A prophetic vision for justice in Palestine
JVL Introduction
Reverend Dr Canon Naim Ateek is a Palestinian Episcopal priest with a long record of speaking out for Palestinian rights.
Here he addresses President Joe Biden, chronicling briefly the sheer horror of the current situation Gaza before going on to offer a vision for the future.
Biden has declared the outcome of this latest and most violent conflict must result in the implementation of the Two-State Solution.
Canon Ateek calls on him and others to offer the leadership needed for “this largely empty slogan” to translate into concrete steps towards the realization of a peaceful solution.
Many of these steps are spelt out by Canon Ateek here.
Utopian, maybe – but rooted in a peaceful vision which holds Biden and others accountable for their own promises and past agreements.
RK
This article was originally published by Fosna on Mon 25 Dec 2023. Read the original here.
A prophetic vision for justice
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Sad thing is that I don’t see how what President Biden has done can be reconciled with the Christian faith. It doesn’t seem to me that he can realistically call himself a Christian. That, actually, goes for a lot of other politicians.
What a great plan!
(As it happens I wrote to Starmer and Lammy as soon as the news got out of the settler-terrorism on the West Bank, saying that surely the UN should be sent there immediately. In response I received for the first time a reply from Starmer who happens to be my MP – or rather, not a reply from him but a form-letter from his apparatchiks, written int he third person… but I digress). I have also long believed that Jerusalem should be an international zone.
I love the creative solutions put forward here. If walls and military roads have been built all over the land between Gaza and the West Bank, why NOT build a safe elevated transport system between the two present Palestinian territories? And an opening for Palestinian refugees to return, to those territories in the first instance. With a forward vision for a multi-confessional state with a shape to be decided by free referenda in future…
At this point I have to remind us all that “Progress is the realisation of utopias… a map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.”
There is a further aspect here that needs to be considered. It is assumed these reparations are accepted by both parties responding in a traditionally “rational” way. But neither side has been living under rational conditions. The mental trauma suffered by the Palestinians will be immense. Evidence of the deep seated indoctrination of hostility toward Palestinians among the Israeli population is well documented.
So I contend that a significant part of the reparations must include addressing the mental health issue of both Palestinians and Israelis if they are to be effective overt the long term.
I seriously doubt the sense in addressing a commited Zionist in this, (indeed any), way. Christian Zionists like Joe Biden believe so strongly in End-of-times theology, that they will dissemble to hide their true (and I would say un-Christian), aims. Jews living throughout “Zion” – including “Palestinian Zion ” is a prophesied condition for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Another is the building of the Third Jewish Temple on “Temple Mount”. Crazy? If Zionists can get away with ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians, the demolition of a Muslim mosque currently occupying “Temple Mount” could soon be achieved.
Next stop: Armageddon, (something devoutly to be wished – by many Zionists, if not others)
Seems a reasonable well structured solution to what should be considered at the end of the ceasefire. The Israeli government must never again occupy Gaza.