New Palestine-Israel Quarterly Focuses on “Religion and Politics”

By the Rev. L. Humphrey Walz

The complimentary trial copy of the first issue of the quarterly Palestine-Israel Journal took me by surprise. Since the recent death throes of New Outlook, established in 1957 by Simha Flapan, I had not expected ever to see another joint Palestinian-Israeli periodical dedicated to reconciliation. Yet here it was.

Its founders, editors, staff, board and sponsors all are Palestinians and Israelis with top track records in pursuing an honorable, durable and mutually beneficial peace among their region's peoples. The Sept. 13, 1993 Yasser Arafat-Yitzhak Rabin White House lawn signing of the Declaration of Principles had sharpened their hopeful visions. But the equivocal, dilatory follow-up—Palestinian, Israeli and American alike—along with the vigor of opponents soon began reviving apprehensions. Better informed and motivated publics, it became clear, would be essential to speeding up the snail's-pace approach to peace. To this end, Israeli Victor Cygielman and Palestinian Ziad Abu Zayyad combined their journalistic expertise to produce this sizeable quarterly review.

Rallying a seasoned team of administrators and writers, they produced a first issue focusing on "Peace Economics" to help readers grasp what could and could not be accomplished in May in Cairo where the Gaza-Jericho-first agreement was finalized. The third issue, scheduled to reach subscribers just ahead of this Washington Report, concentrates on the friction-generating problems of water distribution throughout the Middle East.

In between came a "Religion and Politics" issue, upon which this column will concentrate. Even by limiting this review to the issue's Christian themes and writers, however, it is difficult to summarize adequately its wide range of illuminating articles from contrasting sources.

All but one of the issue's Christian, Jewish and Muslim writers are Israelis or Palestinians, though some live in England, France or the U.S.A. The exception is Dominican Brother Superior Marcel Dubois of Isaiah House, Jerusalem, who teaches philosophy at Hebrew University.

Its editorial, "Let Us Beat Our Swords Into Ploughshares," derives its title from the prophets Isaiah and Micah, who are honored by Jew, Christian and Muslim alike. In it, Abu Zayyad emphasizes that "attempts to achieve peace require much more courage than the decision to go to war." (A salutory but as-yet-unrealized example would be Prime Minister Rabin putting into action his declared "readiness to remove settlements on the West Bank and the Golan Heights.") There must, therefore, also be a "rallying of the masses around the peacemakers." All parties must "put an end to bloodshed and destruction, and channel our efforts toward construction, development and extricating the Middle East from the vicious circle of conflicts, hostility and arms race."

"Attempts to achieve peace require much more courage than the decision to go to war."

This fits closely into the cited prophets' understanding of religion's call to obedient responses in harmony with the perceived will of a righteous and merciful God. (See Isaiah 2:2-4, and Micah 4:1-4.)

However, the varied interpretations of religion also include disheartening phenomena. Cygielman's lead article on "Religion and Nationalism" focuses squarely on the deplorable "blend of uncompromising nationalism and burning religious faith...that bodes ill for the peoples of this region." As chilling examples of this threat, he provides excerpts from the militant credos of the Israeli Jewish Gush Emunim settlers and of the Muslim Palestinian Hamas. "Each side," as he expresses it, "denies the other any right whatsoever to this promised and disputed land—and all, of course, in the name of God."

A salutary, if difficult, approach to resolving differences within, among and about religious categories is open, receptive dialogue. Examples of this at its best abound in the 11-page summary of a round table on "Fundamentalism" engaged in by serious, competent Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Christian participants.

Good will, clear definitions (especially of vague and loaded words), candid speech and attentive listening fostered flexibility and compatibility around the round table. At the same time, participants realized increasingly the importance of tangible results if the process is to have real significance. Let one illustration suffice:

Daoud Kuttab, a Protestant Palestinian by birth and ancestry, was editor of the English-language Jerusalem weekly Al-Fajr that got around heavy Israeli censorship by printing translations from the freer Hebrew press and quotations from foreign newspapers. It could not, however, survive the Israeli closure order, instituted March 31, 1993, which barred delivery to subscribers in the occupied territories. This background was known among his fellow-dialoguers when he raised the question of Israeli religious discrimination that deprives non-Jews of rights and opportunities available to Jews. Jewish peace activist Dr. Menachem Lorberbaum, a teacher of philosophy at Hebrew University and the Shalom Hartman Institute, replied: "Secular Jews see [Israel] as a secular category of nation. Others see it as a religious category...The religious and non-religious have not found a way to conduct real dialogue in Israeli society."

Completing the Dialogue

This incomplete dialogue is filled out elsewhere in the issue by a six-page essay by brilliant Hebrew journalist and author Boas Evron on "The Community as a State." In it he summarizes the facts to be faced and steps to be taken to produce practical resolutions for this dialogic dilemma.

