Shalom/Salaam/Peace

A Liberation Theology of Hope

Constance A. Hammond

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317490548
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History

Conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians has been ongoing since the creation of the state of Israel, a conflict revolving around land-ownership, water politics, human rights, and religious rights. 'Shalom/Salaam/Peace' examines the realities of life in contemporary Israel/Palestine, with its politics, wars, security wall, settlements and ongoing struggles. Having established the historical, scriptural and theological context behind the present situation, the book presents key figures who have promoted peace and justice and explores liberation theology as a way of bringing peace in Israel/Palestine. Combining the history of liberation theology with its lived reality in Israel/Palestine today, 'Shalom/Salaam/Peace' is an illuminating resource for students and scholars of politics and religion.

Part 1
The Land as Place

The Middle East, adapted from Central Intelligence Agency Map 8022983A (R02107) 603 by Miriam Dousse, permission kindly granted by Anna Baltzer.

Palestinian/Jewish Owned Land 1946, and Land Designated for Palestinian/Jewish States, UN Plan 1947, original version by NAD-PLO. Adapted from Oren Medicks 1999, permission kindly granted by Anna Baltzer.

Palestinian/Jewish Land 1949–1967 and 2007, original version by NAD-PLO. Adapted from Oren Medicks 1999, as published in Occupation Magazine, modified by Engin Coban, permission kindly granted by Anna Baltzer.

Israel/Palestine, © 1999, Boston Committee for Palestinian Rights. Modified by Myriam Dousse, permission kindly granted by Anna Baltzer.

The Land of Israel/Palestine

‘The Palestine of Jesus’ Times’, reads the heading on a map in a Sunday School room at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Aberdeen, Washington. The map, like many maps in many churches throughout America, has been there for generations — not as a political statement, simply as a defining label on a map of the world of Jesus as it was in the days of Jesus. I was in the classroom to tell the children a little bit about Christians in Israel/Palestine (This was to enable them to prepare a Peace Candle for our sanctuary — a candle lit at all services in remembrance of our baptismal brothers and sisters in Israel/Palestine.) As I talked, one child said, ‘Constance, why does it say, “Palestine”, on the map, and not Israel?’ I, frankly had not noticed the wording on the map. And so I began a brief explanation of the ‘Why’ of Palestine in Jesus’ time and the ‘Why’ of Palestine in our time. Her question, brought into focus the greater question of today: ‘Why is Palestine no longer a politically recognized entity — a nation or a state?’ Certainly the name Philistine or Palestine has been on record for centuries.

The name Palestine comes from the Philistines, who arrived in about the fourteenth century, BCE (Before the Common Era/Pre-Christ). These early Palestinians lived in an area that extended along the eastern Mediterranean coast west to the Jordan Valley, south to the Negev desert and north to the Galilean region. It is believed these early arrivals came from Asia Minor and areas of Greece. Variations on the name Philistine are thought to have appeared in Egyptian texts at the temple of Medint Havu and in the Annals of the Assyrian Emperor Saragon II. They occupied a land that has been shared and defined and ruled over at various times by the Canaanites, Philistines, Hebrews, Nabateans, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks, British and more recently the Israeli Jews. During the Roman Empire’s rule, Palestine was the name used for the region.

The problem with available source material concerning the Philistines’ origins and history is the actual origins of the source material itself. For the most part, until recently, the material about the Philistines has been written from a western or Hebrew/Judaic perspective. As Palestinian scholar, author and educator Edward Said wrote in his article, ‘Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question’, ‘Palestine has been the home to a remarkable civilization centuries before the first Hebrew tribes migrated to the area’ (Whitelam 1996: 8) This doesn’t sound like the biblical stories Christians and Jews have been brought up on. Wasn’t Abraham the father of all the Hebrew/Canaanite tribes? Could it be that the Philistines predated the Hebrew people in the area now referred to as the Holy Land? As Keith Whitelam writes in his book, The Invention of Ancient Israel, The Silencing of Palestinian History, Palestine’s history has been framed within the context of the Hebrew Bible. ‘The history of the region has long been seen as neatly compartmentalized into Patriarchal, Exodus, Conquest or Settlement periods followed by the United Monarchy of David and Solomon, the Divided Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, Exile, and then Restoration…Palestinian history is effectively silenced by this tyranny of biblical time which has been perpetuated by Western scholarship’ (Whitelam 1996: 60-61).

