Today I’m culling the post from the church’s 2005 Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study, which we put out to encourage churches within the denomination to pray for one another and for churches around the world (the book also has a day of prayer for every General Assembly staff member—mine is September 28). Today the church prays for Israel/Palestine/Jerusalem, a church I have particular interest in after my trip to the Holy Land in April 2004.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) has taken a lot of heat since last year about its stance on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. For years, the church has supported a just peace in the conflict, one that affirms Israel’s right to exist while also affirming the necessity of a Palestinian state and the human dignity of the Palestinian people.

For such a state to exist, essentially, Israel must relinquish Palestinian territory it seized in the 1967 Six-Day War from Jordan and Egypt (today we refer to this territory as the West Bank and Gaza Strip). Palestinians can then build a political state on this ancestral land (Palestine as a cultural and social entity already exists, and has for hundreds of years).

The difference between previous church statements and the most recent one is that the church literally decided to put its money where its mouth is. The General Assembly voted to “initiate a process of phased, selective divestment” from companies that profit from the occupation of Palestinian territories, as well as those who contribute to terrorist acts against Israeli or Palestinian civilians. What this means is that the church will study multinational companies doing business that supports the occupation, ask them to stop operations that harm Palestinian civilians, and then sell church shares of company stock if the company doesn’t respond. The church only sells its stock when all other methods of change have been exhausted. You can read about it at www.pcusa.org/mrti/guidelines.htm. The point is to take concrete action that will change the policy of the Israeli government and end the occupation of Palestinian territories.

When I first went to the region, I had a surprisingly minimal understanding of the situation there, given my background as a history major. But while attending the Sabeel Conference in Jerusalem, I met the people whose lives are irrevocably scarred by the conflict. I met the Christian community in Palestine, who has witnessed to the good news of Jesus Christ in the Holy Land since Jesus himself walked there—a community rapidly dwindling as Christians emigrate to escape the economic and social dead-end that is the occupation. I became convinced that as their sister in Christ, I needed to listen and learn from all sides of the conflict. And when I came back to the United States, I needed to tell others what I had heard.

On this day of prayer for all God’s children in the Holy Land, let me leave you with one of several vivid memories from my trip to Jerusalem. One day of the conference, our tour bus traveled to Ramallah to see first-hand life under the occupation. Of course, we had to pass through Israeli military checkpoints. Coming back toward Jerusalem, after young Israeli soldiers had come through the bus with their machine guns to inspect our passports, I happened to glance out my window to the guard station below. At that moment, one of the soldiers looked up. Our eyes locked, and he gave me a friendly, almost flirtatious, grin as we drove away.

The next day we visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque (better known as the Dome of the Rock, third holiest site of the Muslim world). We entered the mosque during the women’s prayer hour, and I was amazed to see so many Muslim women teaching, praying, and just resting in the peaceful confines of the sacred space. As I quietly wandered around the mosque, my eye caught that of a young girl, maybe ten years old. As I smiled at her, she shyly smiled back. I ran into her a couple more times walking around Al-Aqsa—each time, she looked at me with a smile.

Those two smiles—one from a Jewish Israeli soldier and one from a Muslim Palestinian girl to me, a Christian American—will always be juxtaposed in my mind. For in them, I saw people much like me: people who go out on dates on Friday night, people who get antsy during worship. People who, at heart, simply want a better life and a future with hope.

I want peace for the sake of that soldier and that girl. I want peace for the sake of our hotel staff at the Gloria in Jerusalem, for our cab driver Charlie. And as Christians praying today for all those in Israel/Palestine, we should expect nothing less from our God, through whom all things are possible.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” --Hebrews 11:1

Kelsey

I went to Whitworth College and used to respect those that were my instructors and the administrators of the college. However,
the Prebyterian move towards disinvestment is conventional anti-semitism tricked out as a peace and justice move.

I have contempt for the Presbyterian Church in America and most especially at Whitowrth.

Your gentle feeling for justice dear writer is the sort that ends in embracing the Protocals of the Elders of Zion.

Normally, I would provide my name but have found that then I would be googled up to the world at large. Think of all the Presbyterian fans of the Religion of Peace I would then have to deal with.Ins'allah sis.