Taking Sides

The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, which bills itself as “a community of peacemakers who are active in their own communities and around the world,” has put out analyses of overtures to the upcoming PCUSA General Assembly. They make for revealing reading. The one that I found most interesting was the one on Israel/Palestine:

The Military Occupation – It is our firm belief that peace and justice for both Israel and Palestine cannot be achieved until the 40 year military occupation of Palestinian lands comes to an end.

Those were Jordanian and Egyptian lands until 1967, of course, during which no one called for an end to occupation. Just sayin’.

The Wall, Checkpoints, and Curfews – This military occupation is further articulated by a 436 mile wall and hundreds of check points and road blocks, many miles of which encroach upon Palestinian lands. The result is that Palestinians are forcibly separated from one another and are denied access to employment, education, medical care, natural resources, adequate food and basic needs. Curfews prevent Palestinians from going to work, sending their children to school or even leaving their homes for weeks and months at a time depending upon the whim of the occupying military regime.

The security fence, of course, has also reduced terrorist attacks inside Israel to next to nothing. Terrorists are reduced to lobbing rockets across the border from Gaza. For the PPF, the defense of Israeli civilians is of no consequence, not surprising considering they consider Palestinian violence against civilians to be a matter to which Presbyterians should pay no attention.

Construction of Illegal Israeli Settlements on Palestinian Land – It is against international law for nations to construct permanent settlements on occupied land. Both Israel and the United States are signatories of the 1949 Geneva Convention which clearly prohibits this. Even so, nearly 500,000 Israelis have been moved into such settlements and are protected by Israeli political and military power. In the sixty year history of Israel, every elected Prime Minister has presided over the construction of these settlements contrary to its signed agreements.

I agree with the objection to Israeli settlements, as I’ve stated on numerous previous occasions. The appeal to international law, however, is laughable in a way. The deliberate targeting of civilians is also against international law–the Geneva Convention, as a matter of fact. But that violation is not even worthy of routine condemnation by the PPF.

People Without a Country – Israel maintains a system in which Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have neither the privilege of Israeli citizenship nor the freedom to be citizens of their own nation. Palestinians literally exist as a people without a country. In addition, the territory in which they live is divided into cantons ensuring that Palestine is not contiguous, and can never be, thus eliminating the possibility that a two state solution could ever exist. In this context, millions of Palestinians are controlled by an occupying military force that imposes collective punishment on an arbitrary and routine basis.

Again, the residents of the West Bank and Gaza used to be citizens of Jordan and Egypt, until those countries forced Israel to take military action to avoid annihilation. The claim regarding lack of contiguity is genuinely silly–I mean, Gaza and the West Bank are separated the way East and West Pakistan were: by another country in between. How would the PPF fix that? By giving the Negev to the Palestinians?

Violence – Violence does occur on both sides of this conflict, but its victims are disproportionately Palestinian. According to the Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, at the beginning of 2008 there were 8,436 Palestinian prisoners (most being held without charge) and only 3 Israeli prisoners; 668 Palestinians (overwhelmingly women and children) have been killed in Gaza by Israel over the past two years compared with 13 Israeli dead.

I’ve got grave doubts about these numbers (how many common criminals and terrorists are included among the prisoners; the only Israelis who have been in Gaza the last two years are soldiers, who are armored; I dispute the term “overwhelmingly” as most likely coming from Palestinian propaganda). But here’s the real point: would PPF be happier if a lot more Israelis had been killed? After all, it’s not as if Hamas hasn’t tried; they shower southern Israel, and exclusively civilian targets, with rockets on a daily basis. Maybe PPF should give them a grant to upgrade their targeting abilities.

The analysis goes on to pass judgment on GA overtures that they like and dislike. For those keeping score at home, they like 07-01, 11-01, 11-02, 11-03, 11-04, and 11-23. What I find more interesting is the reasons they give for opposing the two they don’t like:

Overture 11-06 On the 218th General Assembly Being a Voice for the Victims of Violence in Israel and Palestine (National Capital Presbytery). While we embrace the spirit of this overture’s concern for both peoples, we are troubled by the fact that it focuses on ending violence without acknowledging that one side continues its military occupation of the other, imposing debilitating restrictions on the local population and illegally expanding settlements. This overture either ignores or denies that one side completely dominates the conditions it says makes for peace.

In other words, it doesn’t point the finger exclusively at Israel. If the Israelis would just get out of the occupied territories, the Palestinians would naturally lay down their arms and abandon any desire to destroy Israel, just as they did when the Israelis withdrew from Gaza. Oh, wait…

Overture 11-25 On Becoming Non-Partisan Advocates for Peace (Santa Barbara Presbytery) Overture 11-26 On Middle East Peacemaking (Santa Barbara Presbytery) Both overtures address the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by calling upon the PC(USA) to be non-partisan advocates for peace. Specifically, Overture 11-26 calls upon our church to “defer from taking actions or making statements that align the Presbyterian Church (USA) with unilateral support for any of the specific parties involved in the struggle.” The overtures we endorse above provide the most effective means in achieving peace for both sides in this conflict and do not advocate unilateral support of one side over the other. These overtures do recognize, however, that Israel’s military occupation and absolute control of Palestine supports the ongoing seizure of, and settlement in Palestinian lands, along with the violation of human rights that occurs as a result. This makes a just peace agreement impossible. The advocacy of the Presbyterian Church (USA) calling upon the United States and Israeli governments to do what is necessary to create a just two-state solution is indispensable in achieving a permanent peace agreement. Voting in favor of the overtures we endorse will accomplish this and render moot the concerns of these two overtures from Santa Barbara.

In other words, we favor unilateral support for the Palestinians, who should be free to continue to attempt to kill as many Israeli civilians as they can until such time as Israel surrenders, because only Israel is at fault in this conflict.

Any way you cut it, I think it’s fair to say that if the PCUSA wants to completely alienate the Jewish community in America, and forfeit any (of the admittedly minimal) influence it might have in bringing the two sides together, it will go with the PPF’s approach.