Episcopal Press and News
Palestinian Negotiators Brief Episcopal Bishops During Washington Luncheon
Episcopal News Service. March 5, 1992 [92057]
Palestinian delegates recently took time out from their current round of negotiations with Israel in Washington, D.C., to share their hopes and frustrations with 10 bishops from the Episcopal Church's Province III.
"The Palestinians are scratching for every inch of ground [in the negotiations]," said Bishop Allen Bartlett, Jr., of Pennsylvania, who hosted the luncheon that brought the nine Palestinians and the bishops together on February 26 during Province III's annual synod meeting.
Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, an Anglican who has served as spokesperson for the Palestinian delegation since the Arab-Israeli peace talks began in Madrid last October, told the bishops and their wives that Palestinians deeply appreciated the Episcopal Church's many expressions of solidarity with Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. She said that Palestinians were eager for the kind of substantive negotiations that would enable them to achieve full autonomy from Israel but that the Israelis had not progressed to that stage. Acknowledging the key role played by the Bush administration in forging peace talks, Ashrawi expressed her delegation's frustration at what she said were Israel's intensification of arbitrary detentions and mass curfews during the course of negotiations.
The bishops relayed greetings from Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning.
The bishops and their wives also signed an open statement to President Bush commending his administration's decision to link Israel's request for housing loan guarantees with an end to Israel's settlement activity in the occupied territories. Affirming the recent statement addressed to Bush by Browning and 14 other church leaders (see February 7 ENS), the bishops said, "The continuation of settlements poses an enormous obstacle to this fragile peace process."
"We seek peace and security for Israel as we seek justice and self-determination for Palestinians," the statement said. "Neither cause will be served by making loan guarantees while settlements continue to be built and expanded on land occupied since 1967."
Dr. Betty Coates, a staff officer at the Episcopal Church's Washington Office, said that this was the largest and highest-level delegation of church leaders that the Palestinians have met with to date.
The meeting represented the culmination of efforts begun some two years ago. The Province III bishops had planned to hold their annual synod in the Holy Land last year, but the Persian Gulf War prompted cancellation of those plans. More recently, Bishop Samir Kafity, president-bishop of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, had sought to introduce Ashrawi to Episcopal Church officials. When a break in the bishops' synod schedule coincided with a brief lull in the peace negotiations, the luncheon became a reality.