We must trust the Scriptures’ authority, clarity, and sufficiency to not allow either the Palestinian or the Israeli narrative to determine my attitude, my perspective on history, or my view of Jerusalem.  Instead, we must believe there is one true narrative for Jerusalem and that is God’s story. We must not love one culture more than God’s revealed Word.

Read Part 1, “Why Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem?”

Read Part 2. “The Conflicting Narrative of Jerusalem”

The history of any part of the world is full of one people attacking and dominating another group of people.  The world is a horribly broken place as evidenced by the long historical accounts of conquest, torture, and subjugation. Simply consider the long standing conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Hutus and Tutsi of Rwanda, and the current civil war in Syria.  Horrific cruelties mark ethnic and religious divisions throughout our world.  The land of Palestine/Israel is no exception to the brokenness of the world.

For five centuries before the establishment of the State of Israel, Arabs suffered under the rule of the Ottoman Turks.  Since 1453, Arabs were not free to govern themselves and desired liberation from their Turkish rulers.

As World War I began, one account of how an Arab family was forced to serve in the Turkish army is recounted this way:

My father, Musa Kuttab, was a stong, handsome man of high character.  He worked hard and made good money, and he was the only one who could provide for his mother, whose husband had died at an early age.  When the Turkish authorities came to enlist him to fight with the Ottoman army in 1913, my grandmother knew well that many of the young people who left for the army never returned.  Moreover, she was getting very old and her son was the sole breadwinner in the family.  She implored the Ottomans to release him from duty, but they dismissed his pleas, refusing to accept a ‘no’ from anyone.  All the young men of Jerusalem had to join the army, no exceptions.  So my grandmother appealed to the extended family to redeem her son.  The family sacrificed and raised enough money to satisfy the demands of Sultan Abed Al-Hameed in order to insure Musa’s release.  To their surprise it worked; he was released, but then, painfully, the following year, the Ottoman forces enlisted him again and the family was once more driven to amass a new sum of money for this ransom.  In spite of the financial hardship, the family was jubilant both times the Sultan accepted the ransom money.[1]

The British held out the hope that, if the Turks were defeated, then the peoples of the region could determine their own future.  With the victory at Aqaba in the south on the Red Sea under Lawrence of Arabia, and later the defeat of the Ottoman Turks in Beersheva and finally the surrender of Jerusalem in December of 1917, the hopes of the Arab peoples were greatly elevated.  But the British dashed those hopes as the League of Nations mandated the British to oversee the land.  The British became occupiers instead of liberators.  The local Arabs peoples traded one set of masters for another.

As a result from 1936-1939, the Arabs revolted against the British Mandatory occupation.  Thousands of Palestinians had been killed or injured during this revolt.  This provides the backdrop for the influx of the Jews beginning in 1900 until 1948.

For two millennia, the Jews only knew persecution as a subjugated people since the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD.  Scattered throughout the world, they were identified as the “wandering Jew.”  For centuries Jews were required to live in ghettoes and were excluded in fundamental ways from the prevailing culture.

Dating back to the 3^rd and 4^th centuries, Christian leaders had said “you cannot live among us as Jews.”  Secular politicians in later centuries then said “you cannot live among us.”   The Nazi’s in 1930’s and 40’s said “you cannot live.”

Adolf Hitler’s final solution “of exterminating all Jews” pushed the centuries old abuse of Jews to the forefront of the world’s attention.  The technological efficiency of mass murder is demonstrated by Rudolph Hess’ own memoir that Adolph Eichmann estimated that a total of 2,500,000 human beings died at Auschwitz alone.  At the Birkenau concentration camp, two million Jews were murdered in five years.

The vision for a Jewish homeland was first expressed by a Jew in the book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) by Theodore Herzl.  The vision for a national homeland was for the Jewish people to live out a Jewish life in freedom and safety.  He had an idealized view of the Jewish people as one unified culture which was not actually a reality.  Because the vision was for freedom, other regions such as Uganda, Cypus, Egypt, and Argentina were discussed as a possible homeland for the Jewish people.  In 1945, after World War II, finding a place for the multitudes of dispossessed Jews became an urgent need.

