Episcopal Press and News
Presiding Bishop Joins Others in Calling for United States Role in Middle East Reconciliation
Episcopal News Service. October 17, 1996 [96-1585]
(ENS) Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning recently joined other Christian leaders in urging a strong role by the United States in seeking a resolution to the latest threat to Middle East peace -- an outbreak of violence in Israel and the Occupied Territories in late September.
As Israeli and Palestinian leaders were on their way to Washington, D.C., in an initial attempt to restore their deeply damaged sense of mutual trust, leaders of denominations and church organizations associated with the National Council of Churches wrote to President Bill Clinton expressing their hope that "the United States, as a sponsor of the peace process, would play an active role in bringing the parties back to the negotiating table."
In the days of violence, sparked by the opening of a new entrance to a tourist tunnel at the base of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the leaders wrote on September 30, "We have been deeply saddened by the tragic loss of life, and indeed of hope itself, in the Holy Land."
Specifically, the letter urged that negotiations address certain tensions underlying the outbreak of violence.
The opening of the tunnel entrance in a Muslim section of Jerusalem's Old City, they said, marked a change in the status quo of the city's holy sites threatening to both Muslims and Christians. "The status of Jerusalem is to be negotiated, not determined by unilateral actions," the church leaders said. Since the "Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, in particular, is an area of extreme sensitivity both for the residents of Jerusalem itself and for adherents of Judaism and Islam throughout the world," the leaders urged that Prime Minister Netanyahu be convinced that the new entrance to the tunnel be closed.
The leaders also called on Israel to honor the agreements on redeployment of Israeli troops in the city of Hebron, and to stop the expansion of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories.
The United States, for its part, should honor its commitment to support the Palestinian Authority in its development of the autonomous areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a way to address the high rate of unemployment that also feeds Palestinian frustration.
"What is needed now is not the belligerent repetition of fixed positions, but a genuine striving for agreement and compromise," the leaders concluded. "Our hearts and prayers are with the many who have suffered injury and death and their grieving families, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim."