part0012

This essay will discuss competing theologies in relation to the Middle East conflict between the state of Israel and the Palestinian people and their quest for control of their land and for their civil rights. It will focus primarily on competing theologies among Christians, both in the West and in Palestine, as these theologies interact with the Jewish community, both in Israel and in the West. The Jewish voice is also increasingly divided, in defense or in critique of the policies of the state of Israel. Christians interact with these divergent Jewish voices, as they seek to overcome the legacy of Christian anti-semitism and its horrific results in the Holocaust, but also in the debate in relation to the state of Israel. At the same time Palestinian Christians seek to unite their historically divided community to speak with one voice against their oppression and the ethnic cleansing of their land by the state of Israel and to provide an alternative vision of a future Palestine for Israeli Jews and Palestinian Christians and Muslims.

I begin with an exploration of the theology of Christian Zionism, particularly as this has shaped mainstream Western Christianity. I will not focus on the more fundamentalist and millenarian forms of Christian Zionism, important as these are, but rather the often unnoticed and unnamed themes of Christian Zionism which have shaped the behavior and politics of the main bodies of Western Christianity. These expressions of Christian Zionism are deeply entwined with Western Christian imperialism toward the Middle East, represented by then British empire and now by American empire.

These forms of Christian Zionism are deeply rooted in British and American identification of themselves as elect nations, heirs of God’s election of Israel. This election was seen as including a duty to patronize the Jewish people as a nation by restoring them to their national homeland in Palestine, under the aegis of global Christian empire, British or American. In the anxiety of Western Christian theologians after the Holocaust to reject classical Christian supercessionism, this role of restorationism in 17 th to 20 th century Christianity, rooted in the Puritan tradition, has often been ignored.

In restorationism, the relation of Christianity to the Jews remains one of universalism to particularism, but instead of negating Jewish particularism and demanding that it obliterate itself into Christian universalism, it seeks to restore Jews to their status as a nation in their national land, under Christian imperial patronage. It is assumed that thereby they will operate as collaborators with Christian empire in the Middle Eastern context.

As Barbara Tuchman has shown, The Bible and the Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour (Tuchman 1968 ) the British had long identified with Israel as God’s new elect people. 17 th century English Puritans entertained hopes that converted Jews, under the patronage of the English, would be restored to their homeland in Palestine, thereby becoming the precursor of a coming millennium (Sharif 1983 ). These ideas were revived and developed by new evangelical groups, such as the Plymouth Brethren, under John Nelson Darby, in mid- 19 th century England (Sizer 2004 , 50 – 52 ).

But such views were not only found among sectarian groups. They also shaped an evangelical party in the Anglican Church and became influential in British imperial politics in the Middle East, leading eventually to the Balfour Declaration in 1917 . A key figure here is Lord Anthony Cooper, Lord Shaftesbury. This story has been detailed in Donald M. Lewis’ 2010 book, The Origin of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland (Lewis 2010 ).

Shaftesbury was an earnest believer in an evangelical interpretation of Biblical prophecy, in which the restoration of the Jews to their homeland was a prerequisite for the return of Christ and the establishment of the millennium on earth. He worked all his life from the 1830 s to his death in 1885 for this great event. He was also connected with the highest British political leaders of the day, such as Lord Palmerston, British Foreign Secretary, and sought to translate his enthusiasm for Jewish national restoration in Palestine into terms intended to recommend this to British imperial interests in the Middle East.

Shaftesbury was a leading actor in the decision of the Church of England to establish as Anglican bishopric of Jerusalem. Shaftesbury, as a leader in the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, envisioned a vast redemptive project in which unconverted Jews would return to Palestine, in the process becoming Anglican Christians. These two events would prepare the way for the Second Advent of Christ. The first incumbent chosen for this Anglican See of Jerusalem was intentionally a converted Jew, the Reverend Dr. Michael Solomon Alexander, professor of Hebrew and Arabic at at King’s College, London.

In Shaftesbury’s vision of the future age of redemption, Christ would return to reign over restored Israel of Anglican Christian Jews. The Jews Society, as it was called, had the restoration of the Jews to their national existence in Palestine as an integral part of their purpose. Shaftesbury also opposed the Emancipation Bill that would have removed disabilities from Jews to full participation in English political and cultural life. Thus his enthusiasm for the return of the Jews to Palestine went hand in hand with his refusal to accept their full equality as citizens in his own nation.