And so who came first? In some ways it depends on who is recording the event. As for the Philistine people, we do know that they came and settled on the coast. And we know, as well, that at a time in history, after being considered a great threat by the Hebrew ruler Saul, the Palestinians were evidently defeated by the Hebrew ruler David. After that the Philistines seem to have disappeared from our Western historical records (Whitelam 1996: 136).

Looking at the area of Palestine/Canaan and the East Bank of the Jordan River there were cave dwelling hunting and gathering peoples as early as 100,000 BCE. This was a land lived on by a peoples destined to be occupied by other peoples over the centuries. By 2,800 BCE, Egypt had dominated the area, then Syria took control in 1,700 BCE and back the land went to Egypt in 1,430 BCE and 1,154 BCE, with brief losses of control in between. In the midst of this, during the 1,800s BCE, Abraham first settled a section of the countryside of Canaan/Palestine that ranged from approximately Shechem (Nablus) to Beersheba (Ruether 1989: 4).

In 1,000 BCE the Hebrew people formed a United Kingdom of Judah and Israel, which split in 927 BCE. Then we see the Assyrians, the Babylonians (present day Iraqis), the Persians (now Iranians) and finally Alexander the Great ruling this parcel of land for 175 years, from 330 BCE until it became a Jewish Kingdom in 142 BCE. The Greeks are the ones, from the fifth century, BCE, who called the area Syria of the Philistines. In 63 BCE Canaan/Palestine was ruled by Rome. This lasted through and beyond the life of Christ. The Romans, perhaps from as early as 70 CE (Common Era/Post-Christ) (Wagner 2000: 33) — certainly from the Bar Kochba Jewish revolt against Rome in 135 CE — called the area the Province of Palestine or the Provincia Syria Palaestine, which became Palaestinia, from which the anglicized Palestine of today is derived. This name remained through the Islamic period, the Crusades and into the British Mandate of Palestine. Roman occupation was followed by Byzantium Christian rule (324–614 CE), followed by Arab Muslim rulers (638 CE), who were intruded upon by Christian Crusaders (1099-1191 CE). Mamelukes (1244–1517 CE) preceded the Ottoman Empire’s rule, which lasted from 1517–1918 CE (Ruether 1989: 5).

It is interesting to note that during these times, when rulers shifted, the attitude of Jews to Christians, Christians to Jews, and 500 years later, Muslims to Christians to Jews and each to one another often retained an attitude of tolerance, although there were times of incredible destruction, persecution and death. One begins to see how the land of Israel — the land of Palestine — has been the land of many peoples, who have at many earlier times lived in peaceful coexistence. It is also important to note, as Rosemary Radford Ruether said at a Sabeel Conference in Berkeley in August, 2007, that in ancient times the land was never referred to as Israel. Israel was the name given to the ten northern tribes who disappeared in Assyrian times. In the Hebrew Bible this area is called the land of Canaan. The two southern Hebrew tribes that remained, and their area of land, was called Judah. Only when the modern state of Israel came into being, was the land called Israel.

On my first trip to Israel/Palestine, in 1993, I was walking toward the Damascus Gate (the earliest and main gate into the Old City), from the West Bank, when I caught my first glimpse of the inclusivity and exclusivity surrounding the ownership of place. Outside the walls of the city extended a bazaar of international treasures, ranging from CDs to scarves to socks to sunglasses. There was both the traditional and modern basics, as well as the beautiful and the desired. Among these items were sprinkled sweets and treats of exotic looking origins. The people were as varied as the offerings. Some were robed in traditional jalabas, some were covered in traditional veils (hijab), some wore western clothing, some were dressed in the black clothing of the Orthodox Jew, with ringlets hanging by the ears of the bearded men. It was a glorious, festive seeming combination of Jew and Muslim and Christian and nonbelievers living out their secular lives as if in a mosaic of harmony.

As I entered, through the gate, I was struck at first by darkness — a quick refocusing and then, once again, I was stunned by the brilliant sunlight of Jerusalem within the walls of the Old City. This time, however, I had entered into the open market — full of light and full of life that defies description. Colors and smells and sounds all assaulted my senses. The movement of people, of carts and animals, of fish and chicken and vegetables, fruit, bread and meat —the movement of life as it is lived today and life as it has been lived and moved all the days of Jerusalem — all this seemed to bounce across the great cobble stoned street, lifting me up and carrying me forward. Shops, doorless, with clothing, electronics, toys, household goods — all things necessary for life — welcomed me — invited me in — as I wandered by in this flow beyond time. Suddenly, in a widening of the street — a space where several streets intersected creating a small piazzeta — the movement, the mood the bubbling, babbling ceased. Before me were Palestinian school children sitting in their wooden, one-armed chairs in the street outside their school. Pictures of a fellow schoolmate were hanging on their desks. They were sitting in silent protest against the shooting of one of their own by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), the day before. There was a tension. There was a silence. Where before there had been the sounds of the routine, there was now the soundless voice of protest, of pain, of fear. When the Israeli soldiers came, as they did, the students were forced back in to their school. This demonstration, by a handful, ended without incident. This incident, however, underscored the ongoing tension, struggle and conflict that exists in the city and in the area as a whole.

