Several resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be considered by the Episcopal Church’s General Convention, meeting here July 5-12.

Among them is Resolution B019, which calls on the church to engage actively in the discipline of advocacy, study, and prayer for peace between Israelis and Palestinians; encourages all Episcopalians to travel to the Holy Land as pilgrims and witnesses; affirms the importance of economic measures designed to support a negotiated two-state solution; and calls for positive investment in the Palestine Territories and in the social service institutions of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem and the Middle East.

The resolution, proposed by Diocese of Northern California Bishop Barry Beisner and endorsed by Olympia Bishop Gregory Rickel and Bishop Suffragan for the Armed Services & Federal Ministries Jay Magness, also commends the leadership of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori in calling all Episcopalians to advocate for an end to the conflict and increase support for the Jerusalem diocese and the other Christian communities of the Holy Land.

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While the ancient Christian communities around Jerusalem await the miracle of the Holy Fire this week, I pray for another miracle — one that would give full religious freedom to the Christians in the West Bank and Gaza. Holy Week has long been a time of pilgrimage to Jerusalem; Christians have worshiped there since the birth of the church, and these sites are a core aspect of the devotion of Palestinian believers.
The restrictions on travel for worship are not only in force during Holy Week, but also for routine Sunday services, weddings, funerals, and baptisms throughout the year. Certainly, Israel can take care of its own security concerns while accommodating peaceful Palestinian Christian worship.

In a recent letter by 80 Palestinian Christian leaders, including the Greek Orthodox archbishop of Jerusalem, Palestinian Christians spoke out against the lack of religious freedom inside Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. They complained of being forced to endure an “assault on our natural and basic right to worship.”

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The President of the Palestinian Authority has met with leaders of the Christian Churches of Britain in London following his talks with the British government over the stalled Middle East peace process.

The meeting between Mahmoud Abbas and Dr. Rowan Williams comes at a nadir in Anglo-Israeli relations and on the same day the Israeli Foreign Ministry chided Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg as being grossly “ill informed” about the conflict in the Middle East.

According to a statement released after the 17 Jan 2012, President Abbas told the church leaders that Israel and the Palestinians must resume peace talks. The Arab Spring provided a “rare opportunity” to bring peace to the region, the Palestinian leader said.

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On the Sabbath morning of Nov. 5, less than three weeks after the release of Sgt. First Class Gilad Shalit in a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, Jews in synagogues throughout the world will read a Torah portion concerning Abraham’s early journeys. The text recounts how invaders conquered the city of Sodom, taking Abraham’s nephew Lot as a captive, and the way Abraham raised an army to rescue him.

The timing of this Torah reading is an absolute coincidence, an unplanned synchronicity between the religious calendar and breaking news. Yet the passage also offers an essential explanation, one almost entirely ignored in coverage of the Shalit deal, for Israel’s anguished decision to pay a ransom in the form of more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners, including the perpetrators of terrorist attacks on civilians.

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Two Pittsburgh religious leaders said they felt joy and relief when they learned an Israeli soldier held captive for five years by Hamas had been freed.

“I’m thrilled that that’s happened for the family, but I certainly hope and pray not just for his welfare, but that we don’t have to face this situation again,” said Bishop David Zubik of the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese.

Zubik and Aaron Bisno, senior rabbi of Rodef Shalom Congregation in Shadyside, discussed their reactions on Tuesday after Israel exchanged more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Schalit, 25, an Israeli soldier held captive since 2006.

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At the outset, it bears noting what The Episcopal Church has said repeatedly over the course of multiple decades: a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians can be achieved only by bilateral negotiations between the two parties themselves. This important principle was reaffirmed just last month by a joint communiqué of the Patriarchs and Heads of Local Churches in Jerusalem. The contours of what such negotiations must produce are as clear as ever: a two-state solution that provides for the security and universal recognition of Israel and the safety of all its people, the viability and territorial integrity of a state for the Palestinian people, and a sharing of the holy city of Jerusalem.

Unfortunately, the gulf between this outcome and the political and moral will needed to achieve it has proven wide. Only a year ago, hope existed that negotiations would commence, and that ”“ particularly with the involvement of the President of the United States ”“ the moment for a peaceful solution might finally have arrived. Tragically, the events of the past year have driven the parties further apart rather than closer together, leading some to question whether international efforts to support the peace process have lost credibility, and whether there is any meaningful path toward negotiations.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has come under sharp criticism from Palestinian activists, who have accused Dr. Rowan Williams of being an ill-informed right-winger bent on “demonizing Islam” and supporting the Israeli government.