Although Shaftesbury died in 1885 before seeing a restored Jewish nation in Palestine, the influence of Christian restorationist ideas continued into the next generation of British politicians. Lord Arthur Balfour met with leaders of the developing Jewish Zionist movement, such as Chaim Weizmann, and was aware of their demands for Palestine as the only appropriate homeland for Jews. After World War I, the British collaborated with the French to develop Mandate territories in the former Ottoman territories in the Middle East. On the eve of British General Allenby’s entrance into Jerusalem to establish the headquarters of the British Mandate there, Balfour issued the Balfour Declaration declaring the support of Britain for “national home for the Jewish people.”

In defending this decision in 1922 before the House of Lords, Balfour made clear the intertwining of British imperial and Christian religious interests. He proclaimed that the decision sprang, not only from its political usefulness, but even more from the deep debt of gratitude which Christians such as himself and those of the House of Lords, should feel toward the Jews as the progenitors of their religion :

. . . the policy we initiated is likely to prove a successful policy. But we have never pretended that it was purely from these materialist considerations that the declaration originally sprang. . . It is in order that we may send a message that will tell them that Christendom is not oblivious to their faith, that it is not unmindful of the service they have rendered to the religions of the world, and most of all to the religion that the majority of Your Lordships’ house profess, and that we desire to the best of our ability to give them that opportunity of developing in peace and quietness under British rule, those great gifts which hitherto they have been compelled to bring to fruition in countries that know not their language and belong not to their race? That is the ideal which I desire to see accomplished, that is the aim which lay at the root of the policy I am trying to defend, and though it is defensible on every ground, that is the ground that chiefly moves me. (Dugdale 1937 , 2 and 58 )

How Palestinians were supposed to feel about this declaration of their homeland as the “national homeland of the Jewish people” is not discussed. The Declaration does say that it is clearly understood that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” Yet referring to them only as “non-Jewish” implies that they have no particular national identity or claims on this land themselves.

The United States inherited this British support for Palestine as a “national homeland for the Jewish people” and played a critical role in converting it into a Jewish state. Americans also possess a religious-nationalist identification of themselves as a new “elect nation” (Radford Ruether 2007 , 26 – 32 ), and the Puritan tradition linking this with restoration of the Jews to their national homeland. Groups promoting restoration abounded in the 19 th century US. One of these was the 1891 Blackstone Memorial organized by William Blackstone, author of the popular apocalyptic book, Jesus is Coming ( 1878 ) and signed by 413 leading Americans, such a John D. Rockefeller, Cyrus McCormick, J. Pierpont Morgan, and leading senators, clergy and newspaper editors. This Memorial was sent to President Harrison recommending that he create a restored state for the Jews in Palestine (Blackstone 1977 ). Significantly, American Jewish leaders themselves deeply opposed this initiative, seeing it as a ploy to divert Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms in Russia from coming to the United States (Steinstern 1963 , 5 and 11 – 31 ) .

But it was after World War II and the Jewish Holocaust that an American President had the opportunity to push forward a resolution in the United Nations partitioning Palestine and giving 55 % of the land for a Jewish state.” The US also stood by while the 45 % allotted for a Palestinian state disappeared, 23 % taken into the Jewish state, and the rest occupied by Jordan and Egypt, with a million Palestinians dispersed as refugees. The US has given unstinting support to Israel since that time, both through three to four billions of dollars in yearly aid and continual verbal affirmation. Although claiming to be an “honest broker” for the rights of both groups, no one examining this history can doubt that it is the state of Israel which is overwhelmingly America’s primary ally and concern.

What is America’s interest in this support for Israel, a one-sided support so entrenched in American political culture that virtually no politician can dare criticize it even slightly without jeopardizing their position? I would argue that here too we find a deep inter-twining of American political and religious identity and interests. On the one hand, particularly since the 1967 war established Israel’s military preeminence in the Middle East, the United States has seen Israel as helping to maintain its balance of power in the region. Mostly importantly, the armies of the two countries are deeply intertwined, with constant sharing of military tactics and armaments. Jeff Halper, Israeli critic of Israel’s occupation, sees this close identification of the two military systems as the real “elephant in the room” that tie the two states together.