Jerusalem

Jerusalem is a city divided. That seems clear enough even to someone not conversant with the political geography of the city. Jerusalem is divided. Although the United Nations (UN) in its first act as a body, on 29 November 1947, established Resolution (II), which was a plan for the governing of Jerusalem that would make, as Naim Ateek states in Justice and Only Justice, ‘Jerusalem as a corpus separatum, internationalized’ (Ateek 1989: 173), belonging to and serving both Arabs and Jews as a common capital city of the Holy Land. The reality of this hoped for act has never been realized, enforced or enacted. Just looking within the walled city of Old Jerusalem one can see an intricate, tightly compressed, overlapping and intermingling of sacred and historical places that are divided, though one, within the walls of the Old City.

The Old City of Jerusalem is a walled city, enclosed and divided into sections or quarters. The present day walls and gates were built between 1537 and 1542 BCE, during the reign of the Turkish ruler, Suleyman the Magnificent. They have been modified in ensuing centuries, but in essence remain the same. Within the Jewish Quarter, which is found in the southeast sector, there are six synagogues and many areas of archaeological interest including a Hasmonean Walk, left from the time of the Hasmonean Kingdom (167–63 BCE, when Pompey took control of the region). The Hasmonean family and other devout Jews fled Jerusalem in opposition to what they saw as Greek and Olympian cults’ influence on their Jewish faith. Judah Maccabee led his people back to regain control of the city and region. After restoring and purifying the Temple buildings in Jerusalem, they lit the lamps of the menorah and stated that this day of dedication would be called Chanukah (Hanukah). Also in the Jewish Quarter is the Cardo Maximus (the ancient main street that ran from the Damascus Gate into the city and was equivalent in width to a modern eight lane highway); The Burnt House (a basement with charred pots and debris and an archeological story that speaks to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE); the Herodian Houses (remains of wealthy Jewish mansions and a seminary, with frescoes, mosaic floors and household items of great value from the same era) and the Column and the Apse of the Nea (the remains of what had been a complex containing the Orthodox Church of Mary Theotokos — the mother of God/the God-Bearer — unique in that it represented a doctrine of the church and not an event in Jesus’ life) (Murphy-O’Connor 1992: 72).

In this quarter, as well, is located the Western Wall (the Wailing Wall) of the former Jewish Temple — the wall that stands as a symbol for Jews for what was lost in the destruction of the temple in 70 CE and what is to be regained — the wall that stands as a buttress under the plaza on which Haram esh-Sharif (the Dome of the Rock) stands. It is at this wall that religious Jews come to pray, to poke tiny papers of prayers into the crevasses of the wall, to remember and to honor the past, the people, those loved ones being placed in God’s loving hands. It is at this wall that Orthodox religious Jews come to bend and to bow in their prayers. All this is happening, below, while above the Muslims are kneeling in their prayer, facing Mecca, calling forth their faith and their hopes and their desires to God. In the mix are the Christians who come to wonder at the history, at the architecture, at the archeological and religious importance of the place. For it is for us, in our shared Abrahamic faith, as well, a wall of our faith’s foundation. We all are praying, in our own way, to the One God, even though the presence of machine guns at the ready in the hands of the soldiers of the IDF belies that commonality of our faith.

