tried to broker peace between the State of Israel and the Palestinians who have lived under Israeli military control for more than 45 years. For many Jews—who are haunted by centuries of persecution, the inconceivable horrors of the Holocaust and the anti-Semitism that persists in many places throughout the world—the security of the State of Israel is paramount. Not only do they claim a
“THERE’S A WAR OUT THERE WAITING TO BREAK OUT ... WE ARE LIVING IN A BUBBLE. AND THAT BUBBLE WILL BURST.” —DANIEL SEIDEMANN 3,500-year unbroken connection to the land, but they see the modern state as a necessary refuge in a world sill teeming with deeply hostile anti-Semitism. For Palestinians—many of whom have lived under the military occupation of a foreign government since 1967 without citizenship and no civil rights—freedom and sovereignty are paramount. Palestinians want to have the fundamental rights long denied and delayed in the land of their ancestry. The relationship between Israelis and Palestinians currently is characterized by fear and distrust. With each new act of violence and additional year of conflict, the fear and distrust grow. The conflict is one of the world’s oldest and most divisive, in which theology, politics, human rights and history are all tangled into a hopeless-looking web. The sheer complexity of the situation on this relatively small plot of land has provoked many in the West to exhaustion, if not outright apathy. Throughout history, there have been a few crises of immense global importance—ones that transcend their time and place to become parables of justice, or the lack thereof. One thinks of America’s Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s, South Africa’s Apartheid. In each, the call of Christians has been to take a stand for those who cannot. And the
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Church’s track record hasn’t always been great. “The Church has played a pathetic role in dealing with conflicts globally,” says Sami Awad, executive director of Bethlehem-based Holy Land Trust. “The Church has either been completely out of any equation in dealing with conflicts or, worse, on the wrong side of the equation.” There is an opportunity—and need— for the Church to raise the global alarm for peace in the Holy Land. But the window is closing, and the situation is increasingly dire. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who has initiated a new round of peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, has acknowledged that without rapid progress, the future will be bleak. Daniel Seidemann, founder and director of Israeli peace organization Terrestrial Jerusalem, speaks more bluntly: “There is a war about to break out. “We’re not necessarily talking weeks, but certainly not many years,” he continues. “There’s a war out there waiting to break out, and it just hasn’t decided where and over what, but we are living in a bubble. And that bubble will burst.” It’s a problem that hits closer to home than many in the Church might think.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CHURCH? “Palestinians are the descendants of the early Christians,” says Palestinian legislator Dr. Hanan Ashrawi. “We are probably the straightest line to original Christianity. The Christian presence in Palestine is important. Christianity is part and parcel of the Palestinian identity.” The modern Palestinian Christian community traces its roots back to Pentecost, representing an unbroken Christian presence in the land of Jesus since the first disciples. Today, most Palestinian Christians are Orthodox, Roman Catholic or Melkite. There is also a small evangelical Palestinian Church, but Christians are becoming an ever smaller part of the overall population. In the land where Jesus walked and His disciples
founded the early Church, Christianity’s presence is dying. Christian faith once thrived in the Holy Land, but Christians now make up only about 2 percent of the population. And their growth rate has not kept pace with higher Jewish immigration and Muslim birthrates. Palestinian Christians say their situation is increasingly precarious, with extremely high emigration rates due to the pressures