A message from an Anglican in Jerusalem
by S. Ross Jones, Dean St. George's College

This morning the course group at St. George's walked the Via Dolorosa, but it was with a heavy heart.

Our hearts were heavy because of the suffering of our Lord, but also because of the civil conflict. Even as we left the College soon after dawn to walk to the Old City, the news reports were of the three Palestinians killed the day before. One of our secretaries could hear the helicopter shellings through the night. It made a very somber Way of the Cross.

The Arab Summit had recessed the day before and the Knesset had been in session to craft a response. The most significant thing about the Arab Summit was what it did not do. It chose not to offer immediate military support to the Palestinians, offering instead both moral and monetary support. Suddenly the prospect of a regional war diminished. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict will remain a civil war between a highly trained, equipped army and an untrained, mostly unequipped population. It will be up to the Israelis and the Palestinians to work out some form of coexistence. That prospect is not all bad, for no one over here wants a war. The problem is only that the Israelis hold all the cards and the Palestinians are told to accept their terms or suffer the consequences. The Palestinian death toll is now over 120 with nearly thirty of them children and thousands wounded. The Israelis have eight dead and an unknown number wounded. Another of our secretaries cannot now get to work until 11:00 because of the Israeli checkpoints.

Those facts say all that need to be said.

Jesus stumbled.

Was it just because of his weakness? Or was it out of despair that His death would make a difference? Did He even hope that people could begin to look upon each other as partners instead of rivals? The streets this morning are almost deserted, streets that normally are already bustling . It is a strange and eerie feeling.

The Palestinian-in-the-street feels that Israel has emerged from this with permission to do as it wishes. Indeed Barak's declaration of a "time out" from the peace process seems to support this, as does the helicopter shellings of Jerusalem suburbs. Probably the only real weapon available to the Palestinians is public opinion. How long will the world tolerate such slaughter? Why has Israel consistently opposed any UN investigative committee, if it is so convinced of its rightness? The public needs to demand action because neither the Arabs nor the US have said that they will do so. The public that matters most is in the United States, Israel's primary economic supporter. Israel can ignore the rest of the world as long as the US continues its flow of money. That flow is still unthreatened as far as we know. How long, O Lord? How long?

The Stations of the Cross begin to blur in our minds. Simon of Cyrene was asked to bear our Lord's cross.

Jesus fell for the third time.

Injustices seem to be a part of our world, but must it always be that way? Haven't we made any progress in two thousand years?

It is not that the Palestinians are innocent. They certainly have their share of corruption and dishonesty. My personal feeling is that it would take decades for an independent Palestinian state to become a responsible entity, and it may never do so. But this does not excuse what is happening to them now. What is happening now is not even good for the Israelis. Stories abound of Israelis with deep emotional problems resulting from that which they were ordered to do. We cannot dehumanize someone else without dehumanizing ourselves in the process. We turn each other into little more than animals, forgetting that each of those animals is made in God's image. At one level the world is right in saying that Israelis and Palestinians need to learn coexistence. Everyone loses in what we have now. And everyone could so easily win if we could work together.

That is true of us all. How do we get there?

As we finished the Way of the Cross, I walked back to St. George's alone carrying the cross that we had used. An Arab teenager grabbed it and pulled on it as I went through the Damascus Gate. Even as I reached back to free it, an older Arab man came through and pushed the boy aside. The boy said nothing and there was no hostility on his face. Yet I could feel my anxiety rising. There always seems to be a tension here between fear and peace. I reflected on my feelings as I walked on, suspecting that even Jesus had felt the same. He chose peace and I think we all really want to follow Him.

We need His help in doing that.