Churches for Middle East Peace has written to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice regarding the situation in Gaza (this was before the Israeli military action of the last two days, which I’m sure has heads exploding at CMEP) to advise her on her duties:
As people of faith, we are greatly concerned by the situation of civilians caught in the conflict. The blockade of Gaza and the frequent occurrence of rocket attacks against southern Israel cannot be tolerated. The blockade results in power outages, water and food shortages and a lack of adequate access to medical supplies that create a humanitarian crisis felt by all Gazans, while rocket attacks on Israel have targeted civilians indiscriminately and made normal life impossible in the areas affected.
This sounds very even-handed, but doesn’t recognize that it is the continued rocketing of southern Israel that is the cause of the blockade. Unless that is recognized, it looks as though the blockade is simply there to punish Gazans for being Gazans.
If action is not taken soon, the possibility of a larger military confrontation looms. We welcome your February 22 statement announcing additional U.S. resources to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza and recognizing that improvements on the ground are necessary to the peace process. We join together to ask you to work with the international community to achieve a ceasefire, end the blockade, and establish real security at Gaza’s borders. The current closure and separation of Gaza has increased violence and humanitarian hardship. It also is not compatible with the vision of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state living in peace alongside a secure Israel for which you and President Bush have so eloquently called. [Emphasis in original.]
I’m not sure where this “contiguous” stuff comes from. Southern Israel separates Gaza and the West Bank as India separated East and West Pakistan. The only way to make the Palestinian territories contiguous is to give them a piece of Israel. So it seems it’s no longer enough for the Palestinians to have a state it must be “contiguous.”
While our concern is for all the peoples of the Holy Land, we must raise our particular distress about the recent bombing of the YMCA library in Gaza. Though authorities in Gaza have denounced this action, it follows the killing of a Christian bookseller last fall and is symptomatic of the deteriorating social conditions and instability that threaten the safety of all the residents of Gaza. A reduction of tensions in Gaza and the easing of daily life will strengthen the tiny Christian community just as progress on the peace process will help sustain Christian communities elsewhere in the region. Such steps are vital to preserving the cultural and religious pluralism that has long enriched the Middle East.
The passivity of the voice throughout this paragraph makes it really ridiculous. I’m concerned about the fate of Christians in Gaza as well, but that’s because there are some very specific people who are determined to make their lives miserable, if not kill them outright. Those people are Islamic terrorists in league with Hamas. CMEP’s concern for them would be a lot more credible if they could denounce, not just violence against Christians in general, but the perpetrators of it. They don’t, I would guess, because they think that that somehow undermines their support for Palestinian leadership. But if the leadership is the problem–and it is–nothing is going to happen until that leadership changes. That’s the reality, and folks like CMEP need to get used to it, if they want their voice to count for anything at all.
Posted by David Fischler 
