No Shalom in a Land Called Holy: The Israeli Army Helicopters Thundered Overhead Just as I Read, “Blessed Are the Peacemakers”. They Could Not Have Picked a More Ironic Moment

The shadows of four army transport helicopters could not have swept over us at a more ironic time. I had just read aloud, “Blessed are the meek.… Blessed are the peacemakers.” We were 18 American Christian journalists, in the Holy Land at the invitation of the Israeli government, sitting in a circle on the Mount of Beatitudes. There, tradition says, Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount. For a moment, the roar of the four choppers passing over us almost drowned out the sounds of our hillside worship service.

It was not the only time I wondered why peace seems so elusive in the land called holy. I had flown into a country of great beauty, where the very soil seems to give rise to anger and hurt. The fight over “turf” elicits a passion that is hard for many Americans, with their history of an ever-expanding frontier, to grasp. I was only scarcely prepared for the utter complexity of the claims and counterclaims made on the land where once Jesus walked. But I also discovered the longing for peace in surprising places.

“There’s been a slight change in your accommodations,” Mike, our tour guide, told us. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and entourage, due in town for a round of peace talks, were taking over several floors of the venerable King David Hotel. “Sorry for the inconvenience, but think of it this way,” he said: “You’re giving up your rooms for the cause of peace.”

If only it were that easy. Just outside Ben Gurion airport, where our El Al 747 landed, we had seen two Israeli soldiers hitchhiking. None in our group worried about safety. We would walk down few Jerusalem streets where we did not see soldiers, on watch, carrying M-16s.

Beside the road to Jerusalem, we saw rusted hulks of armored trucks, part of a convoy blown up during the 1948 War of Independence, when Zionists and Palestinian farmers traded fierce gunfire. The ill-fated trucks—protected only by steel sheeting fashioned into a homemade armor—had been sent to bring provisions to Jews holed up in Jerusalem. Someone turned the wrecks into makeshift memorials, draping them with Israeli flags in honor of the impending Memorial and Independence Day holidays.

This corridor has seen battles as far back as the dawn of the Iron age, when Israel confronted the Philistines. An old Crusader fortress, now little more than broken walls and piles of stone, stood as a silent reminder of still another era of war between Christians and “Turks.”

Just outside Jerusalem, Mike read us Psalm 122: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.… For my brethren and companions’ sake, I will say, ‘Peace be within you!’ ” Has such prayer been in vain?

As we neared Jerusalem, I realized our group was not so different from this conflicted country. We were a microcosm of Christendom’s own history of religious wars, however amiable our conversation. A couple seats down from me was the religion editor for the WashingtonTimes, a follower of Sun Myung Moon. Several rows back was a research scholar for a publication of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God, a group with interesting theories about how the lost tribes of Israel eventually became the ethnic stock of Britain and America. Around me was an assortment of Southern Baptists, liberal Catholics (including one fascinated with reincarnation and the appearances of the Virgin Mother at Medjugorje, Yugoslavia), a Mennonite, a member of the Church of Christ, and a member of the Plymouth Brethren.

One of our first stops was the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, built on sites where many believe Jesus was crucified, buried, and resurrected. It is more than a church, more like a Romanesque mall of alcoves, altars, and chapels, represented by groups almost as diverse as those on our bus. Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Coptic—all have control over certain parts and access to the holiest sites at prescribed times. “Each tile and each pillar is under carefully allotted ownership,” says Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek in My Jerusalem. “Who cleans what door handle takes on crucial significance since cleaning represents ownership.” In the words of a Wall Street Journal writer, “There’s a lot of coveting of thy neighbor’s chunk of church.” Apparently Christians are not leading the way in forging peace here.

In past centuries, our guide reminded us, denominations sometimes shed blood, contending for control of such holy places. And a decade ago, Israel’s Ministry of Religious Affairs was about to step in to repair this crumbling church, in disrepair because the Franciscan, Greek, Coptic, and Ethiopian clergy could not agree on a course of renovation. “The potential embarrassment of a Jewish government fixing up the church of all Christians finally prompted action,” he told us.

