Churches for Middle East Peace Conference Meets

on June 9, 2009

For IRD President Mark Tooley’s commentary on the Churches for Middle East Peace letter to President Obama, click here.

Israel, not Iran, should be the object of U.S. pressure in the Middle East, according to an ecumenical group involved in Middle East peace. Entitled “Israeli-Palestinian Peace: Hope for Things Unseen,” the Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) advocacy conference was held June 7-9 at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C.

CMEP represents over 20 church organizations in the mainline, Catholic and historic peace church traditions. The organization favors a “two-state” solution under which a Palestinian state controlling the West Bank and Gaza would be constituted alongside an Israel pruned back to its 1948 borders.

Conference speakers described a situation in the Middle East that they found both depressing and hopeful. They found it depressing, because of a fractured Palestinian government that was divided against itself and lacked a constituency, a newly elected right-wing Israeli government less inclined to compromise, and continuing growth of existing West Bank settlements that continued to make division into two states increasingly difficult. On the other hand, conference organizers found encouragement in the singular event of the U.S. presidential election, the outcome of which they repeatedly praised.

“We can do the breakthrough, game-changing moment of getting to a two-state solution,” said Daniel Levy of the New America Foundation. Levy credited an emphasis from “day one” of the new presidency on Middle East peace that he found “liberating”.

“This [Israeli-Palestinian dispute] is the iconoclastic litmus test for how Arab nations view your country,” said Levy. “American policy up until now has encouraged the worst of tendencies – like someone who has drunk too much instead of saying ‘enough is enough’ – we [the United States] give them [Israel] another drink and say, ‘Here’s the keys.’”

“The President has put forward clearly where he wants to go,” said Warren Clark, executive director of CMEP. “He must have political support. That support comes from Congress. Congress needs to hear from constituents about how we want them to vote – the churches are a sleeping giant.”

Shibley Telhami of the Brookings Institution shared the results of his annual polling of the Middle East population. President Bush was shown as the most-disliked leader, while a significant plurality had a positive view of President Obama. Last year, Hassan Nasrallah of the Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah was the most admired leader, Telhami reported that this year it was Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.

Few Middle East people have a “very positive view of Obama, so it is not a love affair,” Telhami qualified. “People are not sure if they should change their mind about Obama or America.”

“Seventy percent identify Israel and then the United States as the biggest threat to their nation,” Telhami said, adding that it was a new trend in the last eight years that the U.S. would be viewed as a threat.

Telhami also revealed that most people surveyed in the Middle East believe Iran has the right to a nuclear program – a surprising result, as the survey polled Arabs, not Persians.

Finally, two-thirds of respondents to Telhami’s survey were prepared to accept a “two-state” solution, while half still believe it will not happen.

“They think Israelis won’t accept it,” Telhami explained, adding that more people in every Arab country surveyed wanted to see the Islamist Hamas movement govern a Palestinian state rather than the more secular Fatah movement.

“If this president fails, it probably will be the end of the two-state solution as an option,” Telhami concluded.

Iran

Over the course of the conference, Iran was acknowledged as a legitimately viewed threat to Israel, but in contrast to proposed policies towards Israel, speakers downplayed sanctions and confrontation in dealing with the Islamic regime.

“Confrontational policies on our end do not help the moderates, they help the radicals,” said Trita Parsi, President of the National Iranian American Council.

Parsi spoke on conflicts in the region, and raised concern about legislation (H.R. 1327, the Sanctions Enabling Act) that would authorize state and local governments to divest from, and prevent investment in, companies with a large stake in Iran’s energy sector. The bill has over 180 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, and has been effectively fast-tracked.

Jim Fine of the Friends Committee on National Legislation affirmed Parsi’s opposition to the Iranian divestment legislation. Fine urged conference attendees to specifically raise objections during their lobbying visits with congressional offices the following day, fearing that additional sanctions against Iran would increase anti-American sentiment in the country and benefit the reelection efforts of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There were no corresponding admonitions against anti-Israeli resolutions by the United Nations, with the fear that they might lead to further polarization of that electorate.

