By Rev Dr Israel Oluwole Olofinjana

Preamble

I was among an ecumenical inter-faith group that visited Israel/Palestine to understand the context, conflict, struggles and hopes of the people of Israel/Palestine. The beauty of the group, organised by Council for Christians and Jews (CCJ), is that there were different Christians representing various views from different denominations as well as theological viewpoints. We had Church of England, United Reformed Church (URC), Baptist, Quakers and Methodists. The diversity of the group is also reflected in the different Jews among us. There were Reformed, Orthodox, Ultra-Orthodox, progressive and secular Jews. We also had a minority of Muslims in the group.

Disclaimer

The reflections below are not from an expert in Jewish political scene therefore this is a personal reflection based on a 5 days of visit to the Holy Land from someone who loves the land and the people of Israel. My name being Israel is rooted in divine revelation and in covenant relationship with God. As a Christian who is aware of the Jewish roots of our faith and have taken time to study the Old Testament for my first degree, I have always wanted to visit Israel. This tour therefore was a fulfilment of a long held ambition and spiritual journey. However, I was not naïve of the situation in Israel/Palestine, but at the same time did not fully comprehend the complexities involved in its geo-political positioning. My reflections below are under five headings: Ancient Christianity, Identity, Religion, Politics and Hope. These themes sometimes cannot be separated but nevertheless, for the sake of clarity and brevity, I have selected these five headings for my reflections.

Ancient Christianity

As a Christian minister who appreciates the roots of our faith, journeying to Israel/Palestine was a fulfilment for me. This is because of how being in the Holy Land has a way of making one’s faith come alive! The narratives, people, customs, context and geography of the Bible is seen afresh with sacred sites (Church of the Nativity and Church of the Holy Sepulchre), the topography of Israel/Palestine, middle eastern culture, architecture and structure and religious traditions encountered. For example, when the Psalmist says: “As the mountains surround Jerusalem so the Lord surrounds his people now and forevermore” (Psalm 125:2 NIV). This text is elucidated with the topography of Jerusalem as a city built on mountains and hill tops.

But besides encountering this lively world of the Bible, one also encounters Ancient Christianity.  To those of us in the West, we are often used to Protestant form of Christianity that we could easily think we are the main players. In Israel/Palestine, we encounter Ancient Christianity such as Catholics, Armenians, Syriac, Greek Orthodox, Coptic and so on. These ancient expressions of Christianity are mediated through different languages such as Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, Arabic and Latin and challenges western Christianity with its dominance of English language, culture and worldview. In a way, one can argue that Ancient Christianity also reflects World Christianity because of its polyphonic expressions through ancient languages. An example is hearing the Lord’s prayer in Aramaic by a member of Syriac Orthodox church!  In Israel/Palestine Ancient Christianity is also experienced through incense, mosaics, icons, creeds, traditions and architecture. In essence, all of our senses are engaged in Ancient Christianity. You can smell it with incense and ointments, you can see it with mosaics and icons that illustrates the biblical stories, you can touch it with some of the sacred sites. Israel/Palestine therefore offers us a visceral experience of Ancient Christianity that is different from western Protestantism that is rooted in an Enlightenment rationalistic worldview.

Identity

Are the people of Israel, that is, Jewish Israelis, different from the land of Israel or are they connected? Are the Palestinian people, that is, Palestinian Arabs, different from the land of Palestine or are they different? These two questions and how it is answered and who answers them centres some of the narratives of how identity is understood and construed in this geo-political context of middle east. What is however interesting is that these questions are steeped in history going way back to biblical times. Abraham is regarded and agreed by all three main religions in Israel/Palestine as the father (patriarch) of their faith. To the Jews, Abraham was the wandering father who embodied Jewish identity and ideals. To Christians, it is through his descendant, Jesus that God’s redemption is complete. To Muslims, Ibrahim (Abraham), is the progenitor and ancestor of their faith as the one who establishes the Kaaba in Mecca and the father of Ishmael. This is why these three faiths are called Abrahamic religions because they all can trace their identity, values and history back to him. In the Old Testament (Torah, Nabim and Ketubim), Abraham as a nomad became the leader of a wandering community which later developed to become the people of Israel. God promised him a land which later became the land of Israel. What is interesting about these two pivotal points is that each time God’s people break their covenant relationship with Yahweh, through disobedience, they are punished through exile, displacement and scattering that sees them separated from the land of Israel. Therefore, the idea of returning home to the land became a major theme of the Old Testament (or the original testament!). This idea of one’s identity being rooted in a land is still very strong in Israel/Palestine. Jewish Israelis as well as Palestinian Arabs view their identity through the proximity to the land and therefore any threat to take that away or separate them from the land is strongly opposed and contested. The story of Naboth and his vineyard in 1 Kings 21 elucidate the importance of identity through inheritance which is still felt today. Naboth refuses to sell his vineyard to the King of Israel because the vineyard represents for him is identity through inheritance. This notion of identity through communal land inheritance is one that is foreign to many of us in the Western hemisphere were identity is constructed on an individual bases rooted in capitalistic economies. To a Jewish Israeli or Palestinian Arab, identity is understood through keeping in close proximity to the land of one’s ancestor. This notion of identity is also the reason why there is so much conflict in Israel/Palestine.

