A few weeks ago I posted a blog that I called “Peacemaking for Amateurs.” I called it that simply because my love and desire for peace are not matched by my knowledge of how to make it happen. In that post, though, I named three causes of war, three of which I was sure: Oppression, Exclusion and Deprivation. What I said was, I think, fundamental. No unusual amount of intelligence or wisdom is required to see how these three pressures can result in war. But, of course, I became aware of these issues by observing and experiencing the Middle East where I have seen all three.
Shortly after I wrote that small essay violence broke out again in Jerusalem. As best I could understand it from the news, the right to visit and worship at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on The Temple Mount was the issue that sparked a series of rock throwing and stabbings, followed by arrests, beatings, revenge stabbings, even shooting. Now more than 30 checkpoints and roadblocks impede the flow of life in East Jerusalem, a city of 300,000 Arabs already splintered by roadblocks and walls and restrictions.
The news did not alarm most of us, because we were in no way surprised. We know that all of the West Bank has been occupied and controlled by Israel for 48 years. Forty-eight years the world has talked about a two-state solution, and Netanyahu has finally admitted that it won’t happen while he is prime minister. (Thanks for the news.) During these 48 years Israel has continued to build cities (they call them “settlements”) all over the West Bank, every one of them breaking the West Bank into more unconnected pieces, every one of them constituting another reason why Israel can never be expected to leave the West Bank. The United Nations, the same United Nations that gave Israel its legitimacy in 1948, has declared that building on occupied territory by anybody anywhere is illegal and a violation of human rights. Not only does no one in the world have the nerve to stop this, my own country, “the land of the free,” supports this violation with money.
Whatever happened or didn’t happen at the Temple Mount is not terribly important. It was a mere spark from a slow burning fire that never goes out. It is called frustration. Forty-eight years of oppression will do that to any group of people. We can blame the Palestinian leaders, or their lack of leaders. We can blame a few young, jobless, hungry hotheads. But behind every one we can blame is those 48 years of occupation, a lifetime of struggle, a lifetime of fading hope. I like the statement of the peacemaking organization B’teselem, that individuals are responsible for their own actions, but the government of Israel is responsible for the occupation.
What amazes me is not the outbreak of violence but the news that so many Palestinians are trying through non-violent means to promote peace in their homeland. What encourages me is that they are joined by so many Jewish Israelis. If American Christians would just catch on to the reality these people see, our own country might get involved in promoting peace with justice instead of feeding the fire in the West Bank. We might make our massive donations to Israel dependent on the cessation of building cities on other people’s land.