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Catholic World News News Feature

Four Years Later October 01, 2004

September 28 marked an unhappy anniversary for residents of the Holy Land. It was four years ago on that date that Ariel Sharon strode onto what Jews refer to as the Temple Mount—revered as the site of the first and second temples—and what Muslims call Haram al Sharif (Noble Sanctuary)—marked by the Al Aqsa mosque and the golden-topped Dome of the Rock, from where Islamic tradition says the Prophet Mohammed ascended into heaven.

Surrounded by hundreds of Israeli riot police, Sharon—now the Israeli prime minister, but then the hawkish leader of the opposition Likud party—marched up to the site. His declared intent, in violating what had been a tacit Israeli agreement to steer clear of the Muslim shrines, was to demonstrate that there is no site in Jerusalem that is off limits to Israeli citizens. But Sharon's show of force, perceived by Islamic believers as tantamount to an armed invasion of sacred space, prompted outrage among Palestinian Muslims.

The bloodletting triggered by his visit, and by the violent Muslim protests that followed, continues to this day. By September 2004, some 925 Israelis and more than 3,000 Palestinians had lost their lives in the latest series of clashes; many thousands more had been injured.

Up until the end of August this year, Israelis had been enjoying a relatively peaceful summer lull, having suffered no suicide bombs since the one that killed 11 people in the port of Ashdod in March. Tourists were beginning to return to Israel’s Mediterranean beaches and Red Sea resorts. Cafes and buses, which had seen a massive loss of patronage during 2003, when a total of 23 suicide bombs cost 139 lives, were filling up again.

Then on August 31, two Palestinian suicide-bombers blew themselves up in buses in Beersheba—the reputed home of Abraham, and the biggest town in the Negev desert—killing at least 16 people and injuring nearly a hundred. Hamas, an Islamist movement, claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they were in revenge for Israel's assassinations earlier this year of its leaders, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi.

In depressing conformity with the norms of this vicious conflict, Israel vowed it would strike back, swiftly destroying the house of one of the suicide bombers in the West Bank Town of Hebron; attacking a Hamas training ground in the Gaza Strip which killed 16 supposed (though unarmed) terrorists; and then killing civilians, including children, during a tank incursion into northern Gaza. Reprisals and counter-reprisals were expected as the cycle of violence spun on.

On the Palestinian side there was no summer respite. Between April and September, around 350 Palestinians were killed, mostly by Israeli soldiers. Inside overcrowded Israeli prisons, 3,000 Palestinians went on hunger strike in mid-August, demanding better conditions. Speaking to contacts and colleagues in the occupied territories at the time of writing, this writer found it clear that the Palestinian people feel as frustrated and miserable as ever.

During a trip to Jerusalem earlier this year, a senior Western diplomat told me that 2004 would be a “crossroads in the peace process." He explained:

2004 is a year of decision, and time is not on the Palestinian Authority’s side, as by the end of the year the boundary lines that Sharon’s government wants to impose—through its security fence, for example—will be much clearer. If there is no progress before the end of this year, the situation could be disastrous for the Palestinian people.

This diplomat argued that the Israeli security barrier, which is likely to be completed next year, forecloses any further compromise on the question of borders or the status of Jerusalem. “Meanwhile, there’s a complete absence of ideas for moving the peace process forward," he said.

Progress toward peace is unlikely until both Israelis and Palestinians feel some measure of security in dealing with each other, and that feeling is not likely to arise, my diplomatic source observed, unless the United States is fully engaged in the peace process, acting as a guarantor of security for both sides. But the Bush administration will not act on behalf of the Palestinian cause unless the Palestinian Authority is democratically reformed and acts more firmly to curb Islamic extremist terrorists. Nor is the US likely to engage more fully in the peace process so close to a presidential election, especially with so much of its international policy focused on the continuing conflict in Iraq.

For now, the Israeli administration is clearly reluctant to offer anything that would help the Palestinian leadership to persuade its people that there are tangible gains emerging from negotiations. On the contrary, some comments by Israeli officials—such as foreign minister Sylvan Shalom's statement that Yasser Arafat (the embattled Palestinian leader who is now holed up in his half-demolished Ramallah headquarters) has no place in the West Bank, and should be “expelled”—have prompted fury in the occupied territories.