"Israel is not the state of any non-Jew living in it, even when he is a citizen born in the country, serving in its army (like Bedouin and Druze) and paying its taxes." Contrastingly, "any Jew in the world, whatever his nationality, has rights in the State which no non-Jewish citizen has. The only thing common to all Jews is the religious civilization that they have an affinity to, whether active and immediate...vague and distant, or even rejected...At any rate, [a Jew who] converts into another religion is no longer accepted as Jewish, despite the shopworn argument that Jews are essentially a nation, not a religion. This legal definition dooms any non-Jew to second-class citizenship in all respects—civic, political, social and economic."

Evron sees the solution in having Israel become a true nation-state which equally includes, yet transcends, the particular interests of all people in it. He believes that "the speed with which a growing segment of the Jewish Israeli public began to support the peace agreement with the PLO shows that a process of political 'normalization' is taking place." He senses "an intense longing, which until now was repressed due to political demagoguery...for liberation from the stifling communal-religious atmosphere, and development of a full national life, including relations with the Arab world."

A valuable service of the Palestine-Israel Journal is its inclusion of the texts of important pertinent documents. Among those reproduced in the "Religion and Politics" issue are extensive extracts from the 16 articles of the Dec. 30, 1993 "Fundamental Agreement Between the Holy See and the State of Israel." These enable readers to make more pertinent their questions on the application of the documents to issues and circumstances including:

The Israeli-Vatican Agreement

What specifics are implied by Israel's affirmation (in Article 1) of its "continuing commitment to uphold and observe the human right of freedom of religion and conscience as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights"? How does this bear on the imprisonment and fines threatened against Jews who become Catholics within the framework of the Israeli Anti-Missionary Law of 1978? Does it negate or modify the previous judgment by former Israeli High Court Judge Binyamin Halevy that "Christian missions are a cancer in the body of the nation...[with] the aim of physical liquidation [of Jews] which had been furthered by the Catholic Church since it was established"? (Jerusalem Post , Dec. 6, 1977).

What, if anything, is new when, in Article 3, "Israel recognizes the right of the Catholic Church to carry out its religious, moral, educational and charitable functions and to have its own institutions, and to train, appoint and deploy its own personnel"...or in Article 10, which reaffirms "the right of the Catholic Church to property"?

Article 9 affirms "the right of the Catholic Church to carry out its charitable functions through its health care and social welfare institutions...[when] exercised in harmony with the rights of the State in this field." For Catholic hospitals, will this affect the high customs charges on ambulances imposed generally against non-Jewish hospitals?

What can the Holy See gain or lose in its peacemaking capacity when, in Article 11, it promises to "remain a stranger to all merely temporal conflicts, which principle applies specifically to disputed territories and unsettled borders"?

Assessments and Reviews

Brother Marcel Dubois' article on "The Singular Significance of the Agreement Between the Vatican and Israel" is earnestly intended to give a background for answering these and forthcoming questions. His description of the agreements as, among other things, a "recognition between two spiritual entities" will strike some as comparing apples with pineapples. Many will agree with him, however, that "it is important to distinguish...between three types of relations: between Jews and Christians on the historical and sociological level, between Judaism and Christianity on the level of theological reflection, between the State of Israel and the Vatican on the diplomatic and political register."

The issue also contains two book reviews, both by knowledgeably involved Christians. Dr. Bernard Sabella of the Vatican's Bethlehem University emerges from the hardships and restrictions imposed there by the Israeli civil and military governments to review Palestinian Society in Gaza, West Bank and Arab Jerusalem: A Survey of Living Conditions, initiated by the Norwegian Trade Union Federation. And Jerusalem journalist Daoud Kuttab reviews The New Middle East by Shimon Peres (Henry Holt & Co., N.Y.). Kuttab finds Peres' dream of a peaceful future for the area pleasantly devoid of adequate consideration of the real obstacles created by the present political and military situation.

Other Christian contributions include Kuttab's interview of fellow Jerusalemite Hanan Bakri, a devout Muslim expert in Islamic law, on "Women in Islam"; and Dean Manuel Hassassian of Bethlehem University gives a detailed analysis of how the emigration of Soviet Jews to Palestine and Israel narrows opportunities for peaceful solutions to the conflict. Other articles by Muslims and Jews also are pertinent and stimulating. They present insights important for Christians who want more fully to grasp the religious resources and complexities of the Middle East.

To help the Palestine-Israel Journal become self-supporting through paid subscriptions, Med Media, the European Commission (Brussels), the Swedish National Development Authority, and the International Center for Peace in the Middle East (Tel Aviv) have underwritten distribution of complimentary sample copies to potential subscribers. If you'd like to receive one, write for it at P.O. Box 19839, Jerusalem. Requests for any specific issue can only be honored as supplies permit. Its final 1994 issue (#4) will concentrate on "The Psychological Aspects of the Conflict."

The Rev. L. Humphrey Walz, D.D., retired associate executive of the Presbyterian Synod of the Northeast, is active in denominational and ecumenical peacemaking activities.