The decision by the UN to partition Palestine was not motivated by a desire to create conflict with the Arab peoples of the land.  The decision was not fundamentally a Jewish decision, but rather the vision of the nations of the world to remedy the problem of Jews displaced by the Third Reich.

The Turks ruled the entire Middle East and the region known as Palestine was known as Greater Syria and ruled from Damascus.  In 1843, Lord Shaftesbury wrote that greater Syria was a “country without a nation.”

In 1867, Mark Twain documented the barrenness of the land for English readers in his travelogue Innocents Abroad.  He wrote that the land was so devoid of vegetation that there was nothing for Syrian goats to eat but gravel.  He supposed that they ate gravel because they chewed on something and he could only see gravel.  His account gave credibility that there were few inhabitants and the land itself was vacated of people.  He concluded “of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince.  The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are un-picturesque in shape . . .  It is a hapless, dreary, heart-broken land.”[2]

William Blackstone, an American evangelical wrote, “And now, this very day, we stand face to face with the awful dilemma, that these millions cannot remain where they are, and yet have no other place to go . . .  This phase of the question presents an astonishing anomaly – a land with a people, and a people without a land.”[3]

As the nations of the world voted in the UN on November 29, 1947 to partition Palestine, no one asked the Palestinians their view on partitioning the land.  As Anton La Guardia put it “seeing the land as ‘empty’ was not a matter of ignorance of the Arab population but a question of ‘European chauvinism’.”

The ‘invisibility of’ the Arabs was self-serving.  Palestine at the time of the first Zionist settlement was not empty of people, but of people deemed worthy by Europeans of controlling their own country.”[4]

Other nations had been given the right of self-determination after World War I and again after World War II.  Why should the Palestinians be forced by the nations of the world to solve “the Jewish problem”?   By some accounts, the demographics of Palestine in 1900 were that ninety percent were Palestinian Arabs and ten percent were Jews.

Because of the nations of the world introducing a Zionist state on Palestine, a mutual coexistence of Jews with the Arabs as equal partners has never been attempted or seriously considered.  Whatever efforts at mutual decision making were made, they were not viewed by the Arabs as sincere, equal partners in the future of the land.

The events leading up to the declaration on May 14, 1948 of the State of Israel involved great suffering and pain for both Jews and Arabs.  It is impossible to compare the suffering they endured.  Both suffered intensely.

Such pain and grief blinded sufferers to see the suffering of others.  As a consequence, the pain of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust blinded Jewish people from “seeing” the pain the State of Israel has brought to the Palestinians. In Germany and Poland, Jews were identified by the yellow star the Nazi government forced them to wear in the 1930’s and 40’s so Palestinians are identified by the dreaded command at the check point or at the airport, “Step out of line and follow me.”

What happens at these check-points unites a people of some six million in Israel and the West Bank.   This special treatment of Arabs unites Palestinians together, because as  Palestinians,  they  are reminded of their identity as outsiders and as outsiders they are viewed as a special threat to Israel.  For most who have an American or European passport, borders and check points are a passing inconvenience where the Israeli representative is very polite and courteous.  But for Palestinians, these experiences are often sources of great anxiety and are often very humiliating.  The pain reflected in the Palestinian narrative keeps Arabs and Palestinians from hearing the Jewish Israeli side of the story.  Pain is indeed blinding and deafening.  To live in the pain of the past keeps sufferers from living in the present.

