NEWS STORY: Pleas to End Palestinian-Jewish Violence Going Unheeded

c. 2000 Religion News Service JERUSALEM _ A few lone Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious and lay leaders on Monday (Oct. 2) made isolated calls for a halt to the Jewish-Arab violence that has wracked Israel and the Palestinian territories over the past five days. But the peace calls were largely drowned out by rounds […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ A few lone Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious and lay leaders on Monday (Oct. 2) made isolated calls for a halt to the Jewish-Arab violence that has wracked Israel and the Palestinian territories over the past five days.

But the peace calls were largely drowned out by rounds of mutual recriminations between Jews and Arabs over the issue of who bore responsibility for the clashes that have left nearly 40 Palestinians and two Israelis dead, as well as hundreds wounded.


One 30-year-old Arab Israeli demonstrator was killed Monday in a second day of violent battles with Israeli police in the Galilee city of Nazareth, which was the focus of a pilgrimage tour by Pope John Paul II last March. More muted disturbances were recorded in Bethlehem, which is under Palestinian rule. Elsewhere on Monday, sporadic battles continued between Palestinian stone-throwers, armed Palestinians, and Israeli police and military forces.

The riots in Nazareth, the worst civil disturbances ever in the Galilee, consumed Nazareth’s main street, recently renovated for millennial celebrations, in smoke and flames from burning tires. Local bank branches and stores were looted, and the homes of two prominent Christian personalities, including Nazareth mayor Ramez Jerayssi, were reportedly the targets of gunfire.

Predominantly Muslim crowds of demonstrators rallied around an empty plot of land near Nazareth’s Basilica of the Annunciation where Islamic leaders have sought to build a mosque, over fierce Christian objections. Only last March, Pope John Paul II passed along the same road, in a procession viewed peacefully by Israeli Arab Christians, Muslims and Jews.

Religious sentiment _ as expressed in the conflicting Jewish and Muslim claims to sovereignty over Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque, known to Jews as the ancient Temple Mount _ was clearly the initial trigger for the disturbances.

But calls by religious leaders for an end to the violence have so far been few and far between. And the few peace calls to be issued have generally been colored by the sharp partisan sentiments that divide Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities here.

Jerusalem’s Latin (Catholic) Patriarch Michel Sabbah, himself a native of Arab Nazareth, condemned the “brutal behavior” of the Israeli forces against Palestinian demonstrators, and called on political negotiators to do their utmost to get the peace talks back on track.

Sabbah also condemned Thursday’s visit by Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the plaza of the Islamic al-Aqsa Mosque. Sharon’s visit, a symbolic assertion of Israeli authority over the mosque site, touched off the initial round of Palestinian stone-throwing protests in Jerusalem.


“This started as a Muslim issue over Jerusalem and al-Aqsa Mosque,” said one Arab Catholic official. “But it quickly became a Palestinian issue in which (Arab) Christians cannot remain neutral.”

On the other side of the political-religious divide, the staunchly pro-Israeli International Christian Embassy, an evangelical Protestant organization, slammed the Palestinian “overreaction” to Sharon’s visit to al-Aqsa Mosque.

“I think that in principle, Sharon had the fullest right to visit, although he was unwise in his timing,” said Johann Luckoff, director of the Christian Embassy group. “We feel that Jewish people, and Christians, should have free access to the Temple Mount and not be restrained in any way. And for that reason, we feel that the Palestinian reaction to the Sharon visit, the subsequent stone-throwing and taunting of Israeli soldiers, was a total overreaction.”

Luckoff said his group has drafted a petition calling for Jerusalem to remain united under Israeli sovereignty in any final peace settlement. The petition, he said, has been signed by tens of thousands of individuals and denominational leaders, representing several million Christians around the world. It is to be presented to the Israeli government during the group’s upcoming Feast of the Tabernacles celebrations that open in Jerusalem on Oct. 14.

Luckoff said the celebrations, which draw about 5,000 evangelical Christians worldwide, will go on as scheduled despite the recent disturbances.

On another front, an Israeli interreligious organization including Jews, Muslims and Christians called on religious leaders across the spectrum to speak up more forcefully against violence and for peaceful coexistence.


“Despite the violence and the tension in the region at the moment, we believe that talking via interreligious dialogue and diplomatic negotiations is preferable to provocation and violence. As religious leaders, we believe that `peace’ is not only the `name of God’ but the path that we all need to pursue,” said the statement by the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel.

But major Jewish Orthodox figures have remained silent in the face of the recent violence, while the region’s most influential Muslim figures are largely affiliated with factions of Islam that see jihad, or holy war, as the only solution to the impasse.

“Al-Aqsa Mosque was under the Crusaders’ occupation for more than 90 years. … But only when the Muslim nation declared jihad was al-Aqsa liberated,” said Friday’s (Sept. 29) sermon at the mosque, which is issued weekly by the powerful Islamic Trust that controls the site under Palestinian Authority auspices. “The same thing applies today. This mosque will not be liberated until jihad will be declared by a trusted authority. … I call all the Muslims to work for this purpose.”

DEA END FLETCHER

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