Waging Peace, Pages 58-59

HCEF Conference on Building Peace Through Faith and Dialogue

Knights and Ladies of the Holy Sepulchre, honorees and HCEF volunteers at the HCEF banquet. (Photo Michael Keating)

JOHN CARDINAL FOLEY, Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, was the riveting (and amusing) keynote speaker for the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation’s (HCEF) 11th International Conference, held at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, DC on Oct. 24, 2009. Cardinal Foley called the Christians in the Holy Land the “unheralded true heroes in the struggle for reconciliation and peace.”

The Annual Awards Banquet was held on the previous evening at the Bethesda, MD Marriott. Dr. Hugh Dempsey with the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center welcomed attendees, and Rev. Craig Barnes, senior pastor of the Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, gave the invocation. When Reverend Barnes was senior pastor of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC more than a decade ago, he worked to raise U.S. awareness of the deteriorating situation for Christians living in the Holy Land. Barnes stressed the important linkage among a vital Mother Church, the well-being of Christians in the Holy Land, and prospects for peace in the region.

HCEF founder Sir Rateb Y. Rabie appealed to banquet attendees to provide economic support for his organization’s important Christian solidarity projects, such as sales of Holy Land Gifts, the Living Stones Housing and Rehabilitation project, the Child Sponsorship program, and the Father Anton Buzo Senior Citizen Center in Birzeit.

Cardinal Foley accepted the Foundation’s Living Stones Award on behalf of the Equestrian Order for its long history of support of the Christians in the Holy Land. Archbishop Pietro Sambi, former Apostolic Nuncio to Israel and now to the U.S., was honored with the Path of Peace Award, HCEF’s highest award. Reflecting on his four decades of diplomatic service, the Archbishop said, “If there is to be peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict it must begin with U.S. actions here.”

The other honorees were Dr. Samir Abu-Ghazaleh and Mary Beahn, who have worked tirelessly for HCEF.

Early the next morning, Dr. Hussein Ibish, senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, moderated a panel discussion on “Is There Hope for a Two-State Solution?” with Paul L. Scham, executive director of the University of Maryland’s Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies, and Dr. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute. All three agreed that a two-state scenario is the only realistic prospect for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Without some kind of dramatic transformation of the political and diplomatic landscape, Zogby suggested, serious progress is unlikely in the near future. He praised efforts by the Obama administration, and remarked that Special Envoy George Mitchell was applying similar tactics to the ones he employed during the Northern Ireland peace talks—letting the two sides vent their frustrations until they reach a point when they can actually begin to hear each other’s perspectives.

Panelists agreed that President Barack Obama’s disappointing response to the Goldstone Report and Israel’s refusal to halt settlement construction cancelled out the good will generated by his Cairo speech. Describing themselves as hopeful, but not optimistic, the speakers agreed with Zogby that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s plan to prepare for a Palestinian state within two years was a bright idea. “It may not lead to statehood,” Zogby acknowledged, “but if they got to statehood and didn’t do it, the state wouldn’t be functional.”

Building institutions for the future is vital, according to Zogby. It wasn’t hijacking or terror that put Palestinians on the map—that was self-destructive. Palestinians’ vibrant society, its poets and artists who survived in camps kept their culture alive.

Zogby warned that Americans can’t allow another century of death in the Middle East. “We can’t surrender to despair,” he concluded, but must fight for peace here and talk about peace in churches across the country.

Jerusalem Women Speak delegates (l-r) Mahran Hanoun, Jala Basil Andoni and Ruth El-Raz. (Staff photo Zephi Friel)

Another panel examined “Religious Faith as a Path to Peace.” Imam Yahya Hendi, Muslim chaplain at Georgetown University, Bishop Richard Graham of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and Dr. Mark Braverman, executive director of the Holy Land Peace project (see book review pg. 66) discussed using faith to resolve conflicts and heal divisions. Braverman, raised as a Zionist and the grandson of a fifth-generation Palestinian Jew, pointed out that unless we deal with the issue of faith, politics and diplomacy will fail in the Middle East. Zionism is “hiding in plain sight in mainstream Christian theology,” he added, not just in end-times books that prophesize a catastrophic tribulation and rapture.

Imam Hendi said he grew up amid hatred in the occupied territories. After he was beaten by Israeli soldiers, as his mother cleaned his wounds, she told him to be true to his Muslim faith, and to love Jews and Christians. Panelists agreed that no religion should promote hate and exclusivity, and that extremists of every faith have hijacked their religion to fuel global conflicts.

Three courageous women spoke on a panel sponsored by Partners for Peace: Jala Basil Andoni, a Christian teacher from Beit Sahour, Palestine; Ruth El-Raz, an Israeli Jew who helped found Women in Black; and Mahran Hanoun, a Muslim who had just been evicted from her home in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Each woman shared her poignant history and told how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has changed their lives forever.

Like all the previous panelists, the women agreed that peace is still possible. History shows that Muslims, Christians and Jews can live in harmony in the Holy Land. For more information please visit <www.hcef.org>.

—Delinda C. Hanley