However, a spokesman for Dr. Williams tells The Church of England Newspaper that Kairos Palestine had improperly construed the archbishop’s remarks about the plight of Christians across the Middle East to be an endorsement of Israeli government policies.

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Episcopalians in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles held silent prayer vigils in protest of Israeli treatment of Palestinians on May 24, the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress about the peace process.

They sought to send a message about the Israeli government’s policies towards Palestinians in general and specifically the refusal to grant Anglican Bishop Suheil Dawani a permit to reside in Jerusalem. As bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, Dawani, a Palestinian Christian, oversees congregations and institutions in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Territories.

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It is understood that the president’s remarks may have been made to head off a symbolic recognition of pre-1967-borders Palestine at the U.N. General Assembly and to restart negotiations between the parties. This is indeed commendable, but not at the expense of securing an agreement that is just and workable for both Israel and the Palestinian people. It would be tragic if the emergence of a Palestinian state consigned the Palestinians to Salafi-Wahabi servitude rather than leading to a true freedom for Christians as well as Muslims, women as well as men.

Finally, from a Judeo-Christian point of view, I would have welcomed an acknowledgment from the president of the Biblical basis of the idea, expressed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, that women and men are endowed with certain inalienable rights by their Creator. This is the true basis for any struggle to have human equality affirmed and respected.

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The biggest leak of confidential documents in the history of the Middle East conflict has revealed that Palestinian negotiators secretly agreed to accept Israel’s annexation of all but one of the settlements built illegally in occupied East Jerusalem. This unprecedented proposal was one of a string of concessions that will cause shockwaves among Palestinians and in the wider Arab world.

A cache of thousands of pages of confidential Palestinian records covering more than a decade of negotiations with Israel and the US has been obtained by al-Jazeera TV and shared exclusively with the Guardian. The papers provide an extraordinary and vivid insight into the disintegration of the 20-year peace process, which is now regarded as all but dead….

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We were very concerned about the fire that destroyed entire forests in the Haifa area. We offer our condolences to the families of victims, and our admiration for the courage of those who died in the line of duty. This sad event made us experience international solidarity. The fact that the Palestinian Authority made available their team of firefighters was a very significant gesture and may be a beginning of a fruitful collaboration in the future, when peace will be established in this troubled land.

We suffer from the failure of direct peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This should not lead us to despair. We continue to believe that on both sides, and in the international community, there are men of good will who will work and put their energies together in their commitment for peace. We believe that nothing is impossible with God and we want to carry out the wishes sang by the angels on Christmas night: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”(Lk.2 :14) We also wish Europe to play a more significant role in this process.

We were shocked and troubled by the massacre of Christians in Baghdad in the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help….

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In 2008, the World Council of Churches convened a group of Protestant and Catholic theologians to review the underpinnings of Christian attitudes toward Israel. (No Jews were invited.) The group published the so-called Bern Perspective, which, among other things, instructed Christians to understand all biblical references to Israel only metaphorically.

This understanding denies the connection between today’s Jews and Moses, Jeremiah and Isaiah. It marks a return to “replacement theology,” the medieval view that the Church has replaced Israel in God’s plan and that all biblical references to Israel refer to the “new Israel”””that is, to Christians. For centuries, that view was the theological basis for denying rights to Jews in Church-dominated Europe.

In 2009, on the first day of Chanukah (which Jews again celebrate this week), a group of Christian Palestinians issued the Kairos Palestine Document, which was immediately published on the World Council of Churches website. The document calls for a general boycott of Israel and argues that Christians’ faith requires them to side with the “oppressed,” meaning the Palestinians. It speaks of the evils of the Israeli “occupation,” yet is silent on any evils committed by Palestinians, including the Hamas terrorists who now govern the Gaza Strip.

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Several prominent Israelis expressed concern over a statement by the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, which said Jews cannot use the Bible to justify injustices.

But tensions increased when a U.S. bishop told reporters at the synod that Jews could no longer regard themselves as God’s “chosen people” or Israel as “the Promised Land,” because Jesus’ message showed that God loved and chose all people to be his own.