Sharon’s decision in August to launch a new round of Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank served to fuel such anger. And the fact that the Bush administration did nothing to dissuade Israel from undertaking this new settlement expansion further damaged the already dented reputation of the US in the Islamic world. Not only does indulgence of Sharon’s expansionism contravene international law and many UN Security Council resolutions, it also undermines moderate opinion among Israelis and Palestinians, of whom the majority still believe in a negotiated solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

LANDMARKS ON THE ROAD MAP

Late in August, Sharon disclosed that the Israeli government was giving the go-ahead for construction of two new Jewish developments, totalling 533 housing units, in West Bank settlements. This announcement came after the approval of 1,000 more units earlier in the month. The announcements prompted the scorn of the Catholic Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, who said this was “a new obstacle on the path to peace.”

Patriarch Michel Sabbah said the Israeli plans for new construction “demonstrate a willingness to continue the conflict in the Holy Land. If the Israelis really want peace, they must accept the idea of leaving the territories to their own inhabitants: Palestine for Palestinians, Israel for Israelis.” Moving Jewish settlers into the West Bank, Patriarch Sabbah told Vatican Radio, is “an act of aggression that can only promote war, not peace.”

Sharon said he would strengthen Jewish settlements in the West Bank while withdrawing Israeli citizens from Gaza, and claimed that he is only allowing for the “natural growth” of existing settlements. But such a policy in itself contravenes the provisions of the “road map,” the blueprint for peace supposedly sponsored by the Bush administration. It also goes against international law, which states that all settlements on occupied land are illegal: The fourth Geneva Convention details the responsibilities of occupying powers, specifically forbidding the occupier from “transferring parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” And the fact that home sales inside Israel fell by more than 20 percent last year suggests that huge and subsidized expansion in the settlements, where Israeli peace activists claim many houses stand empty, is not necessary. The development of settlements in the West Bank suggests that Sharon is actively pursuing his long-cherished ambition of securing the West Bank for Israel, in exchange for withdrawing 7,500 settlers from Gaza, where they live surrounded by 1.3 million Palestinians.

The settlement expansion announcement came as John Dugard, a South African law professor and special rapporteur for the UN in the Holy Land, told the UN General Assembly that there is an “apartheid regime” in the territories “worse than the one that existed in South Africa.” Highly critical of Israel for its “continuing violations of human rights in the territories,” Dugard cited as an example the roads that are open only to Israeli settlers, from which Palestinians are banned. Dugard, who was a member of a Truth Commission at the end of South Africa’s regime, was appointed by the UN in 2001 as special rapporteur for human rights in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Israeli human-rights group, B’Tselem, supports Dugard's assertion. B'Tselem reports that Israel bars Palestinians from more than 400 miles of roadways in the West Bank. A recent report by the group asserted that Israel’s roads policy in the occupied territories causes “harsh, extensive, indiscriminate, and prolonged harm to the local population.” The Israeli military describes roads from which Palestinians are banned as “sterile”—a term that, as some critics point out, has racial overtones.

The World Bank has called for Israel to allow much greater freedom of movement by Palestinians in order to help revive the Palestinian economy: independent sources estimate that there are between 200 and 300 Israeli military checkpoints and barriers impeding Palestinian access in the West Bank and Gaza Strip at any given time.

Israel has argued it is interested in “improving the transportation infrastructure to enable uninterrupted movement across the West Bank,” but that such an initiative would require “extensive and complex construction with international assistance.” One suggestion has been to build separate roads parallel to the restricted roads, on which Palestinians would be entitled to travel. However Israel has hinted that international donors should assist in the payment of these roads. Foreign diplomats counter that any request for improving roads should come from the Palestinian Authority—which has already requested assistance to repair damage done by Israeli tanks, but not necessarily in the areas around Israel’s barriers and settlements.

“We’re already heavily subsidizing the occupation, and that worries us,” said a foreign diplomat. He continued:

We are prepared to help where it means building or reconstructing the Palestinian infrastructure. But there is a lot of concern among the donors that the Israelis think we will just pick up the bill for their actions, whether it’s sending tanks into Jenin and Rafah or building the wall.

BARRIER TO PEACE

Known by many names—security fence, separation barrier, hafrada wall, or simply “the Wall”—the $1 billion construction project undertaken by the Israeli government through the West Bank is a combination of razor-tipped fencing and concrete wall that will snake across 450 miles of the Holy Land when it is completed next year. Israel says the barrier is temporary and is needed to keep out suicide bombers who have killed more than 400 Israelis in the past three years. Palestinians see it as a land grab that will thwart their dream of a Palestinian state.