Unfortunately, it is also at this wall that Palestinians come to grieve the loss of their homes. Before the 1967 Six Day War (when Israel attacked Egypt, Syria and Jordan, taking control of Syria’s Golan Heights, Egypt’s Sinai Desert and Gaza Strip and Jordan’s West Bank and East Jerusalem), the area in front of the wall was full of urban life. There was not a plaza or open area, rather there existed the usual urban mix of homes and shops that extended out from the wall, with a narrow passageway next to the wall for those who wished to pray at the wall. In 1948, the area in which the Western Wall stands was under the control of Jordan and Jews were denied access. In 1967, when Israeli paratroopers took control of the Old City, they bulldozed the Arab neighborhood to create the plaza that one visits today. I, personally, was not aware of this until the Archives for Historical Documentation had the photo exhibit, ‘Journey to Jerusalem: Hospitable Memories, An Exhibit of the Earliest Photographs of Jerusalem’, taken by a resident photographer, Mindel Diness in the mid-1800s. The exhibit was sponsored by the Austrian government and the Austrian Hospice of the Holy Family (which is located in the center of the Old City of Jerusalem), in celebration of the hospice’s 150th anniversary. Local Palestinian archeologists, patriarchs, Israeli politicians and diplomats, shopkeepers and television personalities, religious persons — old and young and in between — all sorts of people — came to the exhibit. Many came as families to describe to the younger generation where their home or business or relative or some object of particular interest had been in the days before the division of the land. It was not only a learning experience for me as a staff member, but a personal opportunity for both Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians —Christians and Muslims — to hear one another’s stories. It was a reminder of how sacred a place may be to one, and how, at the same time, it may exist as a desecration of place or a place of painful memories, to another.

Within the Old City of Jerusalem there are two Christian areas: the Christian Quarter and the Armenian Quarter. The Armenians have had a presence in Jerusalem since their king’s conversion in 303 CE, when Armenia became the first Christian nation. Since the end of the Kingdom of Armenia, at the conclusion of the fourth century, the Armenians have considered Jerusalem their spiritual home. They have had an enclosed section of the Old City since the early fifth century. This enclave was originally designed for religious purposes, but expanded to include secular parts of the culture during the persecution of the Armenian people by Turkey — a time of persecution which ended in a 1915 genocide, in which over 1.5 million Armenians were killed. Today, about 1,500 Armenians live in the compound. The Armenian Quarter has been called by Jerome Murphy-O’Connor ‘a city in miniature’, as the quarter contains within its boundaries an Armenian Monastery, Armenian schools, a library, an Armenian Museum (that was formerly a seminary), residential quarters, and the great Orthodox Cathedral of St. James (Murphy-O’Connor 1992: 64). In contrast, the confines of the Christian Quarter, a 45-acre area found within the northwest section of the city, houses 4,500 people, where there is a mix of historic and active sites: the Jaffa Gate leads into the Christian Quarter which includes, among many sites, two mosques, the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer (built in 1898 on the site of the eleventh century church of St. Mary la Latine), the Church of St. John the Baptist (Greek Orthodox, it is the oldest church in Jerusalem) and Christ Church (built in 1849, it is the first Protestant church built in the Holy Land). This is where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (where Christ is purported to have died, been buried and was resurrected) is located. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is jointly occupied by the Latin Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Syrians, Copts and the Ethiopians (Murphy-O’Connor 1992: 48).

The first time I went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in 1993, we were taken in a group by the Dean of St. George’s College. His way (the very best way in my opinion), is to approach the church from the roof, entering from the top, where the Coptic Orthodox Church’s quarters have grown like organic blossoms, sculpted and stuccoed onto the roof (The Coptic Orthodox Church comes from Egypt and is based on the teachings described in the Gospel of Mark in the Christian Bible.) From this rooftop vista, one wanders down through the various layers of churchdom, to the ultimate, most earth-bound chapel, the Chapel of St. Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, Emperor of Rome. Named Helena Augusta by her son, she was given full honors as the mother of the King. She was a devout Christian and Christian legends attribute the building of Christian churches throughout the West to Helena, as well as the discovery of the true cross of Christ’s crucifixion and the tomb of Christ. She commissioned the basilicas in Bethlehem (the place said to be the site of Christ’s birth) and on the Mount of Olives. From there, in the Chapel of St. Helena, through a closet in the wall of the chapel, we entered into what scholars believe was the quarry — the place — of Jesus’ death, entombment and resurrection. There, the stones are unblemished by the pollution of the centuries. There is most likely the place — the there — on which Christian pilgrimages focus.

While the quarry area remains pristine in its enclosed purity, the upper levels of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are full of the scent of incense and sacred oils — centuries and centuries of incense and oils — of soot smudges and the wax from candles, of prayers, of memories of conflict within and conflict that has entered from without. And now, this holiest of Christian sites is looked down upon by a Jewish settlement. On a trip to Jerusalem, in 2002, while everyone was oohing and aahing about the roof, I looked over and up and saw something new: a rooftop barbed wired enclave, with housing and a children’s playground, all guarded by elevated machine gun turrets and soldiers high on platforms looking down on us, as we walked the roof of the Church of the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Maps and Photographs
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: From the Particular to the Global and Back to the Project
• Part 1 THE LAND AS PLACE
• Part 2 LIBERATION THEOLOGY
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• General Index
• Scripture Index