The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said Oct. 25 that the final message of the Synod of Bishops reflected the opinion of the synod itself, while the remarks by Melkite Bishop Cyrille S. Bustros of Newton, Mass., were to be considered his personal opinion.

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Bishops from the Middle East, summoned by the pope to the Vatican, ended their two-week meeting with a statement that called on Israel to end its “occupation” of Arab lands and to stop using the Bible to defend injustices.

The dwindling numbers of Christians living in the Middle East was to be the principal reason for the meeting called by Pope Benedict XVI, but the joint communiqué also warned Israel about “injustices” against Palestinians.

The synod’s message said that “re course to theological and biblical positions which use the word of God to wrongly justify injustices is not acceptable,” in an apparent reference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Mutual distrust leads many Palestinians and Israelis to think of peace as a mirage. Since religion plays a significant role in justifying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, politicians need the help of religious leaders in their search for a solution.

The problem is that often the patriarchal figures of the three faiths are too focused on “protecting” the community from erosion of piety or the threat of assimilation to pay enough attention to moral empowerment. Too many leaders defend ownership of land at the expense of justice, rationalize war and its spoils, and remind their people to track the enemy vigilantly using partial interpretations of sacred texts for this purpose.

Religious leaders from outside the region oftentimes also fuel the conflict, sometimes without even being aware that they are doing so. Based outside of the area and free from the considerations of local day-to-day life, these authorities too often espouse hardline positions. The American charismatic church, for example, supports Israel automatically, even at the risk of threatening long-term Jewish security. To become enablers of peace, religious authorities will have to shift from a preoccupation with protecting the tradition from change to becoming agents of inter-communal reconciliation.

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The Palestinian leadership said Saturday that four-week-old direct talks with Israel should be suspended as long as Jewish settlement housing was being built in the West Bank. It called on the international community to pressure Israel to stop the construction.

A statement issued after a meeting of about 35 Palestinian leaders ”” the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the central committee of the main Fatah movement and a handful of others ”” held at the compound of the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, said that Israel was responsible for the deadlock.

“The leadership confirms that the resumption of talks requires tangible steps, the first of them a freeze on settlements,” Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior P.L.O. official said after the three-hour meeting. “The Palestinian leadership holds Israel responsible for obstructing the negotiations.”

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Despite tragic violence and discouraging developments, there are signs of hope. Majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians still support a two-state solution. Arab states have declared their commitment to peace in the Arab Peace Initiative. There are U.S. diplomatic efforts to restart Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Lebanese negotiations for peace. Official and informal negotiations have produced the outlines of concrete compromises for resolving the conflict, including the final status issues: borders and security, settlements, refugees and Jerusalem. Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders both here and in the region reject the killing of innocents, support a just peace, and believe sustained negotiations are the only path to peace.

As we said two years ago, there is a real danger that cynicism will replace hope and that people will give up on peace. With the resumption of direct negotiations, clarity is demanded. So let us be clear. As religious leaders, we remain firmly committed to a two-state solution to the conflict as the only viable way forward. We believe that concerted, sustained U.S. leadership for peace is essential. And we know that time is not on the side of peace, that delay is not an option.

The path to peace shuns violence and embraces dialogue. This path demands reciprocal steps that build confidence. This path can lead to a future of two states, Israel and a viable, independent Palestine, living side by side in peace with security and dignity for both peoples, stability in the region, and a comprehensive peace between Israel and all her Arab neighbors.

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Saying that they are people of hope who “refuse … to give in to cynicism or despair,” a group of interfaith leaders delivered a declaration to the White House and State Department Sept. 29 uniting in support of “active, fair, and firm U.S. leadership for Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori was among the 28 Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders who signed the statement.

Alexander D. Baumgarten, director of government relations for the Episcopal Church, represented Jefferts Schori at the meeting with General James Jones, United States national security adviser, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

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The US says it is “disappointed” by Israel’s decision not to extend a ban on West Bank settlement building.

US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has been sent to the region in an attempt to salvage direct peace talks that were restarted earlier this month.

The 10-month moratorium came to an end at midnight (2200 GMT on Sunday).

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Renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are opening in Egypt, amid concern over the imminent expiry of Israel’s partial ban on West Bank settlement building.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are holding three-way talks with Hillary Clinton in Sharm-el-Sheikh.

