Christians Call for a Shared Jerusalem

by Rev. L. Humphrey Walz

The headline of this article is also the heading of a full-page advertisement published in The New York Times of Saturday, Dec. 21 by Churches for Middle East Peace (C-MEP), 110 Maryland Ave. NE, #108, Washington, DC 20002. The text of the advertisement reads in full:

Jerusalem is a sacred city to Jews, Christians and Muslims, the Children of Abraham. All long for Jerusalem to be the City of Peace. For most of its history the fate of Jerusalem was determined by war. Now the ancient hope for peace can become reality through negotiations.

Israeli leaders hold that Jerusalem should be Israel’s capital under the sole sovereignty of the State of Israel. Palestinian leaders hold that traditionally Arab eastern Jerusalem should become the capital of a new State of Palestine.

As Christians committed to working for peace, we support a negotiated solution for Jerusalem that respects the human and political rights of both Palestinians and Israelis, as well as the rights of the three religious communities. We urge Jews, Christians and Muslims to open dialogue on these issues.

Jerusalem at peace

cannot belong exclusively

to one people, one country or one religion.

Jerusalem should be open to all,

shared by all—two peoples and three religions.

We urge the United States government to call upon negotiators to move beyond exclusivist claims and create a Jerusalem that is a sign of peace and a symbol of reconciliation for all humankind.

The advertisement was signed on behalf of the American Baptists, the Church of the Brethren, the Episcopal Church, the Lutheran Office for Governmental Affairs, the Quaker Commission on National Legislation and the related American Friends Service Committee, two national Catholic organizations (Conference of Major Superiors of Men, and the Maryknoll Justice and Peace Office), the Mennonite Central Committee, the National Council of Churches, the Presbyterian Church USA, Unitarian Universalist Association, United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church. C-MEP has represented the cooperating advocacy offices in Washington of these churches since 1984.

Slouching Toward Bethlehem 2000

An important article on present-day Bethlehem appeared in the December issue of The Link. “Slouching Toward Bethlehem 2000,” by Betty Jean and Martin Bailey of the Middle East Council of Churches, gives a grim account of what is happening there today. The “little town” of Christmas carol fame is dying of too little water, too little electricity, too few jobs, and too much theft of its land by the Israeli government.

The Baileys, who live in Bethlehem, focus on the town’s main problem, the decline in its tourist industry, due in large part to the Israeli government’s decision to keep as many tourist dollars as possible in Israel or in its West Bank Jewish settlements. If this plan develops fully, Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land will unwittingly be part of an economic slaughtering of innocent Bethlehemites. Much of the Link article, however, informs readers how they can help prevent this from happening, and in the process experience one of the most rewarding pilgrimages possible to the town where Jesus spent his first days on earth. [To obtain a copy, send $2 to Americans for Middle East Understanding, 475 Riverside Drive, Room 245, New York, NY 10115.]

In the Little Town of Bethlehem

Bonnie Gehweiler is Coordinator of the Southern Methodist Volunteers in Mission program to help bring stability and security to Christians and other Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. Entitled Bethlehem 2000, its volunteers and material support go wherever the local Christians over there are in need. In response to our pre-Christmas questions about her personal reactions to the situation as she has experienced it, she wrote us the following letter from her headquarters in Lexington, Kentucky:

As one of some billion Christians in the world (compared to 18 million Jews) I weep along with the feelings of anger, frustration and powerlessness which I have concerning what is happening to the Christian presence in the Holy Land. At this time I am weeping about that special place, Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus.

O Little Town of Bethlehem—how still we see thee lie....

The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

By the time we will be singing this carol again, there may be very little of Christian Bethlehem left. Israel has already confiscated 61 percent of the Bethlehem Municipality (88,000 acres).

The latest invasion in Bethlehem began in earnest in the middle of the night after the election of the new prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. A heavily guarded Israeli bulldozer began uprooting the centuries-old olive groves. The huge bulldozer bit into the grounds—traditional fields near the Shepherds’ Fields where the angels heralded Jesus’ birth—throwing dusty earth over a hill. Many Palestinians threw themselves in front of the bulldozers only to be beaten and dragged away to jail by Israeli soldiers.

