Be 'peace-makers,' not just 'peace-talkers,' conferees told

by Sara Speicher, World Council of Churches

GENEVA - 9-August-2001 - Painfully aware of the urgent need for the churches to move from affirmation to action in solidarity with the Palestinian people at this critical time, 50 participants at an international ecumenical consultation on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have identified seven potential areas for coordinated action as a beginning of a joint process of ecumenical planning and strategizing for a concerted international response.

The Aug. 6-7 consultation was convened here by World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Konrad Raiser and was co-chaired by His Holiness Aram I, Orthodox Patriarch of Syria and Lebanon and moderator of the WCC Central Committee. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was represented by the Rev. Victor Makari, coordinator for the Middle East in the Worldwide Ministries Division.

Building on long-standing WCC attention to the Palestinian question, the consultation's aim was to strengthen broad international ecumenical support for a comprehensive peace, based on justice and security for the Palestinian and Israeli people.

Raiser noted at the conclusion of the meeting that the exchange of ideas was important in "beginning to identify where the particular dynamics, urge and competence for action lie among us."

Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, the preacher at the consultation's opening worship, declared: "Thank God Jesus said 'Blessed are the peacemakers.' He did not say 'Blessed are the peace-talkers.'... Peace, as all of you know, is neither the absence of war nor the cessation of hostilities. Peace is that relationship between the so-called enemies, from which all the causes that made for war are no more. Making peace requires greater courage than going to war."

Following this injunction, consultation participants declined to draft a concluding communiqué in the form of a public statement. "Action is not another statement, no matter how dramatic," Raiser affirmed. "We need to map out a way for us to actually work together."

The main outcome of the consultation was the decision to form a small consultative group to develop realistic proposals for action with local and international partners in seven areas:

It was also agreed that, together with the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) and local churches, the WCC would develop a coordination point for ecumenical action in Jerusalem, and explore the possibility of linking it with an international coordination center.

The consultants also agreed to propose to the WCC Executive Committee meeting Sept. 11-14 that it consider a special focus on "ending the violence of occupation in Palestine" in the framework of the WCC's current Decade to Overcome Violence program, and possibly to call for an international conference on the subject. As Jean Zaru of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Ceter in Jerusalem noted, "Occupation is violence, and in the Decade to Overcome Violence, we have to expose the structural violence of occupation."

Summing up the value of the meeting, WCC Central Committee member Bishop Aldo Etchegoyen of the Evangelical Methodist Church of Argentina said: "Many people have lost hope in this moment. Many people think peace is impossible. Hope is necessary because this is more than a program, this is our commitment in favor of life, justice, peace and people."

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