Jewish Israelis see their nation as reclaiming the land promised to them by God.  The United Nations November 29, 1947 vote to allow partition of the land gave the Jewish people legitimacy to create the State of Israel.  The State of Israel has caused the desert to bloom, built a modern road and transportation system, electrical and power supplies, and provided business that has benefitted not only the Jews but the Arabs, too.  To the Jewish mind, the Arabs are far better off now than they were prior to 1948.  They have made Israel a desirable place to live and work.  One and half million Arabs remain as Arab Israelis, citizens of the State of Israel.  Many of these are loyal to country serving in the Israeli Defense Force. They also provide minority representation in the Knesset.  The vast majority of Arab and Jewish Israelis work with, live with, and befriend one another.  Yet the suffering and pain of the Jews returning to the land and taking authority over it restrains Palestinians from understanding the pain Jewish people feel.

Because of the pain Arabs feel, many Arabs are often unwilling to see the pain of the Jewish people living under the constant threat of being annihilated because of anti-Semitism.  They believe they have no place where Jews can be safe except the State of Israel. Many Arab Christians are willing to accept the State of Israel.  Yet as they speak of their own pain of how the State of Israel has affected their lives, the pain they voice often blends like a river into the overall Arab narrative that often questions the right of Israel to exist.  The grief of Arab anguish muffles their words of acceptance of the State of Israel.   The Jewish people on the other hand see Israel as Masada.  This is their last stand just as the Zealots fought the Romans in 72 AD to the last man.  If they are not safe in Israel, they are not safe anywhere.

In reality, then there are two states, but both are governed by Israel. The Israeli security fence is dividing even the deepest of loyalties.  Few Jewish Israelis have any understanding of the difficulty the Arabs and Palestinians endure on a daily basis.  They do not know how Israel has taken land from Arabs often cutting their property in two in order to make bypass roads that only Jews can use.

Most Israelis do not see the pictures of Israeli bulldozers uprooting three-hundred year old olive trees in order to build Jewish settlement cities in the West Bank.  Arab homes are leveled to make way for the thirty-foot high concrete wall as a security barrier.  This wall has dramatically secured Israel from the terrorist bombings of the second Intifada beginning in 2000.  But the emotional distance between Jews and Arabs has increased dramatically.   As a consequence, it is easier to demonize people you do not know.  The Jewish Israelis want two separate states, but they fear that the Arabs cannot contain their own people to ensure the safety of Jews.  The divided control of Fatah and in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza makes peace negotiations difficult at best because who has the strength to enforce a peace treaty?  Israelis ask this question to which there is no adequate answer.

Yet Jewish people who see their identity in the Holocaust and their suffering for twenty centuries, cannot believe that Jewish people or the State of Israel could segregate and abuse another people just as they were once terrorized.  The Zionists did not seek to occupy and exploit a subjected people as many European nations colonized people groups, but the result often has the same impact.  The view, that Israel is an occupying nation, has gained significant credibility in much of the world and certainly is the view of a majority of Arabs.

The Jews see themselves and portray themselves as victims. They certainly are victimized by the shelling and bombings that go on to this day in the south of Israel. Sderot, Ashkelon and Beersheva are regularly shelled.  It is true that if there were a single authoritative Palestinian governing body that was able to police its own people and restrain terrorists then most Israelis would be willing to live in peace with such a Palestinian nation.  Israel does not want to be an occupying nation.  They built the security fence and instituted policies in order to protect their citizens. In no way is the present suffering of the Jews from the acts of terror against them by extremists to be minimized,  but the overall day-to-day picture is one where Palestinians are increasingly dispossessed, relatively powerless, and enduring significant unnecessary difficulty.

For example, in Jerusalem on a certain street, Israel has built an electric supply.  This did not exist before and the electrical power was limited in that neighborhood.  But now, the Jewish neighborhood has power seven days a week.  On the other hand, the Arab neighborhood where the power supply is located has electricity every other day.  This is naturally a source of irritation to the Arabs.  From the Jewish perspective, the Arab community is now better off.  Most Jews think that the Arabs would prefer to be governed by Jews because they are better off than when Arabs ruled the city and the land up until 1948.  But Arabs desire to be governed by Arabs, because they seek equality, to be valued as any human is to be valued.

