Episcopal Press and News
Kafity Envisions an 'Era of Hope' Ushered in by Mideast Peace Conference in Madrid
Episcopal News Service. November 8, 1991 [91214]
The opening round of Mideast peace negotiations signals the advent of a new "era of hope" and the possibility of a happier Christmas in the region, according to Bishop Samir Kafity, the president-bishop of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East. The long-awaited conference convened in Madrid on October 30 when delegates from Israel and its Arab neighbors took seats at the same negotiating table.
"It is an era of hope. It is an era of expectation," said a visibly buoyant Kafity in a recent interview at the Episcopal Church Center in New York. He pointed to a tentative spirit of goodwill emerging between Palestinians and Israelis as a result of the initiative in Madrid.
"The Palestinian people spontaneously went out of their homes throughout the occupied territories offering olive branches to the Jewish soldiers," Kafity said, painting a visual counterpoint to the violence that has marked the last four years in the West Bank and Gaza. "It was another Palm Sunday, another procession of spirituality and peace between the peoples of the three faiths."
A Haifa-born Palestinian, Kafity said that he saw a Palestinian state at peace with Israel as a goal of the step-by-step peace process.
Kafity acknowledged that the future status of Jerusalem poses "a problem," given Israel's insistence that an undivided Jerusalem will remain its capital, but he argued that international pressure could convince Israel to allow a new structure for the city.
"Jerusalem will become perhaps the model of peace," Kafity said. All three monotheistic faiths are entitled to equal rights in Jerusalem, including "at the level of sovereignty," he insisted.
Kafity said that he hoped this year's Christmas in the Holy Land would be "one of hope and of peace" that would permit people to celebrate on both sides of the political divide. He noted that Christmas will also mark the last feast in the 150th anniversary year celebrating the Anglican presence in Jerusalem and the Middle East.
"We see ourselves as servants of reconciliation and peace," Kafity said, referring to the bridge-building role of the Episcopal Church in the region.
Returning to a theme he had sounded at an ecumenical peace service, held at St. George's Cathedral in Jerusalem on the opening day of the Madrid conference, Kafity underscored the element of goodwill. An empathetic and open-minded attitude "on the part of both the powerful and powerless" is a prerequisite of peace, he said -- and "the only thing that changes attitudes is love."