Religion

Identity and religion are so interwoven in the context of the middle east that it is very difficult to separate. A western worldview might be able to delineate between identity and religion but not in Israel/Palestine. To be a Jew is to be someone that understands their existence in relation to God and the land promised. Whilst today, there are Jews who would espouse a secular ideology, an average jew in Israel is someone whose worldview and identity is shaped by Judaism, the Jewish religion with the temple mount being of importance. To a Palestinian Muslim their identity is rooted in the Islamic traditions and understanding that the site of Al-Aqsa mosque is significant to the last journeys of the prophet Mohammed. To a Palestinian Christian, the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus in Bethlehem and Jerusalem with the visibility of the sites (Church of the Nativity, Church of Holy Sepulchre) is so crucial to their religious identity. Therefore, Israel/Palestine presents us with two major groups of people Palestinians and Israelis and with three religions that all had their significant sacred sites in the land of Israel/Palestine. These three religions to some extent co-exist well and therefore sets us an example of interfaith dialogue and cooperation. This is more exemplified in the arrangements in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which sees two Muslim families as the custodians of the keys to open and lock the holy site which is shared by Armenian Orthodox, Catholics, Greek Orthodox and more.  But nevertheless religion is still a source of tension and sensitivities in the Holy Land.

Politics

To many of us in the UK and the wider western world, it is often easy to define our politics as either right wing, pro-Israel or left wing pro-Palestinian. But what quickly became clear in this tour was that these are not helpful categories and that they actually fuel further tensions. As one of our speakers reiterate, let us be pro-peace!   The situation and conflict in Israel/Palestine is seen by many, at least the people we spoke to as political and not religious. Some of the speakers say this to convey the idea that religion is not the source of the conflict in Israel/Palestine because Muslims, Christians and Jews live side by side in shared cities and in occupied territories. Why this is true in several respects and there is something those of us in the UK can learn about the model of inter-faith engagement from Israel/Palestine, nevertheless, because religion and identity is inextricably interwoven in this geo-political context, the identity shaped by religious worldview have political overtones. The religious narrative of a promised land rooted in sacred texts means that people’s identity being rooted in a land ordained by God is something worth contending for, or in other cases defend. Whilst as a Christian I do understand that our faith is different from politics, I also believe that our faith has political overtones and implications but sometimes those overtones if not rooted rightly can be misguided and misplaced becoming source of conflicts and contestations.

Hope

So if identity which is so crucial for any human being, religion which is also absolutely crucial because we are wired as spiritual beings is interlinked to our politics rightly or wrongly, what is the hope for the conflict, suffering and pain that we encounter in Israel/Palestine? As a Christian who believes in hope through the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, I believe there is hope for the situation in Israel/Palestine. This hope comes from encountering stories of hope and peace from Jews who despite the pain, suffering and fragmentation of the past 3000 years of Jewish history are crossing the divide to see the humanity of their Palestinian neighbours. This hope is shaped by Parents who have lost their sons and daughters to war and conflict but yet demonstrating love through mentoring the next generation, shared schools that understands the value of teaching Hebrew and Arabic and its corresponding histories to children, initiatives that are seeking to inspire hope, advocate for political change and listening and learning from each other are all creating grass roots of hope which I believe will trickle and ripple. I have hope because of listening to the traumatic stories of Palestinians Christians who in spite of their sufferings are creating agency to empower their communities, fight injustice with peaceful resistance and engaging in innovative and creative solutions to conserve land, water and energy. There are people of peace on both sides of the debate who are willing to take the risk of daring to cross the divide and understand the humanity of their so-called enemy. Let those of us in the West be pro-peace rather than pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian!