Anglican Consultative Council Decries Apartheid in Palestine

Anglican Consultative Council reaffirms two-state solution for Israel, Palestine
Members de-cry 'physical form of apartheid' in Palestine

By Mary Frances Schjonberg , May 09, 2009

[Episcopal News Service -- Kingston, Jamaica] The Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) on May 9 unanimously re-affirmed its desire for a "robust peace process" in the Israel-Palestine conflict and a two-state solution.

The members passed a resolution that calls Israel's West Bank policies "a physical form of apartheid."

Anglican Church of Southern Africa Archbishop Thabo Makogba told the council that he supported the resolution "having lived under apartheid and knowing the pain of apartheid."

He described having seen "the brutality" in the West Bank and Gaza that "segregates God's people."

"If we vote for this resolution, we will be doing our Christians duty of ensuring that peace abounds in Jerusalem," he said.

Diocese of New York Bishop Suffragan Catherine Roskam told the council that "the average American thinks that the conflict in the Middle East is even … I think it falls to Christian minds and to this communion to point out that it is not 50-50." She said Israel uses tanks, automatic weapons and bulldozers against people who fight back with stones.

"It should not cause us to be surprised when as a last resort people strap explosives to themselves and use themselves as human bombs," she said. "I decry all violence, but unless we are willing to speak for justice … these tensions will continue to increase."

Jerusalem and the Middle East President Bishop Mouneer Anis, who said that Palestinians "are living in a very big prison," told the council that peace in the Middle East is crucial to the peace of the whole world.

The ACC was initially presented with two versions of the resolution. The first, offered by the Anglican Peace and Justice Network, was nearly twice as long as the one-page final version and contained considerably stronger language. It referred to "portioning of the West Bank into bantustan-like areas" and the "judaization" of Jerusalem by the government of Israel.

Clare Amos, coordinator of the communion's Network for Inter Faith Concerns (NIFCON), offered an alternative resolution, which the ACC chose to accept. It was amended on the floor to bring a series of statements directed at Israel from the first resolution, including a call for an end to the West Bank and Gaza occupation, a freeze on all Israeli settlement building, removal of the separation wall where it violates Palestinian land, an end to the destruction of Palestinian homes, and the closing of checkpoints in the Palestinian territories.

The APJN resolution was criticized by a number of speakers, including Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who said he could not vote for it, in part because of its rhetoric. He said, however, that it was "quite clear that we cannot rise from this meeting with good conscience without having said something about the manifest injustice and the immense level that exists in the Holy Land."

"I don't want to see various possibilities [for dialogue and progress towards peace], slender as they are, simply because we would like to make a satisfyingly strong statement," he cautioned.

The text of resolution will be posted under the news section of the ACC's website here:
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/communion/acc/index.cfm


Source: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_107457_ENG_HTM.htm