Like many of the other speakers, Parsi spoke glowingly of President Obama’s election.

“The President has unilaterally changed the atmospherics on Iran,” said Parsi. “Obama is using language which does not imply regime change.” Parsi said that Iran was still not convinced of Washington’s sincerity, and that giving Iran a recognized role in the region was important. Parsi downplayed Iran’s nuclear efforts.

“Iran is entitled to [uranium] enrichment,” said Parsi, explaining that Iran can develop the technology and already has the knowledge to further enrich.

“If we want to avoid that [Iran’s ability to enrich uranium], we’ve already failed,” said Parsi, who advocated reassessing the utility of U.N. inspections of declared Iranian nuclear sites. Suspension of enrichment would no longer be a barrier to a weapon, according to Parsi, who instead advocated a monitoring ability to see if the Iranians were using the enriched uranium they already possessed for weaponization purposes. Parsi said that if the Iranians did weaponize, they would break the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and then there would be sanctions. Left unsaid was that Iran would also have nuclear weapons at that point.

“I think limited wars are the only kind we will see in the region,” said Telhami, who dismissed the possibility of a direct nuclear attack on Israel by Iran.

No mention was made of the apocalyptic language used by Ahmadinejad, Iran’s ruling mullahs or the controversy surrounding holocaust denial in Iran. Parsi did allege that there are influences in the U.S. that want Ahmadinejad to remain in power because he is a useful figure to them.

Israel’s Security Barrier

Speakers at the CMEP conference expressed continued concerns about both Israel’s security barrier and the growth of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. While no new Jewish settlements have been permitted under Israeli law since the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993, the existing Jewish settlements have grown in size.

That growth threatens the ability to successfully divide the country as part of a two-state solution, according to Hagit Ofran, director of the Peace Now Settlement Watch Team. Ofran spoke on a panel with Palestinian democracy activist Mustafa Barghouti in a session titled “Stopping Settlements, Building Palestinian Society: Seizing the Moment for Peace.”

Ofran shared data on population growth in the Jewish settlements, as well as compromise proposals on how the land could be divided.

“The presence of any settler in the West Bank is illegal,” said Barghouti, who stated that the policies of the Netanyahu government would threaten the chance for peace. “The reality on the ground is that we have the worst, most racist government in Israeli history.”

Barghouti focused on what he portrayed as the illegality of Jewish settlements, the annexation of East Jerusalem and the existence of Israel’s separation barrier.

“[Obama] is definitely the last American president to have the possibility of a two-state solution,” said Barghouti, who compared Israeli occupation of the West Bank to the racist apartheid system in the former South Africa.

“Much of what is happening is worse than what happened in apartheid,” Barghouti said. “There can be no justice, or peace, if apartheid continues. If you want to support nonviolence by Palestinians, you need to put pressure on the ‘civil violence’ practiced by Israel.”

At no time did speakers make comparable criticisms against the Palestinian Authority, instead naming Israel as the prime obstacle to peace.

The Israeli security barrier, which was labeled a wall (about 30 percent of the barrier is a physical wall, the majority of the remaining amount is described as a fence) received heavy criticism for its placement, composition, and very existence, which conference speakers stated was illegal.

In his homily at the conference’s opening session and worship service, Bishop Eugene Taylor Sutton of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland compared the Israeli barrier to the tower of Babel, which he said was a wall of uniformity – torn down by God in a move to increase diversity.

“There is every indication that the wall won’t set out to do what it was intended to do,” Sutton said. “There is something about walls God does not agree with.”

Israeli officials have defended construction of the security barrier, which is credited for a steep decline in the number of suicide bombings. Palestinian officials have criticized the barrier’s location, saying it unfairly carves up Palestinian lands and prevents transit into Israel’s economic centers.

Sutton said walls were manifestations of “separation and degradation,” also mentioning historic walls such as the Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s Wall, and a barrier along the U.S. southern border.


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