April/May 1995, Pages 72-73

Waging Peace

By Janet McMahon

Christian Leaders Warn Clinton on Jerusalem

Eight leading U.S. Christian leaders called upon President Bill Clinton to press Israel to stop seizing land and constructing settlements in Jerusalem. The eight church leaders outlined their concerns in a statement entitled "Jerusalem: City of Peace," issued March 6 in anticipation of a meeting with the president.

"We ask that the administration use its influence to prevent this vital issue from being settled by force of events or the creation of facts on the ground," the Christian leaders wrote. "We fear that if issues centering on Jerusalem are not dealt with openly and directly by all affected parties, they have the potential to derail the peace process."

Challenging efforts by the Israeli government working through the U.S. Congress to secure exclusive Israeli control over the parts of Jerusalem occupied by Israel in 1967, the Christian dignitaries asked the administration to "place the question of Jerusalem higher on its agenda" and to encourage open and direct negotiations by all affected parties including representatives of the three religious communities in the Holy City as well as Israel and the Palestinians. They also criticized the administration for "failing to recognize and support Palestinian rights and interests in Jerusalem."

The leaders who signed the document have begun a public awareness effort within their own Christian communions. They are Cardinal William Keeler, president of the National Council of Catholic Bishops; Very Rev. Gerald Brown, president of the Roman Catholic Conference of Major Superiors of Men's Institutes; the Most Rev. Edmond L. Browning, presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church; the Rev. Herbert W. Chilstrom, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America; Kara Newell, executive director of the American Friends Service Committee; and Robert A. Seiple, president of World Vision. Journalists can contact the church leaders through Corinne Whitlach at (202) 546-8425.

U.S. Sikhs Protest Serb "Ethnic Cleansing" in Bosnia

Some 50 representatives of the more than one million Sikhs living in the United States and Canada (30,000 of whom live in the Washington, DC area) demonstrated outside the Russian embassy in Washington, DC to protest Serb "ethnic cleansing" policies in Bosnia. Dr. Amarjit Singh, director of the Khalistan Affairs Center, said his community's December action was inspired by the Dec. 2 arrest of 16 rabbis and rabbinical students at a White House protest against U.S. inaction in Bosnia. After seeing the rabbis submit to arrest on behalf of Bosnian Muslims, he said, Sikhs concluded that "We must also say our piece for humanity." He said that tolerance of all religions is a cornerstone of the Sikh religion, which makes the massacres of Bosnian Muslims particularly abhorrent.

Program Commemorates 50th Anniversary of U.S.-Saudi Meeting

The National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations filled an auditorium in the U.S. Capitol building for a March 10 seminar commemorating the 50th anniversary of the meeting between King Abdel Aziz Ibn Saud, founder of the modern kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Seminar participants described the meeting, held near the end of World War II on a U.S. destroyer in the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal, as the beginning of an intense U.S.-Saudi relationship that has seen the evolution of the Saudi kingdom into the economic and political powerhouse that drives the eastern Arab world and one of America's closest Middle Eastern associates.

Changing of the Guard at the Middle East Institute

Former U.S. Ambassador to Greece Robert V. Keeley resigned in January 1995 after completing a four-year term as president of the Middle East Institute. Former Ambassador to Lebanon Richard Parker has agreed to serve as MEI president on an interim basis pending completion of a search for a permanent successor. Parker, who retired several years earlier as editor of MEI's quarterly Middle East Journal, had just completed a new term as interim editor of the Middle East Journal pending appointment of a permanent editor to replace Dr. Eric Hoogland, who left the post last September. The new editor is Dr. Mary-Jane Deeb, who served in Lebanon with the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1979 to 1983, and has taught at American University, Georgetown University and George Washington University.

Teach-in for Middle East Peace Scheduled at University of Michigan

Students and faculty at the University of Michigan scheduled a series of events for March 19 to 29 on prospects for Middle East peace. The events, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the first teach-in in the United States on the war in Vietnam, included a major panel on March 26.

Sponsoring groups included the Middle East Task Force of the Interfaith Council of Peace and Justice, the Progressive Zionist Caucus, New Jewish Agenda, the Palestine Solidarity Committee, Palestine Aid Society, and several religious groups

AMIDEAST Picks William Rugh as New President

AMIDEAST, an educational and training organization which has been a contractor to U.S. and Middle Eastern governments and corporations for more than 30 years, has selected U.S. Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates William Rugh as its new president. Dr. Rugh, who has written extensively on Middle East affairs and who served previously as U.S. ambassador to Yemen and in other U.S. Information Agency and State Department positions in Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria, will take up his duties upon completion of his current tour in Abu Dhabi. He will replace former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Robert Dillon.

Middle East Policy Council Examines Peace Process

Guests at an invitational seminar in the National Capitol building sponsored by the Middle East Policy Council, whose chairman is former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. George McGovern, heard widely differing assessments of the current Middle East peace process. State Department official David Satterfield told a skeptical audience that "the future of the peace process is bright" despite the fact that "donor assistance has been all too slow in coming and some commitments have not been met."

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said "the peace process is at a tragic impasse." Criticizing weakleadership "on both sides" he said, "I find it tragic that the Palestinians are being charged with violating the rights of their own people when those violations that they commit are exactly the acts that we require of them."

Zogby noted that "30 percent of the males over 18 in Gaza have been in prison for at least one to five years" and that "85 percent of the water of Gaza is not available to Palestinians." Zogby said it is "beyond the ability" of the Palestinians "to correct the effects of 27 years of deprivation [in Gaza] that they did not create." Zogby criticized U.S. policy, saying that "the asymmetry of pressure does not help the peace process move forward."

Writer Ian Lustick, who is spending a year in Israel, said that "Rabin has got to do things that will create the kind of political capital Arafat needs...The most obvious thing that Rabin could do is to say that there will be a Palestinian state at the end of the process." Lustick said Rabin "must transform the situation into the kind of exciting political process that we had at the beginning. There must be an end to closure of Jerusalem and an end to the thickening as well as the expansion of settlements. There must be an end to subsidization of settlements [and] there must be elections including Hamas if Hamas will participate, just as Tsomet and Likud are allowed to participate in Israeli elections, although they do not endorse the peace process."

Palestine-Israel Journal Publishing in Jerusalem

The new quarterly Palestine-Israel Journal, founded by Palestinians and Israelis "who are committed to a peaceful solution in the Middle East based upon mutual respect and mutual recognition of each other's national rights and aspirations," is offering annual subscriptions to North American readers at $50. The publication's address is 4 El Hariri St., East Jerusalem, POB 19839 Jerusalem; Telephone 972-2-282115 or fax 972-2-273388.