Peace in the Holy Land
In the popular TV drama series The West Wing, a Catholic US president brokers a peaceful settlement between Israelis and Palestinians, following a crisis in Gaza. The show had moments of prescience, anticipating by two years the election to the US presidency of a member of a minority group. Perhaps, likewise, the prospect of peace in the Holy Land is not as unrealisable as pessimists seem to believe.
The time to move towards bringing peace to the region is right now, and it must emerge from the White House and Israel’s new government, headed by the hardliner Binyamin Netanyahu. US President Barack Obama has the refinement and moral stature to rise above entrenched battlelines, domestically and internationally. His chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, is known to be a loyal friend of Israel, and as such should have the ties by which he might help persuade Israel to abandon positions of intransigence.
Mr Netanyahu may appear to be an unlikely agent of peace, but so did former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin before he reached a lasting accord with his country’s most powerful enemy, Egypt, three decades ago. Mr Netanyahu must be persuasively encouraged to become his country’s FW de Klerk, another hardliner who adopted a line of pragmatism to break a stalemate and facilitate a peaceful political solution in South Africa.
It is true that at present Israel would have no credible negotiation partner to represent Palestinian aspirations. Hamas is showing little interest in peace, and Fatah is profoundly enervated. A new representative Palestinian leadership must be found, one willing to present an alternative vision of a peaceful future and able to sell that vision to its constituency (as it was, incidentally, in The West Wing’s storyline).
This year marks 20 years since two intractable systems — Soviet communism and apartheid — started to fall, quite suddenly and unpredictably. There is no political system that cannot change. Perplexing though it may seem, we must maintain our hope that peace in the Holy Land is possible. The political and religious leaders of the Holy Land, and their respective international allies, must show the courage to defy the expectation that the region’s conflict is beyond a solution.
Pope Benedict’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land might just inspire such courage. The pope has said that he would go as a “pilgrim of peace, in the name of the one God who is Father of all”. Before departing, he said his mission was to show the region’s people the Catholic Church’s commitment to supporting those engaged in dialogue and reconciliation. The Church, he said, is working “to reach a stable and lasting peace with justice and mutual respect”.
Israeli and Palestinian leaders may well find it fruitful to consider the agency of the Catholic Church as a mediator or facilitator in a conflict which desperately requires a fair solution — not only in the interests of justice and regional stability, but for global peace.
Other than the protection of holy sites and particular concern for the welfare of Palestinian Christians, the Catholic Church has no vested strategic interest in the region. It has long promoted peace, calling on Palestinians and Israel to acknowledge and put into effect reciprocal recognition of their respective rights.
The Catholic Church also has the necessary expertise in mediating political settlements, for example through the Community of Sant’Egidio. Given the chance, helping to mediate peace in the Holy Land would be an appropriate way for the Catholic Church to atone for the historical violations committed in its name against Jews and Muslims.
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