Peace treaties do not negate long standing narratives that give identity.  There must be a larger story …  Jesus promised to bring a peace that this world cannot give.  Such peace is both internal as it relates to Jesus giving us a clear conscience before God the Father, but also a peace between those who naturally harbor resentment and prejudice toward one another.  The narrative in the gospel of Jesus Christ provides a larger story that is able to change these ethnic story narratives.

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

All people need to live in an environment that makes sense to them.  Narratives help people know who they are and how to interpret their world.  The story holds communities and nations together.  Not only narratives but also symbols, songs, and celebrations all bring the security of identity to any group of people.  When there is no organizing interpretative story then people become stressed and act abnormally.

Most people want to belong to a larger societal group and to celebrate and identify with both past sacrifices and achievements.  The history of events and their narrative are essential to their belonging.  The narrative of a group is a collective memory which includes history, heritage, and tradition.

At root in Jerusalem there are two conflicting narratives accompanied by differing holidays, songs, and stories that comprise their narratives.  This results in two identities that are in conflict with each other.

For millennia, Arabs have lived in the land which for centuries has been called Palestine.  Only through war and conflict with Rome were the majority of Jews forced from Jerusalem and the land.  The conflict was not between Arabs and Jews.  Ever since, the Jews have lived throughout the world contributing greatly to the prosperity of Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome and Europe.  Historically the tensions between Arabs and Jews have been minimal.  Only since the mass return of Jews and the establishment of the State of Israel has there been severe conflict.

Since the dispersion of the Jews there has continually existed in the Jewish imagination the hope and aspiration of Jerusalem once again being the home of the Jewish people.  Again this is not a dream in any way related to the Arab peoples.  “The only remedy for anti-Semitism is the ‘normalization’ of Jewish life: the restoration of the Jewish people to its own soil in order to enable it fully and freely to unfold its physical and mental abilities in all fields of human productive activity.”[1]

Many nations after both World I and World War II gained or regained independence.  The peoples of all these nations lived in their respective countries at the time of becoming sovereign nations.  By contrast, Israel was given the opportunity to nationhood when Jewish people were a significant minority of Palestine’s population.  “The political independence which the Jews won in Palestine was accompanied by the liquidation of many centuries-old Jewish communities in various countries and the transfer of large numbers of Jews to Palestine.  There is not another similar instance in the history of the world.”[2]

The UN vote to partition Palestine for the purpose of creating the State of Israel precipitated the Arab-Israeli war.  “Because of the issues left unresolved by the 1948 war and its aftermath – on the Palestinian side, the refugee problem in all its dimensions and the unmaking of a Palestinian state; on the Israeli side, control over the whole of Mandatory Palestine and hegemony over the region – the 1948 war soon became the ‘mother’ of the many wars that followed.”[3]

The dueling narratives about the UN Partition plan and the subsequent war give each side reason to be believed in the ongoing conflict today.  The animosity and resentment flows out of each side’s memory of these events.  Both sides are committed to their historical interpretation and memory of the events of 1948.

For the Israelis, the story is one of David (the Jews) and Goliath (the Palestinians).  The Jews who believed God gave them the land were seeking to reclaim that “promised land.”  The land was in continuous decline so that English politicians such as Lord Shaftsbury stated in 1843 “that greater Syria was a ‘country’ without a nation.”  Only with the return of Jewish settlers did the desert again bloom.  Palestinians barely exist in this narrative and when Palestinians emerge they do so only in response and reaction to the Jewish claims.  As Golda Meir once proclaimed, “There is no such things as Palestinians . . . they do not exist.”

The Israeli narrative continues.  The Palestinians did not accept the UN’s offer for establishing a state and the Arab nations attacked the re-born Jewish state. Out of self-protection, the Palestinians fled the land in response to the promise of the surrounding Arab nations that they would drive the Jews into the sea.  As a result, the Palestinians are responsible for the fate of their refugees.  The Jews made failed efforts to persuade their Arab neighbors to stay.  But miraculously the ill-equipped Jewish defense forces defeated the huge Arab armies of at least four nations.  Events like the Deir Yassin massacre were exceptions to a war that was for the most part fought ethically and heroically.  Many of the Jewish dead were those who came straight from the concentration camps.

On the Arab side, the Jews began ethnically cleansing the land right after November 29, 1947 UN vote . . . They destroyed cities, bulldozed homes and threatened many Arab communities.  The 1948 war was an effort to defend Palestinian Arabs from Jewish aggression.  The enduring State of Israel is the catastrophe (Nakba) which keeps a half million Palestinians from returning to their homes and lands.

The Arab narrative continues, the modern Palestinian identity was forming after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire.  Without the interference of the British and the French after World War I, the Arab peoples would have determined their own national boundaries and identities.  Zionism is a western motivated attempt at control of the land in which the Jews have become the beneficiaries at the expense of Palestinian Arabs.

“Jerusalem is also important for Muslim history and religious practice, and played a crucial role in the early Islamic period; Palestine is a part of the Arab world and part of a civilization that had an important influence on human progress; Jews were part of this civilization and, contrary to their persecution in the West, were treated with tolerance.”[4]

What complicates these narratives is that on the Palestinian side there are controversies regarding the leadership of King Abdullah of Jordan and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

Narratives on both sides are more a matter of memory that flows from identity and not necessarily based on definitive research.  There are many conflicting stories most of which are only oral memories of those who lived through the events.  Yet these are enduring narratives that give identity to Israeli Jews and Israeli and West Bank Arabs.  Each side can tell their stories as current events that had happened as if yesterday.

Now, as these stories have circulated for over 60 years, the Jewish and Palestinian identity is taken from these narratives.  As the terror bombings intensified and the State of Israel’s response was to build the security fence, fewer Jews and fewer Arabs interact with each other.  When you do not know a person of another group of people, it is easier to demonize them and to exaggerate stories that may have some factual basis but have been expanded to support each side’s narrative.

How can there be any peace between the Arabs and Jews?  Is it possible to get beyond these narratives?  How can either side stop remembering the offenses of the other side in order to realistically see the shortcomings and failings of their own side?

Is there another narrative that is larger than either the Palestinians or Jewish narratives that redeems both their stories and can give them an identity that will unite them both?

Peace treaties do not negate long standing narratives that give identity.  There must be a larger story.  A peace treaty is only as solid as the narrative that moves both sides to choose to accept and care for the other side.  Jesus promised to bring a peace that this world cannot give.  Such peace is both internal as it relates to Jesus giving us a clear conscience before God the Father, but also a peace between those who naturally harbor resentment and prejudice toward one another.  The narrative in the gospel of Jesus Christ provides a larger story that is able to change these ethnic story narratives.

What to Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem:

• Pray for yourself that whichever side of the story you identify with that you would be open to re-evaluating that story.
• Pray to find God’s story regarding the events surrounding Jerusalem and the region.
• Pray for both Arabs and Jews to be open to God’s narrative for Jerusalem and the region.

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] Arthur Kac, The Rebirth of the State of Israel: Is it of God or of Men?  Moody Press, 1958, Part II, p. 58.

[2]Samuel Dresner, “A Rabbi Looks at Jewish Leadership”, The Jewish Spectator, NY, June 1953. quoted in

The Rebirth of the State of Israel: Is it of God or of Men?, Arthur Kac, p. 83.

[3] Robert I. Rotberg, ed., Israel and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History’s Double Helix, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2006, p. 72.

[4] Saleh Abdel Jawad,  “The Arab and Palestinian Narratives of the 1948 War”,  p. 74.