“This is one of the saddest moments in our lives.”

The immediate plans of Israeli tourism include exploitation of what has traditionally been Bethlehem’s main source of income, tourism, including luxury hotels and souvenir shops; to build an industrial site for factories producing olive wood souvenirs, thus undermining Bethlehem’s centuries-old hand-carved arts and crafts industry; to confiscate much of the center of Bethlehem for parking lots; and to capitalize on Bethlehem 2000, the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus.

Dr. Majed Nassar, founder and director of the Greek Catholic Convent Clinic in Beit Sahour at the Shepherds’ Fields wrote: ‘This is one of the saddest moments in our lives. When those bulldozers start their motors and their iron goes into the fields, killing the ground in an 8-foot wide path, it makes us want to cry so loudly, but the sound of the engines is much louder.’

When I began the Bethlehem 2000 project in 1992 to help the Christians maintain their presence in the West Bank, I had no idea that within four years the Israelis would illegally confiscate so much of this land and would take Bethlehem from us. But that is what is happening. Perhaps it may be too late to reverse the trends of their covetousness. In his book Angels, Billy Graham calls covetousness the most grievous of sins. He writes that it is the reason for almost all wars between nations. Certainly that is true in the Holy Land.

But perhaps even yet the Christian and Muslim world opinion and the indignation at what is happening to our historic Jesus in the land of His birth could stop the bulldozers—whose engines are louder than the cries of the Palestinians’ voices and hearts.

“Jeremiah asked the question centuries ago, ‘Do you not care, all you who pass by?’ We have to care and then do something about it. If we don’t, in a few months it will be too late.”

North American Support Chapter Opened for Jerusalem Center

Sabeel, the Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem, announces the opening of a support chapter, Friends of Sabeel–North America. Sabeel (Arabic for spring, or channel of life-giving water) is an ecumenical grassroots center for Palestinian Liberation Theology, rooted in Biblical interpretation and nourished by the hopes, dreams and struggles of the Palestinian people. Sabeel’s programs encourage the connection between faith and the often hard realities of occupation, violence, discrimination and human rights violations.

Sabeel has promoted more accurate international awareness of the oppressive current political realities and encourages Christians from around the world to work for a just and comprehensive peace. It sponsored the January 1996 conference on “The Significance of Jerusalem for Christians and of Christians for Jerusalem” and was instrumental in promoting the Sept. 29 Peace Walk, both described in this column in previous issues of the Washington Report, Sabeel support groups have already been formed in England and Sweden.

Friends of Sabeel–North America, as a grassroots network, plans educational programs within churches, lecture tours by visiting speakers, a conference in the U.S. in 1997 and in Jerusalem in 1998, and a response network of persons who will communicate with newspapers, politicians, and the public concerning human rights issues. Members will also receive Cornerstone, Sabeel’s informative newsletter, four times a year.

The Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, director of Sabeel, welcomed North American memberships with the statement that “you are an integral part of a growing world-wide network of individuals and organizations who share a common concern for the Palestinian Christian community, as well as for the achievement of a just and enduring peace in the Middle East. As people of faith, your various efforts to stand with the Palestinian Church today as it continues its faithful 2,000-year-old witness and strives to affect justice…are deeply appreciated.”

The North American organizers, Robert Assaly, Betsy Barlow, Kathy Bergen, Dale Bishop, Jess Gaither, Rosemary Ruether and Don Wagner—all seasoned ecumenical Middle East hands—believe that a grassroots educational campaign to North American Christians is long overdue and could make a difference.

Currently in the planning stage are a Lenten Study Guide and a June conference in Washington, DC. To join, contact the organization at Box 4214, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Annual membership is $25, with additional contributions welcome. Pending tax-exempt status, checks made out to “Church of the Incarnation” and marked “for Sabeel” will be tax-deductible.