U.N. Role Crucial to Solution of Gulf Crisis, Jerusalem Church Leaders Tell Bishops
Episcopal News Service. September 26, 1990 [90249]
Steve Weston, Canon for Communication and Program for the Diocese of Dallas.
WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 20 -- Turmoil stemming from the Persian Gulf crisis and the prospect of increased unrest within Israel and the Arab world brought animated response from two officials of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem who presented their views before the House of Bishops.
Bishop Samir Kafity, president-bishop of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, and the Rev. Canon Naim Ateek, canon of St. George's Cathedral in Jerusalem and pastor of its Arabic-speaking congregation, assessed the continuing multi-lateral military buildup and its destabilizing effects on Israel's relationships with its Arab neighbors. Both emphasized that the series of crises in the Arab world are not separate incidents in the struggle for autonomy in the Middle East.
"We do not see the crises disconnected from one another," Kafity asserted in an address before the House of Bishops. "We are still living the post-World-War-II resolution of a situation over which we have no control. Faith continues to be exploited and abused for divisive reasons."
Kafity said the current Persian Gulf crisis impinges on inter-Arab relationships. "Claims and boundaries are not certain for all the region. The crisis existed before, during, and after the invasion of Kuwait."
"The resolution of the [Persian] Gulf crisis lies with the United Nations," Kafity said. "We want the UN to solve all aspects of the crisis at the same time. We can't prioritize solutions when there is death to children, to parents, to nations. The task is not to condemn or polarize but to use the situation for a better Middle East and a better world."
In an August 21 message to Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning, Bishop Kafity acknowledged a new destabilization of the region in which Israelis, Palestinians, and Muslims have constantly faced an uncertain and often hostile future. "Action in this crisis should not be prompted by the price of oil and self-interest," Bishop Kafity said, "but by the sacred value of human rights and human life."
The crisis is exacerbated by heightening tensions, Kafity continued. "We call on all nations to respect the charter and decisions of the United Nations, including its many decisions on Palestine, Lebanon, Cyprus, and the Middle East in general."
Browning responded to Kafity's concern in late August by calling upon President George Bush "to remain within the mandate of the United Nations as that body seeks to resolve the crisis." He urged the U.S. government to be open to "every opportunity for a negotiated and peaceful solution" and suggested that national pride should not "obstruct the possibility of negotiation."
Dialogue among Israeli and Arab interests in the Middle East remains tenuous at best, said Ateek, and the claims of Jews, Palestinians, and Muslims to a geographical homeland with Jerusalem as its center have intensified. One million Palestinians who once lived in present-day Israel now claim Israeli citizenship; 1.3 million Palestinians live in what is referred to as Eastern Palestine, on the West Bank of the Jordan River; and there are more than a million Palestinians living in Lebanese refugee camps. "The great danger in the Middle East is that people are emigrating, and there is growing religious factionalism," Ateek asserted.
A Palestinian Christian whose family lost everything in the forced eviction from its home near Nazareth when Israel became a nation, Canon Ateek said the presence of such a political state has always provided uncomfortable relationships in the Arab world since 1948. Yet the creation of a new democratic secular state in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims can live together still remains the ideal.
"Peace in the region, justice, and the self-determination of all peoples are critical. We have to be evenhanded. If we say what Iraq has done is wrong by annexing Kuwait, what Israel has done in occupying the West Bank, Golan Heights, part of Lebanon, and the annexation of East Jerusalem is wrong," Ateek said.
Arab countries share a similar problem that Ateek said he believes is bound up in the quest for rights to sovereign territory. After World War I, the area under Turkish domination anticipated its autonomy, promised by the Allies. "Independence was denied Palestine," the canon said, "because Britain promised to create a Jewish homeland there." Disunity within the Arab countries, intensified by the Persian Gulf crisis, tugs at the sleeve of the Palestinians.
"We know that a secure Israel will live within its secure borders," Ateek added. "Israel must also live as part of the Middle East. The task is to see how it can relate not as an enemy but as a good neighbor."