“There is no more profound challenge in the Middle East than how we can balance our ministry of reconciliation against the brutal fact that violence engulfs us, evil probes to the very depth of our being, and not a day passes without us being touched by tendrils of hate and vengeance,” Jarjour told the association’s October 6-10 congress in South Africa’s parliamentary capital.
Jarjour, a former general secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches, said it was difficult to imagine that people could have the courage to communicate peace in the Middle East, when war and conflicts prevailed in the Palestinian territories, Israel, Iraq, and Lebanon.
The theme of this year’s WACC congress, the fourth since the association’s inception in 1968, was “Communication is peace: building viable communities”. Against this background, Jarjour described the Middle East as a region stricken with deep division and turmoil.
“While much of the outward manifestations of the multiple levels of conflict seem to indicate internal struggles, there are clear and deliberate external causes, factors, and actors that have been involved in these conflicts,” he said.
Jarjour gave Iraq as an example of this. He said the country had slipped into deep political meltdown after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, which had followed the US-led invasion in 2003. He said the Iraqi civil war that followed was mostly a conflict between political and religious factions over power sharing, and it had created a complicated situation where thousands of Iraqis were being killed every year.
“The conflict between political and religious factions fighting for power has left the country lawless. There is too much sectarian fighting in Iraq, which is the worst kind of conflict,” he said.
Jarjour added that Iraq had become a zone of escalating violence, of which international and regional powers were taking advantage for their own interests.
