Hope for peace found at grassroots
level
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome
Catholic experts on the Middle East seem to concur on one point:
If peace ever does replace the cycle of tit-for-tat violence between Israelis
and Palestinians, it is unlikely such leaders as Yasser Arafat or Ariel Sharon
will usher it in.
Instead, they say, the regions last, best hope resides in
its civil society, where grassroots initiatives and a simple desire for normal
life survive against seemingly impossible odds.
At the same time, reactions voiced to NCR after a
mid-December appeal for peace by John Paul II illustrate how deep the divisions
run. The Latin-rite patriarch of Jerusalem blasted the Israelis for making
unreasonable demands on Arafat, while the Israeli ambassador to the Holy See
criticized the pope for labeling both Palestinian and Israeli violence forms of
extremism.
Pope John Paul II convened a Dec. 13 summit of prelates from
Israel and Palestine to discuss the future of what Christians call the Holy
Land, along with bishops from the Roman curia and around the world. Among them
was Bishop Wilton Gregory of Belleville, Ill., president of the U.S.
bishops conference.
At the summit, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano
laid out a blueprint for peace. A deal, he said, must include security
for Israel, the birth of a state for the Palestinian people, evacuation from
occupied territories, an internationally guaranteed special statute for the
most sacred parts of Jerusalem and a fair solution for Palestinian
refugees.
Such ideals, however, can seem remote from bloody reality. In the
48 hours since Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat called
for a halt to terrorist action, Israeli officials recorded a total of 17 new
attacks, with one leaving three Israelis wounded in a drive-by shooting.
Is anyone really willing to give peace a chance?
One of the untold stories of the conflict, observers say, is that
the answer is a ringing yes. They point to pioneers such as Bruno Hussar and
Dalia Landau, and their Oasis of Peace and Open House projects.
Hussar, who died in February 1996, was the child of Jewish
parents. He later converted to Catholicism and became a Dominican priest.
During the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), Hussar helped shape the document
Nostra Aetate, which rejected the charge of deicide, or
responsibility for the death of Christ, a charge that had been directed at the
Jewish people over the centuries.
In the 1970s, Hussar founded the Oasis of Peace on a hilltop
between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Its a community of Jewish, Muslim and
Christian families who regulate their lives in a democratic assembly.
The community runs a school where children learn both Hebrew and
Arabic, and study one anothers religious traditions. There are two
teachers, one Jewish, the other Arab.
Landau is a Jewish woman who grew up in Ramallah, in the occupied
territories, after the 1967 Six Day War. One day a man knocked at her
familys door asking if there was still a lemon tree in the backyard. It
was the former Palestinian occupant, expelled during the war.
A friendship grew between Landau and the Palestinian family, and
today Landau runs a center called Open House dedicated to peace among Israelis,
Palestinians, and the Arab nations of the Middle East. The center is based in
the home Landau shares with its former Palestinian owners.
Italian religion writer Luigi Sandri profiles these grassroots
peacemakers in his book Holy and Lacerated City: Jerusalem for the Jews, the
Christians and the Muslims (Monti, 2001). He told NCR that people
such as Hussar and Landau are creating the basis for peace.
By itself, grand political negotiations cannot succeed if
they are not preceded, sustained and accompanied by a climate that renders
inevitable a diplomatic deal, said Sandri, who spent years in Tel Aviv
for the Italian press agency Ansa.
Sandris guarded optimism is shared by Jesuit Fr. David
Neuhaus, like Hussar a convert from Judaism who became a priest and settled in
Israel. He teaches at the Catholic university in Bethlehem.
When I look for hope, I think about people on both sides who
struggle to go about their daily lives, Neuhaus told NCR in a
telephone interview from his residence in Jerusalem.
It can take our students, for example, hours just to reach
the university. They try to get around the Israeli soldiers, and if
theyre blocked in one place they walk miles to another. They will not
give in to violence, he said.
Neuhaus said many Palestinians and Israelis are willing to
live in the tomorrow, in which two states coexist. The problem is
that we have political leaders who come out of a very aggressive, militaristic
past with no vision, he said.
Its a concern echoed by Missionaries of Africa Fr. Justo
Lacunza Balda, president of the Pontifical Institute for Arab and Islamic
Studies in Rome.
I do not believe for a second that Sharon and Arafat will
bring peace, Lacunza Balda told NCR. They have a military
background. They solve problems by the bullet and by putting people against a
wall.
For peace to come, he said, civil society must
be allowed to have a word.
Neuhaus said he takes consolation in the fact that most common
people he knows, both Israelis and Palestinians, are prepared for a two-state
solution, under which Jerusalem would be the capital of both states under
shared governance.
Never has this been so widely recognized, he said.
Yet reactions to the popes Dec. 13 appeal for peace
illustrate that disagreements are far from being resolved.
In those remarks, the pope said the people of the Holy Land are
being crushed by two different extremisms. Israeli officials
criticized the popes language.
The Israeli ambassador to the Holy See, Yosef N. Lamdan, told
NCR in an exclusive Dec. 18 interview that the pope seemed to
equate Palestinian extremism and fanaticism with the use of force by
Israel to defend itself.
We were put out, he said, adding that the Vatican has
never officially informed the Israelis of the results of the Dec. 13
summit.
Meanwhile the Latin-rite patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah,
told NCR that the more objectionable form of extremism is the Israeli
occupation. He said it is unrealistic to demand that Arafat stop Palestinian
attacks before the Israelis withdraw.
No leader can tell his people, We cannot have our
land. We have to accept the Israeli occupation, Sabbah said.
You cant side with the occupier.
Observers told NCR that Christian leaders in the occupied
territories tend to be pro-Palestinian, in part because they are ethnically
Arab, in part because they believe their political future lies with the
Palestinian Authority and not with Israel.
Unsurprisingly, Lamdan struck a different note.
The increase in violence has to be seen in the context on
the unrelenting terrorist assault by the Palestinians on Israels civilian
population, Lamdan told NCR. If Arafat stops the terror,
there would be no reason for further Israeli military action in
self-defense.
As it is, he said, we are not willing to simply
let our children be killed.
John L. Allen Jr. is NCRs Rome correspondent. His
e-mail address is jallen@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, December 28,
2001
|