Dear Friends, It is an honour and a privilege for me to be invited to address this seminar of the Stockholm International Forum. I am going to talk on peace-building and reconciliation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I will do this from a Palestinian Christian perspective.

Instrument of Truth
I am a Palestinian and a Christian. My home is in Jerusalem. We Palestinian Christians have lived in the Holy Land since the very beginning of Christianity. Today we are not as many as we used to be. But we are nevertheless part and parcel of the Palestinian people. Our family belongs to the 1948 refugees. I still carry an UNRWA refugee card. I was fortunate to grow up in the Old City in Jerusalem. I wonder if I would ever have become a pastor or a bishop if I had grown up in the difficult circumstances in a refugee camp in Bethlehem, Jenin, Nablus or Ramallah, which all are impoverished areas.

During the last months, I together with all Palestinians have been deeply affected by the heavy Israeli military incursions into the Palestinian areas. Church and family members, together with friends in many of the attacked areas have reported how they have been experiencing shooting, shelling, killings, and destruction of property and infrastructure on a massive scale. Even our Lutheran Church and its institutions were not spared from that.

(Some 700,000 Palestinians are living under curfew for weeks, forbidden to leave their homes for work, for school, for anything. Only for some few hours now and then this curfew has been lifted so that people can get food – if there is food to buy in the shops.)
People live in fear for their lives. What is going on seems to be an attack on all hope and aspirations in our community. The result of this massive suffering is increased bitterness, hatred and despair.

I am here carrying in my body the pains and suffering of my Palestinian people. I am here with an olive branch in my hand saying: Enough for hatred, enough for occupation, enough for violence, enough for revenge and counter-revenge, enough for stigmatization and demonization and dehumanization of the other. I say enough for war. It is time for truth.

Catalyst for Justice
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is primarily of a political, and not of a religious nature. However, religion is called to contribute positively in the search for a solution, and not to inflammate the situation further. In this I believe that religion is called to speak the truth and call for justice as the prophets of old.

I admire His Holiness Pope John Paul II, whom I consider to be a prophetic figure. He made the mea culpa (i.e. ‘the fault is mine’) on behalf of those members of the Church who persecuted and made injustice to the Jewish community. I have written him a letter of admiration, in which I said that I hope that all religious and political leaders will be as courageous as His Holiness.

Time has come for the leaders of the three religions – locally and internationally – to take the lead in confessing that injustice has been done to Palestinians. This should be done in order to prompt the world community and the government of Israel to admit these wrongs as well.

Our prophetic task is to address the root cause of the Middle East problem: The occupation has to end. It is a sin against God and against humanity, as it is depriving the other their rights and their dignity. Occupation is destructive to the occupier, as well as to the occupied. We want security for the Israelis and freedom for the Palestinians. But the security of Israel is dependent on the freedom of the Palestinians.We therefore call for justice and freedom for both peoples within the internationally recognized borders. Once we recognize the symbiotic relationship between the two peoples, just peace and reconciliation will become reality.

The prophetic voice that seeks a just peace is a voice that cares for the future. The issues of a two-state solution, of refugees, settlements, and a shared Jerusalem should be addressed and solved in accordance with international legitimacy.

Ministers of Reconciliation
No forms of peaceful settlement of the conflict will ever be realized unless the grass roots will be reconciled with one another. In this task the religions are called to be the forerunners; preparing the way for reconciliation. At the moment both nations are polarized with both political and religious extremism in the lead. The walls of hatred and animosity are growing higher between the two peoples. This makes it more difficult for religious leaders to impart the line of equitable coexistence. At the same time, as victims of injustice, we should never allow injustice to have the final word.

My question is always: How can the two peoples change their image of one another? How can animosity turn to neighbourliness, insecurity to security, hatred to love, fear to trust, and bitterness to forgiveness?

In a dialogue meeting between Jews and Christians some years ago, I spoke about my son’s fear of Israeli soldiers. This fear would cause him to live in hatred, which is something I do not want. In the same meeting a Jewish rabbi talked about his fear of his daughter getting stabbed. This urgent sense of fear and suffering helped the rabbi and myself to discover the humanity behind the figures and statistics. And as long as we find each other in the suffering – the way of pain, the via Dolorosa – then real reconciliation will take place.

We are all called to see God, not in ourselves and our own tribe only, but also in the others, in the people who are different from us. In order that we can accept the otherness of the other, and mutually recognize each other’s human, civil, religious, national, and political rights. Only then will Palestine and Israel become the promised land of milk and honey for both Palestinians and Israelis.

For this reason I believe peace education is a significant tool in securing just peace and reconciliation. For me peace education is to make a Uturn. To turn away from the hatred and violence that separate us, and instead turn to the mutual respect and coexistence that brings us together. This indeed is a challenge to all of us.

With the extremists getting ever stronger on both sides, the polarization is presently growing between the two peoples, which in turn feeds the vicious circle of hatred and spiral violence.

Might and military power might be able to win in the short term, but in the long term hatred will grow. Hatred directed against the other, as well as against one’s own people.
As my wife and I were walking from Jaffa Gate into the Christian Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem, a Jewish girl around twelve years old spoke to us in Hebrew saying: “Please help me to enter the Old City. I am afraid, because my teacher has told me that the Palestinians here will kill me.” My wife who masters Hebrew told her to follow us, and spoke to her all the way about the other and that she should not believe in what she had been told. When we came to a corner and were to depart from each other, my wife asked her: - “Did you feel safe with us?” – “Very much so,” she said. My wife continued: “Do you know that both of us are Palestinians? Did we harm you?” The stunned little girl opened her mouth and did not know what to say.

My concern is the future of our children – Israeli as well as Palestinian. What we do – or do not do – now will decide if they are to live in constant hatred and fear with little trust in each other, and thereby prolong the painful conflict and pass it on to the next generation.
At present the Israeli children are taught that their security is in arms and military might. They live in fear, even though they have the power. They need to be liberated from the mentality of fear and be educated that their future security is in a reconciled Palestinian neighbour.

On the other hand, today’s Palestinian child only knows one Israeli; the tough soldier who confiscates land, shells homes, detains the father, forbids the parents to enter Jerusalem to work and pray. These children are to be liberated from these experiences and from the occupation, and be educated that their freedom and security is in a reconciled Israeli neighbour.

It is time to commit ourselves to move from statements to action and to change our warrior swords into peaceful ploughshares.We are to say as a graffiti in Ramallah: Better the pains of peace than the agonies of war and occupation. Let us sing with King David: Justice and peace must kiss each other.

May the Peace of the Lord fill our hearts and direct our ways.