Property rights in Jerusalem are a prime example of how the Jewish vision of Jerusalem is for it to remain a Jewish city.  Because the battle for Jerusalem in May-June 1948 was so intense, David Ben Gurion ordered no Jew to leave their home or even a room.  Custodianship is the key to control.  That principle functions today.  If a house or a portion of land is unused or “vacant” and if Jewish interest can be proven, then that building or land can be legally taken for Jewish purposes.  The government of Jerusalem regularly takes land by this means.

However, the charge of some such as Jimmy Carter that Israel operates on an apartheid model is highly questionable.  Jimmy Carter writes in his book Palestinian Peace Not Apartheid, “It will be a tragedy for the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world if peace is rejected and a system of oppression, apartheid, and sustained violence is permitted to prevail.”[5]  Many Arabs/Palestinians live in the State of Israel and live contentedly within the state.  There are several Arab/Palestinian parties who have representatives in the Knesset.  Most Israeli Arabs have no such experiences as those in West Bank.  Bethlehem, as one Arab leader expressed is “Paris” compared to those living in Gaza.

From the Jewish side, the intent of Israeli politics is that Gaza and the West Bank provide their own businesses and industry, improve education, and medical care for the people.  However, the majority of the money invested in Gaza and the West Bank is focused on weapons and rockets which regularly rain upon the southern cities of Israel.

The present legal and political situation for Palestinians is one where Palestinian law applies under the authority of the Palestinian Authority.  All Palestinians are endowed with the right to appeal directly to the Supreme Court.

Israel has offered the Palestinians comprehensive peace plans on several occasions.  In 2008, Ehud Olmert offered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas a peace offer based on an Israeli return to the pre-1967 lines in 93% of the West Bank and proposed a 5.5% land sway inside the Green Line to compensate for settlement blocs that would remain in the West Bank.

Olmert also offered to share Jerusalem with the Palestinians and place the Holy Basin under the rule of five states that would ensure access of all the faiths as is the situation now.  PA President Abbas never responded.

In 2000, then Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat a similar peace offer that was also rejected.

Who knows what kind of pressure is placed on President Abbas with regard to this offer of peace.  President Sadat of Egypt was assassinated for making a peace treaty with Israel in October 1981.  Is Abbas also under such a threat if he makes any concessions to Israel?  The name Hamas means destruction.  For most in Hamas the only solution to the problems in the Middle East is that Israel should no longer exist.

From Israel’s perspective, who can the Israeli government negotiate with who can enforce whatever peace proposal they decide on?  The Fatah leadership in the West Bank and the Hamas government in Gaza cannot seem to end their internal disputes.  Israel does not have a partner in the Palestinian Authority they can work with to resolve Palestinian disputes.

The charge of “Apartheid” is a rhetorical weapon by some to demonize and marginalize the State of Israel as a legitimate state.  Do those who make this charge have a sincere desire to advance peace?

There is no question that the Arabs have suffered greatly in the West Bank.  We know of those whose fathers were shot by the Jews in the 1948 war.  We know of others who have had their lands confiscated by Israel for the dividing Wall and roads only Israelis may use.  The offenses are placarded on the security fence.

Arab suffering and pain provides a distorting lens that keeps people from seeing how Jewish people suffer or at least from feeling the pain of their suffering.  As one pastor describes his experience at viewing Israeli pain, he writes:

“We live so close to each other and yet we do not feel one another’s pain.  When a homicide bomber succeeds in killing Israelis in Jerusalem, I can sometimes hear the sirens of ambulances and emergency vehicles from my apartment in Beit Safafa.  I then rush to the TV to watch the horrible details unfold.

I do not like what I see or hear, but somehow that doesn’t seem enough.  I feel strangely numb to the pain of my Jewish neighbors who lose their lives or are burned, injured, or traumatized due to the bombings.  It is a real issue for me, because as a practicing Christian I am called to love my enemies.  I think one way to express that love is to truly share the pain of others when they suffer.