Before the talks began the US secretary of state had said Israel should extend its freeze on West Bank construction.

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In the months ahead, direct negotiations will be taking place between the Israeli and Palestinian authorities. This will be a critically important test for those directly responsible and a heavy responsibility lies on them to move the situation forward from the tragic patterns of recrimination and retaliation that have become so familiar. It will also be a time of testing for Jews, Christians and Muslims in this country. Shall we be able to pray together for peace and justice; shall we be able to refrain from words and actions which are partisan rather than reconciling and thereby model to the wider world how a deep commitment to each other can be sustained? It is my hope and prayer that this will be so.

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… the film tracks the story of Mohammed Abu Mustafa, a 4-month-old Palestinian baby suffering from a rare immune deficiency. Moved by the baby’s plight, Eldar helps the infant and mother go from Gaza to Israel’s Tel Hashomer hospital for lifesaving bone-marrow treatment. The operation costs $55,000. Eldar puts out an appeal on Israel TV and within hours an Israeli Jew whose own son was killed during military service donates all the money.

The documentary takes a dramatic turn, though, when the infant’s Palestinian mother, Raida, who is being disparaged by fellow Gazans for having her son treated in Israel, blurts out that she hopes he’ll grow up to be a suicide bomber to help recover Jerusalem. Raida tells Eldar: “From the smallest infant, even smaller than Mohammed, to the oldest person, we will all sacrifice ourselves for the sake of Jerusalem. We feel we have the right to it. You’re free to be angry, so be angry.”

Eldar is devastated by her declaration and stops making the film. But this is no Israeli propaganda movie. The drama of the Palestinian boy’s rescue at an Israeli hospital is juxtaposed against Israeli retaliations for shelling from Gaza, which kill whole Palestinian families.

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The Church of England is reviewing its investment in a company building Jerusalem’s light railway amid concern that the tramline “will help to cement Israel’s hold on occupied east Jerusalem”.

But the Church has stopped short of endorsing a campaign urged by Palestinian churches to boycott “everything produced” by Israel’s West
Bank occupation.

The boycott call was made in a document known as ‘Kairos Palestine’, issued by Palestinian Christians last December. It denounces “Israeli occupation of Palestinian land” as “a sin against God and humanity”.

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The General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada went on record expressing “deep concern” regarding the interception by Israeli Defence Forces of relief ships from Turkey and Ireland. The ships were attempting to disrupt the Israeli blockade of Palestinian ports to deliver relief supplies to Gaza.

Nine people were killed May 31 after the Israelis boarded ships heading toward Gaza. On June 4, an Irish Gaza-bound aid ship was forced to head towards the Israeli port of Ashdod instead.

The synod passed the motion by a show of hands after a short debate. “It’s not for us to declare to the nation of Israel how to defend themselves,” said David Parson from the diocese of the Arctic.

Bishop Dennis Drainville of Quebec argued that the synod was within its rights to object to what he considered an unjustified action. He quoted Martin Luther King as saying that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere.”

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Here is one:

Re “Chosen, but Not Special” (Op-Ed, June 6):

Michael Chabon writes eloquently about his desire for Jews and Israel to shed the idea of exceptionalism. But exceptionalism is intrinsic to almost any group, and it is a fantasy to expect a nation or a religion to shed the idea, however irrational and ridiculous, that somehow it is special.

Rather than view Jewish exceptionalism as an albatross, we should view it as a way to inspire Jews and Israel to do better and to be openly critical of events and actions that fall far short of the ideal.

This ability to be self-critical is, like the belief in exceptionalism, an intrinsic part of Jewish and Israeli culture. It is precisely what is happening right now with the widespread acknowledgment that the raid on the Mavi Marmara was a tragic blunder.

Stuart Rojstaczer
Palo Alto, Calif.

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We construct the history of our wisdom only by burying our foolishness in the endnotes. To imagine a Chelm ”” the town inhabited, according to Ashkenazi Jewish folklore, entirely by fools ”” requires a presumption of general wisdom elsewhere, as the proper imagining of Heaven requires an earthly realm of sorrow.