Our visit to the tomb itself, the heart of the church, was blocked by just such an uneasy truce; we arrived there just as the transition was to be made to the Catholic time slot. Their own altar ornaments would have to be set up before anyone could enter, a process our busy itinerary would not accommodate.

The even grittier conflict, of course, is between Palestinians and Israeli Jews. One evening in Jerusalem I met several persons who had marked views on those tensions.

The first was Jimmy DeYoung, head of Shofar Ministries, an evangelical Christian media service based in Jerusalem. Our tourism department hosts had invited several guests to join us, and Jimmy must have been high on their list. At Jerusalem’s Mishkenot Sha’ananim restaurant, with its view of Jerusalem’s Old City, the tanned, white-haired Jimmy sat across from me and talked eschatology with the zeal of an evangelist.

“The only thing the Palestinians understand is a fist,” he told me. “The only way they will talk peace is if they have no choice.” What about the complaints of the Palestinians that their schools have been virtually shut down since the late eighties? Such harsh action was justified, DeYoung said, because Palestinians gather not to educate their children, but to talk about “how to kill Jews.” His solution for the conflict seemed to depend on removing Arabs from the region.

His view of the end times, which expects the Jews to rebuild the temple on the current site of the Muslim Dome of the Rock as a precursor of the return of Christ, was popularized by Hal Lindsey in The Late Great Planet Earth. Some forms of that view hold that two-thirds of all Israeli Jews will be killed at Armageddon, with the remaining third converted when Christ returns. In her book Prophecy and Politics, journalist Grace Halsell poses the obvious, but insistent question: “Knowing that Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson and most major TV evangelists believe every Jew will be either killed or converted to Christ, why should Jews seek to collaborate with them?” Support from politically conservative dispensational Christians, she concludes, is worth it all to Israel.

Also at dinner was Ed McAteer, a former Colgate-Palmolive salesman who was credited by many with helping Ronald Reagan win in 1982. He now heads the Religious Roundtable, an organization that promotes traditional values and supports Israel in the public-policy arena. McAteer is well-connected both in Southern Baptist circles and with principals of the evangelical political Right. He had just accompanied a planeload of Russian Jewish émigrés, some of the vast number Israel expects to resettle over the next few years in the land it controls. McAteer was launching an appeal to Christians to support the flights.

McAteer has a good-natured manner and a Walter Brennan smile, but his views on the Palestinian question leave little room for small talk: The pamphlet he gave me, “Will Israel Be Forsaken?” concludes, “May each of us resist the temptation to sacrifice Israel on the altar of political expediency. It won’t work. God himself covers Israel—and his hand is turned against her adversaries.”

That night at dinner, Jackie, an editor for a Franciscan publisher, told Ed of an encounter she had just had while strolling in the Muslim quarter of old Jerusalem. She had watched a nine-year-old Arab boy run from an Israeli soldier on patrol. The soldier had done nothing to provoke the boy, but in his haste and fear, the boy tripped and gashed his cheek. The mother approached Jackie asking if she would help get medical attention, an extraordinarily difficult task for Jerusalem Arabs since the intifada began. Jackie recounted the story, and suggested that Ed would do his image among Arab Christians no harm if he would use his contacts to organize and fund a medical clinic in the Muslim quarter. “You could have a Christian doctor, a Jewish doctor, a Muslim doctor, all working together,” Jackie brainstormed. She urged him to call a press conference the next day while the media were still in town for Baker’s visit. I was surprised that Ed seemed open to the idea. How tempting to believe some small effort could bring peace when the wheels of international politics were turning exceedingly slow.

My third conversation that night confirmed that the problem needs more than medical clinics. I snuck away from our meal at the restaurant to visit a Palestinian pastor whom friends said I must see while in Israel. Although it was the eve of Sabbath, I found a cab driver who would take me to the Arab section of the city. Saint George’s Cathedral was the destination, where Naim Ateek is the canon and pastor to its Arabic-speaking congregation.

Naim’s hair is silvery white, but his broad face is more boyish than you would expect for a 54-year-old. He told me his story in the simply furnished parsonage:

In 1948, just after he turned 11, Naim was displaced from his home in Bet She’an during the Zionist occupation of his town. Since then, he says, Palestinians in Israel—Christians and Muslims—have lived as “hewers of wood and carriers of water,” much like blacks in America.

