The commissioners and delegates will have struggled to discern God’s will on hundreds of agenda items before them, some of which have been generating widespread contention. In spite of their best efforts, the commissioners’ actions did not end most of the disputes. In some cases, their efforts may incite even more conflict.
One controversy still unresolved past July 13 will be the General Assembly response to the Middle East Study Committee report and recommendations. The ongoing nature of this issue presses Presbyterians to continue studying, learning, and acting on their convictions. For that reason the Outlook periodically concentrates its reporting on the Middle East.
Outlook Editor Jack Haberer was invited months ago by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to tour the Holy Land, especially the Biblical sites in the Palestinian territories, under the guidance of Palestinian guides. Among its many worldwide development projects, USAID is trying to help the Palestinians build the tourism trade via religious pilgrimages.
Haberer had already toured Israel twice with church groups, under the leadership of an Israeli (Jewish) guide, but this different itinerary looked intriguing, especially in the light of the work of the MESC. He accepted the invitation.
That week-long tour concluded on June 28, just five days prior to the convening of the GA. While there, Haberer interviewed key leaders within the Palestinian community as well as one of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s top aides in the Quartet organization.
He has filed the following report.
What’s it going to take to bring peace between Israelis and Palestinians? And, what can peacemaking partners worldwide do to help foster peace and justice in this troubled land?
Ever since 1948 these two peoples have been fighting to control a tract of land the size of New Jersey that suffers a climate – at least during the summer – as hot and dusty as West Texas.
Military battles have taken thousands of lives, while killing hopes for peace. Guerilla warfare, including kamikaze-style bombings of civilian populations (justified in part by citing the Biblical hero Samson), has generated broad condemnation in the international community toward the Palestinian cause. Negotiated peace agreements have produced peace between Israel and two of its Arab neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, but diplomatic accords with Palestinians have been disregarded, generating international condemnation of Israel’s actions. Jesus’ expression, “a city set on a hill,” is taking on new meaning as Jewish settlements blessed with running water and other modern infrastructures proliferate on hilltops overlooking Palestinian villages denied such amenities, turning the Occupied Territories’ map into a checkerboard.
“We need to change the balance of forces and that means one of three ways,” Mustafa Barghouthi told the Outlook. He is the founder of the Palestinian National Initiative, a third political party in Palestine that challenges the violence of Hamas and the corruption of Fatah. “Either we use violence, and we don’t agree with violence; or we use non-violence; or we accept discrimination and become slaves of occupation and apartheid,” he said.
A medical doctor and founding director of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, Barghouthi also has served as information director for the Palestinian Authority. He ran for president in 2005, gaining 19 percent of the vote (coming in second place), behind Mahmoud Abbas.
His challenge to Fatah has not put him in hot water, though. Barghouthi commands respect throughout the Palestinian Territories, including within the government, because his non-violent approach resembles that of Gandhi and Mandela, borrowing from the South African the language of apartheid. Indeed, his rejection of violent methods aims to bring an end to a system of discrimination he calls the worst form of apartheid in the 21st century. (the complete interview of Barghouthi can be found at www.pres-outlook.org/barghouthi).
In order to gain traction as a movement, these Palestinians have been urging private organizations, such as religious groups and colleges, to participate in the BDS Movement — boycott, divestment, and sanctions. The goal is to pressure the state of Israel to close down the settlements on Palestinian land, to return to the pre-1967 borders, to eliminate checkpoints, to enact a two-state solution, and to tear down the separation barriers, what Palestinians call the apartheid wall. As students of history, they understand that the BDS efforts against the white majority in South Africa had to begin in smaller organizations to create enough momentum for lawmakers to follow suit, aiming to press governments to financially bankrupt a morally bankrupt government (the U.S. government was one of the last to join that movement when the U.S. Congress overrode a Ronald Reagan veto on Oct. 3, 1986).