In July, the head of the Vatican press office welcomed a decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to condemn the barrier. Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the world court’s opinion supported that of the Holy See and “more precisely, what the Pope said some time ago: what the Holy Land needs is not a wall, but bridges.”

The ruling came in response to a request made by the General Assembly of the United Nations concerning the “legal consequences of the construction of a wall in the occupied Palestinian territory.” In its advisory opinion of July 9, the ICJ ruled that Israel’s barrier violates international law by cutting deep into West Bank land occupied and dotted with settlements by Israel since the 1967 war. Israel, the court added, is duty-bound to guarantee “freedom of access, visit, and transit” to the Holy Places “without distinctions of nationality.”

The court said Israel had a right and a duty to protect its citizens from suicide attacks, but could have done so with a wall built on Israeli, rather than on occupied, land. It said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could only be resolved by applying relevant UN resolutions and the American backed “road map” for peace. It added that Israel must pay reparations to Palestinians for damage caused by the barrier’s construction on Palestinian lands and suggested that both the General Assembly and the Security Council consider further action to ensure Israeli compliance with its opinion.

(The decision by the world court came a week after a separate setback for the Israeli government's plans—this one delivered by the country's own highest tribunal. The Israeli Supreme Court ordered the rerouting of a 20-mile section of the barrier, saying that the construction of the barrier across that particular section of land violated the basic human rights of Palestinians living in the area.)

When the ruling was announced, Brother Vincent Malham, the American-born president of Bethlehem University, told me that the ICJ decision addressed “the extreme injustices the Wall perpetrates against so many ordinary Palestinians and the hardships it imposes on their daily lives: students separated from their schools, farmers from their lands, laborers from their jobs, sick people from hospitals.” Though he did not believe the ruling from The Hague would have much practical effect, he said that even the judgment would demonstrate to both Israelis and Palestinians “what the ICJ, representing the enlightened and moral views of most people in the world, thinks of this outrageous atrocity.”

“We call on the international community to make sure this advisory ruling becomes a reality,” Father Shawki Baterian, chancellor of the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem, said. “The Wall is increasing hatred between Israelis and Palestinians,” he said. Father Baterian added that the physical barrier could not ensure the security of Israeli citizens; that could only be guaranteed through success at the negotiating table.

Azmi Bishara, an Arab Catholic member of the Israeli parliament, said the ICJ’s ruling “can’t be better. This is very solid ground on which an international coalition can be built against Israeli practices in the occupied territories.” Bishara observed that the barrier will not provide Israel with any real security since Palestinian militants will still be able to fire missiles over the wall into Jewish towns, as has been done from Gaza. "This is not the Great Wall of China, it’s not historical. It is an ugly cement wall,” Bishara said. “Many walls were destroyed. This wall can come down.”

Rabbi Ron Kronish, president of the Inter-religious Coordinating Council in Israel (ICCI), summed up the impact of the barrier by saying that it brought an “end to empathy." By that phrase, he explained, he meant that "there's a lack of desire to see any suffering in others." Convinced that reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians will require the sort of understanding that is formed by face-to-face encounters, the ICCI is working to facilitate such meetings, bringing together Arabs and Israelis—Jews, Christians, and Muslims. "These sorts of meetings don’t solve the problem, but do create a human face in the enemy, which is a religious imperative,” the rabbi said.

INTERNATIONAL PARTICIPATION?

An international conference of Catholic bishops from Europe and the Americas, meeting in the Holy Land earlier this year, concluded with a message of solidarity for the country’s dwindling Christian population, and clear statements objecting to the level of devastation being caused by Israel’s “security fence.” Held in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, the conference brought together bishops from 10 countries, including two presidents of North American episcopal conferences: Bishop Wilton Gregory of Belleville, Illinois (for the US) and Archbishop Brendan O’Brien of Saint John’s, Newfoundland (for Canada). The bishops were briefed on the plight of indigenous Christians by university lecturers, charity workers, clerics, students, and diplomats. They also had meetings with Israeli President Moshe Katsav and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, and took part in an inter-faith discussion with local Jewish, Muslim, and Christian scholars.

