Vatican Summit Articulates Agenda for Middle East Peace

By David Scott

Though largely ignored by diplomats and the media, the Vatican summit on the "postwar Gulf, " held March 4-6 in Rome, may one day be recalled as an historic turning point in the Catholic Church's involvement in the Middle East.

As Pope John Paul II observed, the meeting of 15 Catholic leaders from the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and America, brought together "the pastors of a people who yesterday were fighting each other." But more importantly, these pastors for the first time spoke with one voice and articulated a common moral and political framework for Middle East peace.

If taken seriously by Catholic believers, the final summit communique would commit the world's largest religious body to an agenda that includes secure boundaries for Israel, independence and unity for Lebanon, a homeland and self-determination for the Palestinians, multilateral demilitarization and economic development of the region, and the establishment of Jerusalem as the international "holy city" of Muslims, Christians and Jews.

A New Vision

The weeks since the summit have seen a flurry of Catholic diplomatic and interreligious activity. It would seem that the summit has emboldened the church and given it a new vision of Middle Eastern affairs.

In an unusually frank letter to UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, dated March 21, the pope said that Catholic leaders "expect an energetic international commitment" to the "other major problems of the Middle East" which preceded Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf war.

The pope conveyed to Mr. de Cuellar the anger of Middle Eastern church officials, who have condemned the world community for waging a war to enforce UN resolutions concerning Kuwait, while ignoring similar resolutions on Palestine and Lebanon. The sufferings of the Palestinians and Lebanese, the pope stressed, "have endured, in all their dramatic reality, despite numerous resolutions by the United Nations."

Catholic leaders have also moved to show the church's solidarity with the faithful of Islam. On April 16, at the conclusion of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, John Paul took the unprecedented step of issuing a papal message to the world's Muslims.

The pope affirmed "the readiness of the Catholic Church to work together" with Muslims and others "to build structures of a lasting peace. " Seeking concordance with those Muslims who, like him, had opposed both Iraq's invasion and the Gulf war, John Paul said, "The path of those who believe in God and desire to serve him is not that of domination. It is the way of peace."

The final communique rejected any "religious interpretation" of the war.

Since the summit, there has also been evidence of a renewed Catholic commitment to collaborating with Muslims in the search for a solution to the Palestinian question. On March 14, the pope discussed the issue with a Palestinian interfaith team headed by the highest ranking Muslim in the region, Mufti Sa'ad Al-Din Al-Alami of Jerusalem, and the highest ranking Catholic, Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, also of Jerusalem.

The group used its audience with the pope as a highly public platform for condemning Israel's "inhuman measures" in the occupied territories, which the group said " grossly violated" Palestinian human rights. The group demanded "international protection" from Israeli brutality and called for "the termination of the Israeli occupation and the establishment of the Palestinian state."

Holy War

The church's renewed confidence and tenacity on the issue of Middle East peace can best be seen as a direct result of the post-war Vatican summit. The pope and most Catholic leaders had opposed the war against Iraq as morally unjustifiable and practically incapable of bringing about peace in the region. As the pope said in a talk to Vatican diplomats before the war, "Without entering into the profound causes of violence in this part of the world, a peace obtained by arms could only prepare new acts of violence."

In his opening address at the summit, Pope John Paul said the 43-day war had confirmed his worst fears: "Yesterday's problems are not resolved or do not even know the beginnings of a solution. " Indeed, he said, the war had exacerbated tensions in the region and "awakened distrust and rancor inherited from the past."

Delegates from Palestine and North Africa said the war had opened old wounds and revived the bloody and ancient rivalry between Christians and Muslims. Arab Christians, said Chaldean Patriarch Raphael I Bidawid of Iraq, have reason to fear "subjugation to a new oppression, if not from governments, then certainly from Islamic public opinion."

Archbishop Henri Teissler of Algiers was alarmed at the "religious reading" given to the war by Muslim extremists, who saw it as a "Jewish-Christian crusade against Islam and Muslims." With many Arabs feeling humiliated and angry at the West, summit delegates worried about a revival of Islamic radicalism. Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah called on the summit to make clear the distance between "Western political powers and Christianity."

In their individual speeches and their final communique, the pope and the assembled churchmen tried to do just that. The bloodcurdling rhetoric of President Saddam Hussain's calls for a "holy war" were front-page news in the West. But the summit seemed more concerned about President George Bush's more sober claims that the US was "on the side of God" in a "religious war" against "evil in the world."

Clearly playing to Arab and Muslim leaders, Pope John Paul included in his opening address a statement carefully crafted to rebuke both Mr. Hussain and Mr. Bush for their abuses of religion during the war: "There is no religious war taking place and there could never be a 'holy war, "' he said. Likewise, the final communique rejected any "religious interpretation" of the war, along with all efforts to cast it as a "conflict between Islam and Christianity."

The desire to shore up relations with Islam, however, did not prevent the pope from rebuking any Muslim countries that "do not allow Christian communities to take root, celebrate their faith and live it according to the demands of their own confession."

Class War

The Vatican summit was also significant for its consideration of disparities between wealth and poverty in the Middle East. In fact, Catholic leaders appear to believe that closing the gap between rich and poor is as necessary to peace in the region as resolving the religious and racial strife between Arabs and Jews.