“The daily humiliation of the people [in this congregation] is almost unbelievable,” he said. During the Gulf War, when a curfew was in effect continuously, medical care was almost impossible. Palestinian Arabs had to get a permit from Israeli soldiers to travel to a hospital, but that meant violating the curfew. And he worries that the Israeli government is growing less willing to negotiate with Palestinians. “They are shifting from a Zionist [that is, political] understanding of history to a point of view that is more religious.”

When I suggested that that should temper the political claims, he disagreed. “It’s caused things to harden. Since 1967 and the Six Day War, Israel has been guided more and more by a religious vision. They think they cannot give up any of the land because God has given it to them. Israelis begin with the assumption, ‘Everything is ours. You don’t belong here.’ ”

One day, as we left Jerusalem for the Dead Sea and Masada, we saw a sign by the road—“Peace Research Institute.” “I suppose it is the height of optimism,” Mike offered with a smile, “to think there’s anything about peace worth researching here.”

Israel’s parched desert, with its angry heat, has an impressive religious history. “The people who fled to the desert came for both religious and expedient reasons,” Mike told us. Harsh hills like these were the haunts of Elijah, David, the Essenes, John the Baptist, Jesus, Jewish zealots, fifth-century monks—and the martyrs of Masada.

At Masada, Herod the Great built a massive cliff-top fortress in the first century. He built the lavish citadel as a place of escape should disgruntled subjects revolt. But Jewish fighters retreated here after Jerusalem fell in A.D. 70; here they made a heroic last stand. For all the impressive ruins, it is the story of their fierce resistance and courage that makes this a virtual shrine to Judaism, and the most popular historic site in the country.

“Masada must not happen again” is not just a slogan etched onto the wall of a nearby youth hostel. It is a key to understanding Jewish insecurity and defensiveness in the Holy Land.

A short drive south of Jerusalem, Tantur ecumenical institute sits on a hill like an oasis in the arid land surrounding Bethlehem. Begun in the early seventies to promote ecumenical dialogue among Christians, it now also serves as a meeting place for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. “One thing that impresses you,” says Robert O’Donnell, vice-rector of Tantur, “is the number of Jews and Arabs who want to live together in peace. They don’t agree with terrorism, nor with the policies of the Israeli government.” The institute leads visits to Arab refugee camps, to Jewish kibbutzim, to other sites where people from every background live. As much as anyone, O’Donnell has seen firsthand how biblical Palestine has become a hotbed of emotions, of guarded rights and remembered wrongs. He has also seen how putting hostile groups together to tell their stories can soften the emnity and strengthen their resolve to see peace established.

Indeed, many Americans are surprised to find that surveys of Israelis show that a slim majority favor granting land to the Palestinians for the creation of a Palestinian state, a compromise that most government leaders want to avoid. And many Palestinians, I learned from conversations with Ateek and others, also long for a peaceful resolution.

Clearly, no partisan answer will solve the conflict—whether from ultra-Orthodox Jews, militant Muslims, earnest dispensationalists, or even a pilgrim Christian journalist. Christians must listen to all sides. We should begin to care about people, not just Armageddon calendars. And we must do all we can to help all the citizens of a hurting land do more than posture and fight, but also learn to listen.

My last day in Israel left me with a telling glimpse. It was not in Jerusalem, or by the sea of Galilee, but in cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, on the waters of the Mediterranean. I was out jogging under a cloudless sky along the beach promenade. I saw a young woman soldier, lovely, dark-haired and dark-eyed, who must have been on break. She was talking with her boyfriend, first sitting on a bench, then walking the promenade with him, hand in hand. They strolled, he in blue jeans, she in army fatigues, with her rifle slung low over her back.

I realized how apt a metaphor it was: One hand holds a loved one; the other holds a gun.

Eugene H. Peterson is pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church, Bel Air, Maryland, and author of A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (InterVarsity) and Answering God (Harper & Row), both of which are about the Psalms.

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