When innocent Palestinians are assassinated by Israeli attacks in Gaza, Hebron, Bethlehem and elsewhere in the West Bank, my heart goes out in sorrow to them.  I wish I had the same level of compassion for innocent Israelis who are killed or hurt.

This is a spiritual dilemma, which is further complicated by the fact that I am a pastor of a Christian congregation in East Jerusalem and, therefore, often preach peace and reconciliation and call on members of my congregation to love their enemies regardless of racial or political realities.  I confess it is much easier to speak about forgiveness than to actually forgive, and it is much harder to practice love than to preach it.  Then I think:  If I, a Christian pastor, cannot truly love my enemies, what must it be like for the average Palestinian?

I have tried to examine my heart in an attempt to understand why I feel the way I do.  Why do I care less when innocent Jews are killed?

The answer to this question is found not so much in my heart as in my mind.  Although I am religious and care much for my spiritual well-being, I am also rational.  Rationality, mingled with a sense of patriotism, overcomes my spiritual motivation and desire to love my enemies.  Reason tells me that for every innocent Israeli killed in these cycles of violence, at least three innocent Palestinians are also annihilated.  It also tells me that even if the death on both sides of the conflict were numerically equal, the day-to-day suffering of the average Palestinian far outweighs the suffering of the average Israeli.  Palestinians cannot order curfews and imprison Israelis in their homes and cities.  Palestinians have no power to establish checkpoints on the borders of Israeli cities.  Palestinians cannot employ bulldozers to demolish Israeli homes.  Again, reason tells me that a nation who occupies another should expect the pain resulting from the desperate lashing out of an occupied population.

I cross the Bethlehem checkpoint on a daily basis.  My eyes, which are windows to my intellect, see injustice every day.   I see demolished homes, a collapsing economy, the masses under perpetual and suffocating closures and the daily suffering of an entire population.

When I look eastward, near the check point, the settlement of Har Homa built on land Israel confiscated from Palestinians after 1967 (on what Palestinians call Jabal Abu Ghnaim), stares me in the face.  Turning to the West I see the Aida Refugee Camp, one of three refugee camps in Bethlehem, which is home to Palestinians who were forced to flee their villages in 1948 in what is now called Israel.  Then I look straight ahead and see Rachel’s Tomb, a holy place turned into a prison-like fortress.  Looking behind me it is impossible to avoid the settlement of Gilo that was also built on Palestinian land that Israel annexed to Jerusalem after 1967.

The realities I view, along with the stories I hear, are imprinted on the walls of my soul and influence my entire person, including my spiritual outlook.  Injustice makes me exceedingly upset and definitely affects my attitude.  Consequently, when pictures of innocent Jews, slaughtered by a Palestinian homicide bomber are shown on TV, I rationalize instead of empathize.  I continue to blame Sharon, the occupation, or the latest Israeli bombing that snuffed out the lives of a number of Palestinians.

I long for the day when, deep in my heart, I can feel the pain of my Jewish neighbors in their time of calamity as much as I feel the utter despair of my people.  I long for the day when we, on both sides of the political divide, can step into each other’s shoes and understand the anguish and hopelessness that the other side is feeling.  Perhaps then we can become better aware of our common humanity, cry together, and express forgiveness to the other.  Only then, perhaps, will we triumph over those – on both sides- who thrive on violence, destruction and bloodshed.”[6]

Both Arabs and Jews live with the memory of pain and the ongoing threat of further pain.  Does God have a purpose for such pain?  All of us resist pain and seek to avoid troubled circumstances as best as we are able.

Yet another narrative speaks of one who left the peace and safety of his home in heaven to enter into this troubled world with its conflicts and hatreds in order to change that story line from despair to hope.  This One came knowing that this world would hate Him and persecute Him.  He came not because people were seeking Him and wanted Him but rather to prove His Father’s love for this dysfunctional and troubled world.  God so loved the world that He gave His Son.