As a Jewish child I was regularly instructed, both subtly and openly, that Jews, the people of Maimonides, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk and Meyer Lansky, were on the whole smarter, cleverer, more brilliant, more astute than other people. And, duly, I would look around the Passover table, say, at the members of my family, and remark on the presence of a number of highly intelligent, quick-witted, shrewd, well-educated people filled to bursting with information, explanations and opinions on a diverse range of topics. In my tractable and vainglorious eagerness to confirm the People of Einstein theory, my gaze would skip right over ”” God love them ”” any counterexamples present at that year’s Seder.

This is why, to a Jew, it always comes as a shock to encounter stupid Jews. Philip Roth derived a major theme of “Goodbye, Columbus” from the uncanny experience. The shock comes not because we have never encountered any stupid Jews before ”” Jews are stupid in roughly the same proportion as all the world’s people ”” but simply because from an early age we have been trained, implicitly and explicitly, to ignore them. A stupid Jew is like a hole in the pocket of your pants, there every time you put them on, always forgotten until the instant your quarters run clattering across the floor.

It was this endlessly repeated yet never remembered shock of encountering our own stupidity as a people ”” stupidity now enacted by the elite military arm of a nation whose history we have long written, in our accustomed way, by pushing to the endnotes all counterexamples to the myth of seichel ”” that one heard filtering through so much of the initial response among Jews to the raid on the Mavi Marmara.

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The lethal mishandling of Israel’s attack on a ship carrying humanitarian supplies that was trying to break the blockade of Gaza was bound to provoke outrage””and rightly so. The circumstances of the raid are murky and may well remain that way despite an inquiry…But the impression received yet again by the watching world is that Israel resorts to violence too readily. More worryingly for Israel, the episode is accelerating a slide towards its own isolation. Once admired as a plucky David facing down an array of Arab Goliaths, Israel is now seen as the clumsy bully on the block.

Israel’s desire to stop the flotilla reaching Gaza was understandable, given its determination to maintain the blockade. Yet the Israelis also had a responsibility to conduct the operation safely. The campaigners knew that either way they would win. If they had got through, it would have been a triumphant breaching of the blockade. If forcibly stopped, with their cargo of medical equipment and humanitarian aid, they would be portrayed as victims””even if some, as the Israelis contend, brought clubs, knives and poles. As it was, disastrous planning by Israel’s soldiers led to a needless loss of life.

For anyone who cares about Israel, this tragedy should be the starting point for deeper questions””about the blockade, about the Jewish state’s increasing loneliness and the route to peace. A policy of trying to imprison the Palestinians has left their jailer strangely besieged.

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The Israeli raid on a flotilla bound for Gaza, which left at least nine dead, was a disaster. It was poorly conceived, incompetently executed and entirely counter-productive.

Israel has a right to defend its borders, but also a responsibility towards its citizens and friends to remain a beacon of civilised conduct in the Middle East. When it fails in this responsibility, the problem is not its alone. Israel’s friends believe in Israel because they believe in the ideals that it represents. On Monday morning, Israel fell short of these ideals.

Such a betrayal invites a roar of disapproval, all the more damaging to Israel’s interests because of that which it drowns out. Just as the intransigence of the blockade around Gaza has allowed the vile regime of Hamas to escape the scrutiny that it deserves, so has Israel’s blundering savagery on the high seas allowed those on board the flotilla to appear unimpeachable. This is inaccurate and also dangerous.

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Differences remain between Israel and the US, following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, the White House has said.

President Obama urged the Israeli PM to take steps to build confidence in the peace process, during “honest” talks on Tuesday, said spokesman Robert Gibbs.

Mr Gibbs also said the US was seeking “clarification” of the latest plans to build homes in occupied East Jerusalem.

Mr Netanyahu’s trip came amid the worst crisis in US-Israeli ties for decades.

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Israel signaled it won’t halt its building plans in the disputed territory of east Jerusalem, deepening a rift with the U.S. that threatens efforts to contain Iran and other American security goals in the Middle East.

Officials on both sides fear relations between the two allies are at their worst point in decades, after Israel scuttled hope for a new round of peace talks by announcing new settlement plans last week during a visit by Vice President Joseph Biden. That led to an extraordinary public rebuke of Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Netanyahu apologized for the timing, but he has declined to retract the plans for the settlements and others that have become among the biggest obstacles to peace talks. On Monday, a leading member of Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party said the prime minister told members in a closed-door session that Israel wouldn’t bow to pressure and reverse course on its planned 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem.

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