But the religious identification of American Christians with Israel as a Jewish state is also very deep. Most American Christians would agree with the statement that God gave the land of Palestine to the Jewish people as a permanent and exclusive donation. This supposedly Biblically-based claim in effect deprives Palestinians of any national rights to the land. This Biblical land claim is the primary basis for most American Christians’ identification with Israel.

This belief has been supplemented, particularly since 1967 , with a Christian post-Holocaust theology that claims that Christian responsibility for the Holocaust demands repentance in the form of unstinting support for Israel. This is couched both in terms of a kind of payment or compensation for Christian sins against the Jews, and also as the necessary protection of the Jewish people against any future Holocaust. The guilt and repentance argument is particularly important in mainline churches, while being a less compelling factor for millenarian evangelicals attracted by the combination of the exclusivist land claim and the belief that restoration of the Jews is about to usher in the redemptive millennium. The repentance argument typically takes the form of a devastating rebuttal of any effort of Christians who are aware of injustice to the Palestinians to criticize Israel. Any critique of Israel is typically met with an intense outcry from Jewish spokesmen to the effect that this Christian group is “anti-semitic,” threatening the security of the state of Israel, and are even seeking to “destroy” the state of Israel. A sector of Christians within these churches has been cultivated over the years through Christian-Jewish dialogue and Christian post-Holocaust theology to reinforce this outcry.

Christian post-Holocaust theology was developed from the 1970 s to today by an influential group of Christian theologians, mainly western Protestants, as an effort to root out anti-semitism from Christian theology and thus overcome what they saw as the primary misinterpretation of Christianity that led to the Holocaust. Theologians such as Paul Van Buren, K. Kendall Soulen and Clark M. Williamson are representative of the post-Holocaust theology that seeks to overcome anti-semitism in Christianity (Van Buren 1983 ; Soulen 1996 ; Williamson 1993 ).

These theologians see the theology of supercessionism as the critical issue leading to anti-semitism. Thus any idea of Christianity as superseding Judaism as a universal fulfillment in a “new covenant” overcoming an inadequate particularist and tribal Judaism must be rejected root and branch. These theologians believe that the way to do this is to reaffirm the primacy of God’s election of the Jews as the heart of a single covenant that has not been superseded but continues to define human history. Christianity, far from superseding Judaism, has been added in as auxiliary to Judaism’s world mission in this single covenant.

For these theologians God’s gift of the land to the Jews as a permanent and exclusive donation is central to this gratuitous election of the Jews by God. Christianity can repent of anti-Semitism only by affirming this exclusive donation of the land to the Jews and wholeheartedly supporting it against all threats to Jewish security and wellbeing in its promised land. Jewish critic of this post-Holocaust Christian theology, Mark Braverman, sees this effort of Christian renewal as actually blocking possibility of a Jewish renewal which must take the form of a questioning of the exclusivism of Judaism which has been renewed through modern Jewish empowerment in the state of Israel. In Braverman’s words :

A theology that attempts to correct for Christian supercessionism by preserving or incorporating God’s election of Israel ultimately replaces Christian supercessionism with Jewish exceptionalism. And if Christian triumphalism as expressed in supercessionism led to the ovens of Auschwitz, then Jewish triumphalism as expressed in political Zionism has led to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. (Braverman 2010 , 114 )

This kind of post-holocaust theology of Christian repentance for anti-Semitism has become major force in a number of mainline western Churches, in collaboration with the Jewish establishment. The effect of their influence is that Christians calling for some parallel justice for Palestinians are either silenced entirely, or else a very compromised statement is finally issued by the denomination that removes any call for real change in Israel frontline projects of occupation and land confiscation, while fervently affirming the church’s commitment to the security of the state of Israel. In effect, any critique of Israel in Western Christian churches, especially in the United States, but also in Canada and Europe, has been effectively silenced by the combination of these forces.

However, in recent years ( 2004–2010 ) this situation of silencing of Western Churches has begun to shift slightly, although not yet decisively. This has been caused by two factors. First, Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians in the occupied territories has grown increasingly extreme, building the separation wall that confiscates major sections of land and water inside the 1967 truce line, fragmenting the Palestinian communities with curfews and checkpoints, so that it becomes ever more difficult for them to carry on daily life, and making a two state solution ever less possible by removing the contiguous land base for such a state. Those Western Christians in communication with Palestinians have intensified their efforts to educate other Christians about the dire injustice of this situation for Palestinians.