In spite of only loving and helping all who came into contact with Him, He was hated because He was pure and just and ultimately executed as a common thief.

His judge declared Him not guilty of any crime.  He died in the place of one who was a terrorist who tried to overthrow the government.  He died because of those who self-righteously thought they knew what was best for everyone and were jealous of him who threatened their power and authority.

Was there any reasonable rationale for this man to experience the trouble and pain that He did?  Why should His Father turn His back on Him when He was betrayed, condemned, and executed?  This is the mystery of wickedness.  There is no explanation.  Yet His suffering was redemptive and brought hope to the nations of the world.  He was able to forgive those who bore responsibility for His execution.

Is there sufficient power to this redemptive story that can give hope and help to both Palestinians and Jews?  There is power in the gospel narrative as it is a story for all cultures.

We should expect the Bible to contradict and offend every human culture at some point because human cultures are ever changing and imperfect.[7]

Palestinian Arab and Jewish Israeli cultures have changed dramatically over the past 20 years and even more drastically since 1900.  Have these cultures been shaped by God’s word?  The sovereign living God has shaped these conflicting peoples for His own purposes.  We may not understand the reasons for each side’s suffering but we know that the gospel narrative will comfort, reshape, and provide unity for both peoples.

We must trust the Scriptures’ authority, clarity, and sufficiency to not allow either the Palestinian or the Israeli narrative to determine my attitude, my perspective on history, or my view of Jerusalem.  Instead, we must believe there is one true narrative for Jerusalem and that is God’s story.  We must not love one culture more than God’s revealed Word.  The Bible teaches that God uses pain and trouble for larger purposes than we are able to see in the present moment.  C. S. Lewis has famously been quoted: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pain:  it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”[8]  Is God not speaking to Jews, Arabs, and the world in the pain of the inhabitants of Jerusalem?

Prayer is to quiet our hearts before the living God who rules history to hear His voice in the midst of the pain and suffering in Jerusalem, the Middle East, and the world as well as our own personal pain.

What to Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem:

• Pray that you would be able to begin to understand the pain both Jews and Arabs have experienced. Help each to walk in the other’s shoes.
• Pray for both particular Jews and Arabs by name to endure the daily trouble and stress that they experience.
• Pray for the gospel narrative of Jesus crossing the fence from His heavenly security into the danger zone of hatred that ultimately killed Him in Jerusalem to penetrate our heart.  Allow God to use this story to transform the story line for Arabs, Jews, and ourselves.  May God bring peace to our hearts and to the region as we pray.
• Pray that God use the story line of the gospel to transform Jews and Arabs as well as ourselves.  Only then may God bring peace to individuals to reconcile with those they have suspicion, prejudice, and resentment.  “For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation . . . that He may reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross thereby putting to death the enmity.  For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.” Ephesians 2:14-18

Dr. Douglas W. Kittredge is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is pastor of New Life in Christ PCA in Fredericksburg, Va.

[1] Alex Awad, Palestinian Memories: The Story of a Palestinian Mother and Her People, Bethlehem Bible College, 2008, p. 19.

[2]Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad

[3] Ariel Yaakov, On Behalf of Israel, American Fundamentalist Attitudes Toward Jews, Judaism and Zionism, 1865-1945, Carlson Publishing, Brooklyn, NY, 1991, p. 32.

[4] Ben White, Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy, Pluto Press, London, 2012, p. 4.

[5] Jimmy Carter, Palestinian Peace Not Apartheid, Simon & Schuster, 2006, p. 216

[6] Alex Awad, “Feeling Their Pain” Essay, Published in Ha’aretz, January 2003, Palestinian Memories: The Story of a Palestinian Mother and Her People, Bethlehem Bible College, 2008, pp 181-183.

[7] Timothy Keller, Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, Riverhead Books, NY, 2008,  pp. 72-73.

[8] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p. 93