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During the world economic forum in Jordan, the BBC broadcast a discussion between an Israeli businessman and the chair of the Palestine Development and Investment Company. The Israeli wants to set up industrial parks in Gaza, and the two men agreed enthusiastically that economic development was vital to achieving lasting peace between their peoples. At the end of the broadcast, however, all cordiality evaporated as they argued over which must end first: the occupation and settlements, or the guerrilla attacks on Israeli civilians. As the BBC correspondent quickly closed the segment with a polite thank you, you could still hear the two men sounding like squabbling preschoolers yelling, "He hit me first."

The event was a parable of the roadblocks to Middle East peace. The unconverted human soul does not have the resources to abandon the blame game, practice forgiveness, and achieve genuine reconciliation. Still, the unconverted can be made to see that compromises can make life better than endless violence.

This may well be a propitious time for the Bush administration to press for compromise. With the threat from Saddam Hussein removed, and with the American presence moderating the threat from militias in south Lebanon, the time seems ripe. Failure at this point will likely ensure a long future of frustration and vendetta.

More than 50 years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict has provided a superabundance of grievances for all. But the infinite regression of blame is the path to futility. The teachings of Jesus ask us to focus on creating the conditions in the present that will work for the common good.

Newsweek recently put a stumbling block in the path to peace when it suggested that the Bush administration's "road map" could offend the leaders of "the nation's 50 million evangelicals," a voting constituency "which the White House hopes will turn out in record numbers next year."

But at no time in the past 50 years has there been as broad a spectrum of evangelical opinion on this issue as there is today. And this fact should free the Bush administration from vague fears of evangelical voting-booth backlash.

Christianity Today's Todd Hertz tested the perception of a monolithically Zionist evangelicalism by querying a wide range of leaders. Hertz also talked to the University of Akron's John Green, who tracks evangelicals' political behavior. In a study of 350 evangelical leaders, Green found that while 60 percent back Israel over Palestine, 52 percent favor a Palestinian state. "Evangelical élites want to see peace in the Middle East," Green told CT. "They believe the Palestinian people have legitimate aspirations to have their own country."

Green told CT that these leaders "would not support a state if it threatened Israel." And Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said that he "would argue that nothing could be more secure for Israel than creating a viable, self-sustaining Palestinian state that agrees to live in peace and agrees to suppress terrorism."

Other evidence that there's no monolith:

1. A June 18 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times by Dallas Seminary professor Darrell Bock listed the varieties of evangelical thinking on the modern state of Israel. Bock wrote with a dispensationalist accent, but he noted that believing God gave the land to Israel does not preclude Israel from negotiating parts of its territory in exchange for peace.
2. A decidedly non-dispensationalist tone suffuses a statement posted on the Knox Theological Seminary website and signed by 100 mostly Presbyterian and Reformed leaders. The statement's most striking assertion compares the "bad Christian theology" that "contributed to the tragic cruelty of the Crusades" to the "bad Christian theology" that "is today attributing to Israel a divine mandate to conquer and hold Palestine, with the consequence that the Palestinian people are marginalized and regarded as virtual 'Canaanites.' "

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August 2003, Vol. 47, No. 8