not address other causes of Christian exodus from the broader Middle East, such as the ascendancy of radical Islam.
“Stop allowing yourself to express your friendship with Jews as an automatic enmity with Palestinians,” Chacour advised. “It is not with the power of weapons that we can guarantee survival of Israel, but with the power of justice and peace.”
Influencing Israel
Conference speakers argued that a successful resolution to ongoing Middle East disputes was possible, but that Israel’s government needed to be pressured into making concessions.
“We are not capable of discriminating between legitimate criticism and dissent, and the very small group of people who want Israel not to exist,” said Naomi Chazan of the New Israel Fund.
Chazan, a former member of the Israeli Knesset, argued that the Christian Right supports “the worst, most extremist groups in Israel” and that “what is lacking is not the solution, but the political will to do so.”
Hazan was joined in a panel discussion by retired U.S. Ambassador Phil Wilcox, who argued that the more the United States had lavished arms and money on Israel, it had given the country the confidence to continue in its ways unchanged, rather than the confidence to feel secure enough to move forward in negotiations.
“They are living under delusion, we have perpetuated that delusion and that is not an act of friendship,” Wilcox said. The retired ambassador also stated that “most [Israeli] Jews are from Europe” and urged a sharper tack against Israel.
Hazan, however, argued against at least two central ideas of pro-Palestinian activists.
The former Knesset member questioned the appropriateness of a Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) strategy, saying it “weakens the forces of just change” and that proponents should “leave the fear at home.”
Many pro-Palestinian activists have encouraged BDS efforts, pointing to the campaign that pressured South Africa’s Apartheid government to change. Some groups, such as the Palestinian Liberation Theology organization Sabeel, equate Israel to the Apartheid state.
Chazan said there is an assumption that BDS promotes the goal of a Palestinian state, but she contended that instead in makes Israelis believe that more people want to obliterate Israel. She also said it strengthens the “right wing” position that Israel is under attack and weakens what remains of Israel’s Left.
“BDS doesn’t promote that goal in Israel, what will promote that is supporting Arab-Jewish coexistence groups,” Hazan said.
Chazan, born in Jerusalem in 1946, also questioned the “one-state solution”, the idea of unifying West Bank Palestinians and Palestinian refugees together with the Jewish state, a move that would end the Jewish demographic majority in Israel. Chazan said that both she and Chacour had both seen “a lifetime of pain” in their communities and called a one-state solution problematic because of the desire for collective self-determination of both the Jewish and Palestinian peoples.
“You can’t sign on the dotted line and have it over with,” Chazan said of overcoming the enmity between older Jews and Arabs, which she said would require healing for two generations. Instead, Chazan argued, a two-state solution that would set the way for future reconciliation need to be the goal.
Cautious Optimism
Speakers were supportive of President Obama’s recent statement in favor of returning to the pre-1967 borders separating Israelis and Palestinians.
“No American government has ever offered such an ambition plan,” claimed Clark, who stated that U.S. policy proposals regarding a Middle East settlement used to be incremental plans.
“Let’s not raise our hopes too high on President’s support of ‘67 lines in negotiations; nevertheless it is a good thing,” Clark said, also calling for international negotiations.
Direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians had been a “palpable failure” for the last 20 years, in the retired ambassador’s view, and it was a “vain hope” for direct negotiations succeeding without the involvement of other nations.
Clark said that in direct bilateral negotiations, the more powerful side usually prevails, and in this case that more powerful side was Israel.
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• Christians in the Middle East
• Greenbelt No Buffer for Israel
• Ecumenical panelists look for pressure on Israel, “political space” for Iran
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