A second key factor is the emergence of a sector of American Jews alarmed by this growing injustice who have come to redefine their own allegiance to Israel, seeing that such allegiance must include some deep change on the part of Israel to accommodate Palestinian rights, either in the restoration of land for a possible two state solution or else by acceptance of a one-state bi-national solution. For them Israel is destroying itself by becoming unsustainably aggressive. A transformation of this culture is necessary both to save Israel and to allow a just solution for the Palestinians.

Critical groups have grown among Israeli Jews, some of whom have become activists in resistance, such as Jeff Halper, founder of the Israeli Committee against (Palestinian) House Demolitions (Halper 2003 ). Critical Palestinian Christians have also organized as a group and have sought to make their voices heard. Palestinian theologians, such as Naim Ateek and Mitri Raheb (Ateek 1989 ; Raheb 1995 ), have developed expressions of Palestinian liberation or contextual theology.

In 2009 a group of Palestinian Christians issued a collective Kairos statement enunciating their cry for justice and their vision of a just future for both peoples and three religions in the one land These four groups, critical Christians and Jews in the United States (and elsewhere in Canada and Europe) and critical Israeli Jews and Palestinian Christians, have bonded and work together. The interconnection of these four groups has begun to create a sufficiently strong common front that it has begun to threaten the hold of Christian Zionism in US mainline denominations.

American Jew Mark Braverman sees as a major obstacle in this quest for a theology of peace in the Middle East the confusion of two different discussions: Jewish-Christian interfaith dialogue and quest for a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Jewish-Christian interfaith dialogue is primarily a Western discussion, rooted in the centuries of Christian hegemony in the West and the type of Christian theology toward the Jews shaped in that context. By contrast, Christians and Jews in the Middle East from the 7 th century lived in a totally different context, both being minority religions under Islam.

Western Jewish-Christian inter-faith dialogue started with the shock of the Holocaust. This caused Christians to want to learn about injustice to Jews by Christians and to appreciate a more authentic Judaism, rejecting anti-semitic supercessionism and affirming the autonomous authenticity of Judaism. However this dialogue has been constructed in a one sided way, in which Jews are not expected or intended to learn anything from Christians, but simply to shame Christians into a position of overt or covert acquiescence to Jewish demands in regard to Israeli policies in the Middle East. Braverman, by contrast, sees himself as transformed by conversation with Christians. Jews like himself have come to critique their own doctrine of election, with its implied exceptionalism, and have been called to a more pluralist universalism.

For Braverman, Jewish-Christian interfaith dialogue must cease being used as a covert tool to silence critique of the state of Israel and its policies toward Palestinians. The Israel-Palestine conflict is not primarily about relations between religions, Judaism, Christianity or Islam. Rather is it an issue of socio-political relations between peoples, of justice and injustice. All three religions and their cultures have traditions to critique injustice and to call for genuine justice toward peoples. These are the traditions that have to come into play to create a just coexistence between Israeli Jews and Christian and Muslim Palestinians who need to share the historic land of Palestine in peace and justice.

For Braverman these two discussions and their false confusion came to a head in the recent General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church meeting in Minneapolis in July 2010 . The Presbyterians have developed an increasingly strong critical group seeking justice for the Palestinians. In 2004 this critique took new form in a call for active disinvestment from those parts of the Israeli economy that serve the occupation. This call echoed the successful strategy of disinvestment that was used against the apartheid state of South African in the 1980 s. It also repositions the critique of Israel as a critique of an apartheid state. Jewish defenders of Israel were alarmed and mobilized their Christian Zionist allies among Presbyterians to try to kill this idea of disinvestment.

The Presbyterian Middle East Study Commission was mandated to study this conflict. It came up with the carefully worded document, “Breaking Down the Walls,” to be voted on in the 2010 General Assembly.

A strong group of defenders of Israel, representing the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, together with Presbyterians for Middle East Peace, a Christian Zionist group of Presbyterian pastors and seminary professors, worked determinately to demonize the statement by the Study Commission. It was decried as anti-semitic, as betraying the historic friendship of Jews and Presbyterians, and as seeking to destroy the state of Israel. The Palestinian Christian Kairos document, which the Study Commission recommended for study among Presbyterians, was also decried as anti-semitic and supercessionist.