Visiting the Monastery of the Sisters of Emmanuel on the outskirts of Bethlehem—a site that will soon be cut off from Jerusalem by the Wall—the bishops viewed the construction of the security barrier. “I don’t know how anybody could support this,” said Bishop William Kenney of Stockholm, who was representing the Commission of the European Bishops' Conferences. Archbishop O’Brien said the wall would further ghettoize Palestinian society.

Israel, on the other hand, argues that the security barrier has already proven useful, pointing to the lull in the number of suicide bombings this year, particularly in areas where the Wall is complete. But construction of the barrier is not the only factor in the equation; Israel's military operations in the West Bank and Gaza have, by the government's own estimates, destroyed a substantial portion of the Palestinian capacity. And by claiming that the Wall has stopped terror attacks, Israel dismisses the importance of the international diplomatic pressure that has been brought to bear on Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority to take firmer action against terrorist groups. In fact, Palestinian officials say that the militants' relative quiescence during the early summer months was due not to the Israeli security barrier, but because of negotiations, led by Egyptian diplomats, to ensure an orderly withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza.

A BRIDGE FOR PEACE

The suggestion was made, during the international conference of Catholic bishops, that the Church could act as a bridge for peace. In his opening address to the bishops, Patriarch Michel Sabbah, said: “Churches of the world have the responsibility to affirm the Christian character of this land by making themselves present through many ways of presence, pilgrimages, reconciliation, and respect for the human person.” The Patriarch remained upbeat about the political situation. Having only recently returned from a disagreeable meeting with Moshe Katsav, in which the Israeli president had labeled the Catholic leader in the Holy Land as an apologist for terrorism, Sabbah remained optimistic enough to say that the peace process required patience. “It’s like a flower bed in a garden,” he said. “It may not look like much is happening, but under the surface, the shoots are strengthening and growing.”

"Things are improving, if slowly," the patriarch insisted. He reported with satisfaction that Christians from around the world are resuming travel to the Holy Land; the number of pilgrimages increased significantly during 2003, and more were expected toward the end of 2004. He also reported an easing of tensions between Christians and Muslims in the occupied territories, although the absence of strong government authority makes it possible for some militant groups to intimidate their more moderate neighbors. "The law of the jungle is dominating,” a spokesman for the patriarch told me early in September. “The powerful are taking over the weak.”

Still, Bethlehem University—which received a commemorative plaque from John Paul II on September 8, testifying to its enduring contribution to the cause of peace—stands as living testimony to religious coexistence in the occupied territories. The university, which began a new academic year on August 25, has a student population of 2,200; about 35 percent are Christians (Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant) while the majority of the students at the Church-run university are Muslims. The Religious Studies Department includes Catholic professors as well as those competent in Islamic and Jewish studies—although a source at the university admitted that “the present political situation makes it impossible for the University to hire Jewish professors.”

Brother Vincent Malham reinforced this sense of practical solidarity between Christians and Muslims on the West Bank, and suggested that tensions between the communities were an indirect result of the Israeli occupation: “Israel wants to break the wills of the Palestinian people,” he charged. “There is a deliberate policy of suffocation.” Brother Malham added that the suffocation “makes Palestinians want to leave, as they do not want to bring up their children here.”

Thus the message of solidarity reaffirmed in the bishops’ final statement was a source of some hope for Palestinian people—Christian and Muslim alike. “We have seen the devastating effect of the Wall currently being built through Palestinian land,” read the statement, signed by all 11 bishops who took part in the conference. “We have had an experience of the frustration and humiliation undergone every day by Palestinians at checkpoints, which impede them from providing for their families, reaching hospitals, getting to work, attending their studies and visiting their relatives.” The bishops promised to rally support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in their own countries. Bishop Gregory, the president of the US bishops' conference, said that he and his fellow bishops were “in it for the long haul."

Delivering a homily at a Mass celebrated in Bethlehem's Basilica of the Nativity—a ceremony that was televised across the Holy Land—Archbishop Patrick Kelly of Liverpool, vice-president of the bishops’ conference of England and Wales, said:

We are determined to walk with you, whose land is this land, which is also the land of the prophets, the apostles, and the saints. The Holy Spirit gathered us this evening in order to listen to him in this holy place and to listen to you, to your sufferings and to your prayers, asking for peace and justice.