"We can no longer ignore problems of an economic nature, " Pope John Paul said. "In this region of the world there is great in equality. We all know that when a people is shackled by poverty and by an uncertain future, peace is endangered."

The summit was colored by popular resentment of the "haves" of the Arab world. " Five percent of the Arab population owns 95 percent of the resources and that is .unjust," according to Bishop Selim. Sayegh of Jordan. "Dozens of Sudanese die each year, while some lose millions in Europe's casinos. This is why the Jordanian streets are packed with demonstrators against foreign military intervention."

The communique's call for "a severe regulation of arms trafficking and a substantial disarmament, which should include all sides, " was also presented in the context of bridging the gap between rich and poor. Money currently spent on arms would better be spent on "development and support plans for the least-favored populations, " the summit participants said.

In addition, the summit recognized the need for the US and the nations of the West to change their dealings with the Arab world. In exchange for peace, the Western powers "may have to let go of some things," said Archbishop Thomas Winning of Glasgow, who is head of Scotland's bishops.

Just War

The summit communique repeated the long-standing Catholic support for the I unity, independence and sovereignty" of Lebanon, "the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to a country and to be allowed to freely choose their own future," and Israel's right "to live within secure boundaries and in harmony with her neighbors."

But in the aftermath of the Gulf war, John Paul expressed concern that "the poor people of the Middle East—I am thinking in particular of the Palestinian people and the Lebanese people—will be ever more threatened."

Middle East church officials said the war had cast serious shadows over the future of Lebanon. There was strong concern expressed that, because of Israeli and Syrian cooperation in the anti-Iraq coalition, the international community would be slow in seeking their withdrawal from military positions held in southern and northern Lebanon. "Lebanon should not be a prize for any country that has taken part in the Gulf war," Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sefir of Lebanon warned.

Arab churchmen decried the "double standard" of justice they saw at work in the Gulf war. "People are asking why" United Nations resolutions calling for the departure of foreign troops from Lebanon have never been enforced, Patriarch Sefir said. "If Lebanon had been freed by virtue of those resolutions, perhaps Iraq would not have had the courage to attack Kuwait."

Time to Stop Turning a Blind Eye

Patriarch Bidawid said the time had come for Christians to stop turning a blind eye to Israeli crimes against the Palestinians. Guilt and remorse for the Jewish Holocaust should no longer continue to blind Christians to the collective punishment and possible extermination of the Palestinian people.

"Obviously, no one puts into doubt the right of Israel to exist," he said, "but we must remember that the so-called 'holocaust' was not perpetrated by Arabs but by Western powers. The Arab-Israeli problem was born and prospers on injustices which have nothing to do with the holocaust."

Delegates acknowledged that the Palestinians, especially the PLO, would likely be made to pay a high price for the support of Saddam Hussain by some of their leaders. In a clear reference to reprisals against Palestinians in Kuwait and the occupied territories, the summit communique voiced concern that there be no "humiliation for anybody, nor punitive aspects for any people" in the postwar period.

As Patriarch Sabbah of Jerusalem noted, "The problem is not the PLO. It is a problem of justice; the war has not changed this... The big powers that fought this war said it was for justice. Now they have to prove that by going to the logical end of justice."

Some delegates expressed doubt that the US has the political and moral will to bring about the needed changes. Patriarch Maximos V Hakim of Syria said: "The danger we see is that America does what Israel wants. That which Israel asks, America asks—and this is not possible" any longer if there is to be peace in the region.

Most delegates were not likely to have been convinced by President Bush's March 6 speech to Congress in which he called for a "comprehensive peace" founded on UN resolutions 242 and 338. Adopted in 1967 and 1973, respectively, those resolutions call for negotiations between Arabs and Israelis and Israel's withdrawal from territories it captured during the June 1967 war. "We have heard the same words more or less for the last 30 years, " said Jordan's Bishop Sayegh. "Unless there is US pressure on Israel to make concessions, there will be no peace in this region.

Dreams of Peace

The wild card in the peace process is the role of the US bishops, the spiritual leaders of 55 million American Catholics. Their representative, Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati, kept a very low profile at the summit. He did say, however, that the US bishops " strongly support efforts to address the legitimate concerns of the Palestinians, Israel's need for survival and security, and the rights of the Lebanese to freedom from domination."

In the final communique, he and his fellow churchmen agreed that the summit "confirmed that Christians ... have something to say and a part to play so that a world of brotherhood should not be a dream." But making that dream come true will require US Catholic leaders to make good on their summit promise "to do all that is possible, in our communities and in our society, " to advance their agenda for regional peace.

Given their historic reluctance to challenge the government of Israel, European and American bishops especially would do well to listen to the voices of Catholics everywhere, who, in the wake of the Gulf war, desire never to send their children off to battle again. They should also heed the summit warning of Pope John Paul that "Any 'wait and see' attitude in the search for solutions or in the promotion of dialogue constitutes a serious risk of aggravating the existing tensions."

David Scott is a New York-based journalist who writes for Catholic publications.