But unlike earlier years, this time there was a counter group of Jews attending the Presbyterian Assembly, members of the Jewish Voice for Peace, and Mark Braverman, who supported the Presbyterian Study document and counteracted the arguments of the Jewish establishment and its Presbyterian defenders. The result? The Presbyterian Study document, with some modification, passed the Assembly. Presbyterians committed themselves to an effort to end violence on both sides, a call to Israel to relocate the separation wall on the 1967 truce border, equal rights for Palestinian citizens in Israel, cessation of practices such as collective punishment, home demolitions and deportation of dissidents. Use of disinvestment was maintained. The Palestinian Christian Kairos document, as a study document for Presbyterians, also continued to be recommended.

In Braverman’s view, the tactics of silencing of Christian critique of Israel, through combined Jewish establishment and Christian Zionist pressure, failed. It failed, not because Presbyterians have become anti-semitic, but because many have learned better what is actually happening in Israel-Palestine and have decided where the line between injustice versus justice and possible peace between the two people actually falls. Others see the Presbyterian document that passed as more compromised and the forces of conflict between those who want to silence the churches and those who want to speak out for justice as still very unresolved.

At this point I will turn to another group of voices in this quest for a theology of peace for the Middle East, that of Palestinian Christians, whose voices have been mostly ignored or suppressed in the West, but whose Kairos document was recommended as a study document for the U.S. Presbyterian Church in 2010 .

Palestinian Liberation theology, as developed in the work of Naim Ateek, Palestinian Anglican priest and founder of the Sabeel movement in Palestine and its international supportive organizations, has a number of key characteristics. It is a contextual liberation theology. That is, it arises from the particular context of the Palestinian experience of oppression and ethnic cleansing by the state of Israel and seeks liberation from this situation of injustice. It is thus a theology that arises in a particular land, the land of Israel-Palestine, and addresses the situation of the peoples of this particular land, even while rooted in universal principles and a universal God.

It is an ecumenical and inter-faith theology. That is, it seeks to bring together all Palestinian Christians in the land of Palestine who have been divided into many churches, going back to the many historical schisms from the 4 th century to modern times, Catholic, Orthodox and Oriental Churches, and the variety of Protestant churches. It seeks to overcome these divisions in an ecumenical Palestinian local church, speaking with one voice. It is also interfaith in that it seeks to bring together Christians, Muslims and Jews as three peoples of the Abrahamic faith, to work together for justice and peace in the one land of Israel-Palestine.

It is Biblically-based: it draws on the vision of the Bible for justice, liberation and peace, while also seeking to overcome the misuse of the Bible to advocate separation and negation of some people by others, It sees Christian Zionism as the prime expression of the misuse of the Bible to promote racism, violence and injustice, based on the belief that God chooses one people and gives them exclusive rights to the land against the other peoples of the land. Palestinian liberation theology seeks to show why this theology of Christian Zionism is a distortion of Biblical faith.

Palestinian liberation theology is a theology of non-violence. It follows Jesus’ way of non-violence and seeks the path of reconciliation between peoples. It is an anti-imperial theology. It critiques all theologies of empire, whether the Roman empire in the Biblical context, or modern empires, such as the British or American empires. It stands in the tradition of the theology of liberation from empire of both the Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament and applies this critical vision to the political situation of today.

Central to Palestinian liberation theology is its understanding of God. God is not a racist who chooses one people as his favorite elect people and seek to bless them with the land, power and prosperity at the expense of the rest of the people of the land. Rather God is a God of all peoples, of all nations, a God who created the whole earth and all the peoples and lands in it. This God seeks justice and peace for all people, not in an abstract way, but in terms of the particular historical situation of each people in their context and relationships.

As a Christian theology Palestinian liberation theology sees Jesus Christ as a criterion of interpretation of the Biblical message. It emphasizes not only how Jesus Christ represents God, but also exemplifies the fullness of his humanity in his historical context and reality. Its looks to Jesus Christ as a Palestinian Jew living under the occupation the Roman empire of his day. It follows Jesus Christ in his way of non-violent resistance to imperial occupation. It is not supercessionist of Judaism but rather both affirms the continuing validity of the prophetic traditions of Judaism, and also affirms the distinct experiences of the Christian faith.

These themes of Palestinian contextual and liberation theology are reinforced by the Kairos document issued by a group of Palestinian theologians of various Christian churches on December 11 , 2009 from Bethlehem. It is called a Kairos document to affirm that this is a critical moment when God is speaking in the crisis of human events and calling us to repentance and transformation. This term recalls the South African liberation struggle in which its Kairos document called the people of South Africa and the world to overcome the historical injustice of apartheid.

