c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ It has long been conventional wisdom that Jerusalem would be the last item on the agenda in Middle East peace negotiations. It was believed that Israelis and Palestinians had to develop a plan for peaceful coexistence before the super-charged issue of the Holy City could be successfully tackled.

The comforting idea that Jerusalem’s future could be held in abeyance was surely naive when it first surfaced in the 1993 Oslo Accords. Today, it has no basis in reality because the battle for Jerusalem is raging on many fronts. As they say in the financial world, the city is”in play.” Even though Israelis and Palestinians have formally agreed to negotiate the final status of the city between themselves, many outside kibitzers,including members of the religious community, are offering dangerous solutions for Jerusalem’s future. The latest meddler to enter the”We Know What’s Best for Jerusalem”game is a Washington, D.C., group, Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP).

CMEP’s members include many U.S. mainline Protestant churches, the National Council of Churches, two Quaker organizations, the Unitarian Universalists, and two groups representing Catholic men’s orders.

CMEP’s campaign, complete with full-page newspaper advertisements, calls for”sharing”Jerusalem between two peoples, the Israelis and Palestinians, and the three faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. CMEP also favors dividing Jerusalem into two capital cities.

At first, the CMEP plan appears reasonable because of its warm and fuzzy”sharing”language. But there are three fatal flaws to the proposal: a severe case of historical amnesia, a dumbing-down of religious sensibilities, and a pervasive bias. Because of these gross deficiencies, CMEP’s plan is unworkable and a prescription for instability.

CMEP does not come to the issue with clean hands and a pure heart. CMEP has exhibited a consistent hostility toward Israel and its legitimate needs. In 1991, the group actively opposed the request by Israel for loan guarantees from the United States to assist in the absorption of the hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews who were arriving in Israel. CMEP based its opposition on the notion that the absorption of so many refugees would disrupt the peace process.

Immediately following the Gulf War, during which Saddam Hussein fired SCUD missiles at Israeli civilian targets, CMEP called for a”moratorium on all arms transfers to the Middle East.”Such a policy would have effectively crippled Israel’s self-defense capability against aggressive countries like Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and it would have robbed Israel of an anti-missile system.

In 1995, the group vigorously opposed bipartisan Congressional efforts, led by Sens. Bob Dole and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Israel’s capital city.

Today, CMEP conveniently ignores the fact that between 1949 and 1967, the years when the Old City and other parts of eastern Jerusalem were controlled by Jordan, Jewish holy places _ including the Western Wall _ were barred to all Jews, not merely Israelis. Ancient synagogues, cemeteries, and schools were damaged or destroyed during that terrible period.

Even though these actions violated the Jordanian-Israeli armistice agreements, CMEP failed to speak out about the denial of Jewish rights. There were no sweet calls from CMEP for”sharing”Jerusalem when it was a bitterly divided city.

It took the 1967 reunification of Jerusalem and Israeli sovereignty for all religious groups to finally achieve full religious freedom and access to the holy places.

In its current campaign, CMEP makes the superficial assertion that Jerusalem is”a sacred city”for the three faiths. Sadly, CMEP engages in the popular ploy of”religious equivalency”in which all claims, beliefs, and facts regarding Jerusalem are melted down to the lowest common denominator. CMEP makes it sound as if Jerusalem’s”sacredness”is equal for all religions. It is not.

Lutheran Bishop Krister Stendahl, former dean of the Harvard Divinity School, decades ago put the issue of Jerusalem’s holy places in proper perspective:”For Christians and Muslims that term (holy sites) is an adequate explanation of what matters. … But Judaism is different … it is not tied to `sites,’ but … to Jerusalem itself,”Stendahl said.

Another Christian leader, the Rev. John Pawlikowski of Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union, quite rightly demands continued safe access to the city for all religions. However, he declares that Jerusalem”… needs to remain undivided and be fully recognized as the capital of Israel.” Indeed, throughout Jerusalem’s 3,000 years, only the Jews have made the city its national capital, beginning with King David.

CMEP has performed a grave disservice by intruding into the current peace process with its ominous Jerusalem proposal. Again Pawlikowski:”… (CMEP’s plan) will do little to advance the requisite negotiations.” I can only hope that the world will deposit the CMEP plan in its proper place: the dustbin of history.

MJP END RUDIN