“The Things that Make for Peace”: The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and Beyond…

Timothy Seidel

(A talk given in Wilmington, DE for Pacem in Terris on April 2, 2009 as part of our four-part series, “Listening, and Longing for Peace: Israel – Palestine.” )

As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.” Luke 19:41-42

Greetings. I work in Peace and Justice Ministries with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) U.S., which includes programs dealing with anti-racism training, immigration education, women’s advocacy, peace education, restorative justice, and conflict transformation. MCC’s peace and justice work goes back over sixty years to the establishment of the Peace Section in the early 1940’s, an effort that has worked over the years to both nurture the peace witness of the church as well as seek to faithfully live out that witness.

Prior to this, I worked as a Peace Development Worker with MCC in the Occupied Palestinian Territories from 2004-2007, living in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, working to build relationships with Palestinian and Israeli groups committed to justice, peace, and reconciliation—including networking with peacebuilding and development organizations, assisting regional peacebuilding projects, arranging learning visits for visiting groups—and communicating the stories of peacebuilders in Palestine-Israel and MCC’s partners to MCC’s North American constituency.

As the relief, development, and peacebuilding agency of Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches in Canada and the U.S., MCC has maintained a presence in Palestine since 1949, providing relief aid and development assistance. Since the Israeli occupation began in 1967, MCC has also focused on how to promote reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis on the solid foundation of justice.

When I read a text such as this one from Luke’s gospel, I cannot help but feel like Jesus is speaking directly to me, to us, and indeed, these words are a challenge to us all.

This is a subversive text. It reminds me of a story about what “peace” in Palestine-Israel looks like, a story from Hedy Sawatasky, a worker with MCC in Palestine in the 1950’s who was challenged by a Palestinian woman: “what you are doing is only a band-aid solution…go back home and look at the root causes of evil and war.”

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye. Matthew 7:3-5

Another subversive text, a text that keeps us honest, and a challenge that when heeded gives our work integrity.

Since my return from Palestine, I cannot help but see the linkages to the work of peace and justice here in the U.S. Just as that Palestinian woman told Hedy, the root causes are too often rooted here.

I continue to struggle with not being cynical about the situation in Palestine and in Gaza in particular. It is not a healthy place for me to be, spiritually or emotionally. But the Gaza Strip is a heart-breaking catastrophe in so many ways and the people there have been suffering for so long.  It makes me think about the ways that we in the U.S. are irrelevant—in the sense of giving us pause and humbling us to the reality that we are not gods. And that it is less about what we need to do and more about what we need to stop doing (i.e., honestly looking at the ways in which we, the U.S., have made Gaza into a prison).  

Honesty in our self-reflection should lead us to confession and repentance of our own histories of violence and injustice on this continent. I once heard quoted a Native American who argued that the best way for people from the U.S. to address the terrible conflict in Palestine-Israel is to deal more seriously with our own history of colonization, dispossession, and displacement and work for justice for the indigenous peoples in the U.S. This would not only address a serious and ongoing historical sin but in the process more effectively help our Palestinian and Israeli brothers and sisters suffering in that broken land. This manner of systemic analysis recognizes that work for justice in Gaza should be part of the work for justice everywhere.

And so these themes intersect everywhere: colonization, dispossession, and displacement; militarism, racism, occupations, and walls.

This has led me to seek a “thicker” definition of peace. In particular, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King spoke about these linkages, namely racism, classism/poverty, and militarism/war. And so our work at anti-imperialism abroad must be complemented by our anti-racism/anti-oppression work at home.

Examples of this within MCC U.S. are the programmatic priorities we have identified of U.S. militarism, Middle East peacebuilding as well as immigration. They all emerge out of the same historical trends of colonization, dispossession, and displacement.

I have already spoken about the Middle East peacebuilding component, but how might an accompanying “peace” issue look like in this community? How might we identify these linkages? I would argue that immigration is such an issue, an issue all-too-invisible, or at least invisible to some. In fact, I would dare to guess that even here in Wilmington we would not have to look too far to uncover the plight of undocumented neighbors.

Newcomers to the United States continue to encounter an unwelcoming hostility shaped by racism and xenophobia. They are too often met with suspicion, intimidation, isolation, militarized borders, raids, and migratory documentation backlogs. This past year, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) conducted some of the largest workplace raids in the history of the United States, causing fear, separating and terrorizing families, and disrupting entire communities and the lives of immigrants and U.S. citizens. The ongoing construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall materializes this anti-immigrant sentiment. There are an estimated 12 to 16 million people in the U.S. with undocumented immigrant status. And the U.S. immigration system continues to be dysfunctional; lacking programs for guest workers and increasing documentation backlogs, and proposing futile programs that do not address the root causes of immigration.

In this context, the Christian community continues to be ambivalent about how it should respond to immigrants, and in its majority the church remains uneducated on the political, economic and social issues that cause immigration. For example, when coming to the United States individuals are looking for economic opportunities, means for survival for themselves and their families, and fleeing the dire situations that their countries are facing—many of these situations are directly connected to foreign policy of the United States, including trade policies. The economies of neighboring countries, such as Mexico, have been seriously affected by trade agreements that promote economic disparity and dependence.

This brings up the current and very urgent issue of economic justice as another item in front of us today.

And so, a “thicker” definition of peace requires a thicker, more systemic analysis and approach to “peace”, accompanied by engaged and engaging theological reflection.

Whether it is seeking a justpeace in Palestine-Israel or radical hospitality for the stranger in our midst, do we see, do we recognize on this day the things that make for peace?

Timothy Seidel works as Director for Peace and Justice Ministries with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) U.S. He was a peace development worker with MCC in the Occupied Palestinian Territories from 2004-2007 and a contributing author to Under Vine and Fig Tree: Biblical Theologies of Land and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict (Cascadia Publishing, 2007).