This Palestinian Kairos document names Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land as a sin against God and humanity, for it deprives Palestinians of dignity and basic human rights and prevents both Israelis and Palestinians from being able to see God in each other’s faces. It does not oppose Israel’s right to exist, but rather opposes an occupation which prevents the two people from living in peace and justice with each other. It also calls for religious liberty for all people of the land in their various religious traditions. It does not accept either a religious exclusivism which would define Israel as a Jewish state, or the views of those who would make a future Palestinian state an Islamic state.

The Palestinian Kairos document is clearly committed to the way of non-violence as the only way to overcome violent injustice. It calls for non-violent resistance to violence as the way to “put an end to evil by walking in the ways of justice.” It is a statement that is grounded in hope despite the times of discouragement and frustration with a political process that has failed for more than sixty years to deliver a just solution to the conflict, but instead has allowed the problem to grow continually more extreme. It is a cry of hope issued in the context of absence of hope under the oppression of Israeli occupation that has grown continually worse, a cry of hope based on faith in God despite all contrary realities.

These contrary realities include a depressing list of negative and worsening facts: the separation wall erected on Palestinian land that confiscates land and water, and turns towns and villages into prisons; Israeli settlements that ravage the land, control natural resources and prevent hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from making a living; daily humiliations to which Palestinians are subjected, as they seek to make their way to jobs, schools or hospitals; the separation of members of the same family, who are not able to live together because of lack of identity cards; lack of access to their holy places, as Christians or Muslims; the plight of refugees, many of whom have been living in impoverished camps for more than sixty years; Palestinian prisoners thousands of whom languish in Israeli prisons; disregard of international law by Israel; the continuing effort to ethnically cleanse the land of Palestinians by giving young people no hope and thus encouraging their emigration; and finally the fragmentation of Jerusalem which prevents the city from being a center of peace, but makes it instead the heart of the conflict .

Central to the hope what grounds Palestinian theology is faith in God, the one God who is the creator of the universe and loves all of his creatures equally. They also affirm faith in God’s eternal Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, who came with a new teaching casting new light on the themes of Hebrew scripture. This is a living word that continues to cast new light on each period of history, manifesting to Christian believers what God is saying to us now.

Palestinians believe that their land has a universal mission. The promises of land, election and people of God open up to include the whole of humanity, represented concretely by the presence of three religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and two peoples, Israeli and Palestinians. By seeking to liberate this land from injustice and war and make it a land of reconciliation for all its people, God calls this land to represent the reconciliation of all peoples in their diversity. Thus the mission of this land itself must be based on a rejection of any exclusivism which gives one people or one religion special rights that exclude the others. Theologies of exclusivism must be rejected.

The way to this reconciliation must be through peaceful non-violence. One cannot resist evil with evil. Civil disobedience is one expression of non-violent resistance. This includes strategies of divestment and economic and commercial boycott of the products of the occupation. The struggle is not finally about Palestinian against Jew, but justice against injustice. Jews, Christians and Muslim, Israelis and Palestinians must find a united front in this struggle for justice for all peoples of the land. God is not an ally of one people or religion against another, but does take the side of justice against injustice. It is on this basis that people of faith in the one God of all three religions stand together seeking to make a state for all its citizens, which respects both distinctiveness and equality of each people who must find a common life together.

This Kairos document of the Palestinian Christian people speaks for a reconciliation of particularism and universalism, of both religion and ethnic identities. It rejects both an enclosed particularism of the election of one people that excludes the others. It also rejects a supercessionist universalism that condemns local particularity and turns universalism into the imperialism of world empire, universalizing one nation and religion, under whose rule all other particularities must be subjugated. Rather it embraces a universality through multi-particularity of people who together learn to live together in justice and peace.

Christian Zionism, including the western Post-Holocaust theology which started with good intentions but ends in Christian Zionism, represents a false direction in Christian thought. It supports the combination of Jewish exceptionalism and western world empire. Its result is endless world war. Palestinian liberation theology, by contrast, represents the basis for an authentic theology of hope, justice and peace for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israelis and Palestinians, Jews, Christians and Muslims, can find a new meeting point through the development of this perspective, with its clear affirmation of the three religions and two peoples finding a home together in one land and under the one God who created and affirms them all together.