“We refuse to be slaves of occupation,” insisted Barghouthi. “We refuse to use violence. So the only way we have is non-violent resistance, and that cannot happen only by our force but also by the struggle and support of people outside [who are willing to participate in] boycotts, divestment, and sanctions as an instrument of pressure to change the future in a better way for both Palestinians and Israelis.”
After two years’ study, the broad Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Palestinian community published the Kairos Palestine document last December, modeled after the Kairos Document developed by black South African Christians in 1985. It borrows the language of apartheid and spells out the BDS strategy. When asked if such a strategy might backfire, Victor Batarseh, the Christian mayor of mostly Muslim Bethlehem, responded, “I think this is the only way to make Israel come to peace, by sanctions, by divestment. … As it was done in South Africa, so it’s needed in Israel.” Such sanctions can take many forms, he said: economic, trade, cultural, sports. “I think in my mind this the only way: for the benefit of Israel to start with, and then for the Palestinians, because they need peace, and we need peace. And it is the time for peace now” (see whole interview at www.pres-outlook.org/batarseh).
When asked how Palestinians can compare their plight to the horrors suffered by black South Africans during apartheid, Barghouthi retorted that this “can only be described as the worst system of apartheid in human history.” He acknowledged, “Some Israelis get angry when I say ‘apartheid.’ … I ask you and I ask them, what is an alternative word you can give me to describe a situation where an illegal Israeli settler can use 48 times as much water as a legal Palestinian resident … where Israel confiscates 80 percent of our water resources and then forces us to buy the same water from them at double the price that Israelis pay although the Israelis make an average of 26 times as much income than us? … What justifies the fact that roads in the West Bank are segregated, that I cannot drive or use most of the main roads in the West Bank because they are exclusively for Israeli settlers, or army or citizens? … What justifies the fact that a person in Jerusalem, whether it is a man or a woman, cannot live with his spouse if they carry a Jerusalem I.D., and the spouse carries a West Bank I.D.? …That is discrimination. That is apartheid.”
Barghouthi also acknowledged the horrors suffered by Jews during the Holocaust, the Inquisition, and in the many ways anti-Semitism has caused suffering. “But that all does not justify the Israeli government behavior today,” he added. “On the contrary, being the people who have been so oppressed or whose ancestors have been so much oppressed and discriminated against, in my belief, the Israeli people should be the most sensitive to any active oppression anywhere.”
Will BDS prove effective? Ian Smith isn’t so sure. Smith, who was appointed this past May by Tony Blair to be the economic and business advisor to the Quartet (U.S., U.K., Russia, U.N.) in its Middle East peacemaking efforts, sees positive investment as key.
He sang the praises for Palestinian National Authority Prime Minister Salim Fayyad “a credible, American-educated economist and very reasonable man,” for “pursuing unilaterally an independent Palestinian state,” not waiting for Israel to grant them independence. Eschewing terrorism and violence, strengthening the rule of law, building a collective community life, and developing a sustainable economy – beginning with expanding the tourist trade – those are the steps he wants pursued.
Smith hopes that peacemaking partners will invest in the tourist trade so that both Israel and Palestine, which together receive about three million visitors a year – comparable to a typical soccer team’s games in England – can produce many winners. He said that this is one endeavor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports, since it can raise the prosperity of the whole country.
Smith did warn that the Israeli government gets pushed by the extremists in the society to be harsh, so outside observers need to hold the Israelis’ feet to the fire. “In one sense the boycotts aren’t good because they affect the Palestinian economy as well, but on the other hand the Israelis definitely need to know that the international community is here, it’s going to look after people – both for them, defending Israelis, but defending Palestinians, too.”
In 2004, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) called for initiating a process that might lead to divesting of funds from corporations profiting from Israel’s occupation. It was the first denomination to take such an initiative. Others have followed suit. Then again, the Presbyterians and most other groups have found many of their constituents standing in opposition to such actions, and the actual transfer of investments has not taken place.
It remains to be seen whether the BDS movement will gain traction as it did in the days of apartheid, whether it should, and whether such efforts will help foster peace and justice in this troubled land.
