Peace and Reconciliation as Mission in a World in Conflict

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has inundated the media, reaching every country on the globe. The Israel-Hamas war is daily in the world’s media headlines. According to Israel, this war will likely last through 2024. The church and the world are divided, even polarized in their reactions to this current outbreak of war. The Israel-Palestine conflict has many roots. For most Christians, the roots are biblical, theological, and ethical. For others, the roots are largely geo-political and humanitarian. These roots are inseparably entangled in a plethora of conflicting interpretations.

The focus of this article is the body of Christ in Israel and Palestine in the current situation. There is one body of Christ with many expressions. The community of faith, both Jewish and Arab ecclesial communities, are a tiny minority.^[1]

Terminology

The body of Christ in Israel identifies itself as Messianic Jewish—Jews who have come to faith in the Messiah Jesus.^[2] Not only is this term used for contextualization of the gospel, it also embodies Jewish identity. In Palestine, the body of Christ identifies as Palestinian Christians. This is a clear unequivocal term with a rich history for Palestinians. 

Mission for Palestinian Christians is the gift of the good news of Christ. For Messianic Jews, mission is a problematic term. Mission is equated with missionary, both of which are historically anathema for Jews.^[3] Jesus’ life and his message proclaim the arrival of the kingdom of God. His mission was to create disciples who would live and love according to the present reality of that kingdom. ‘Mission’ as a term needs to be rescued from the current narrowness of gospel proclamation.

The Beatitudes in the Bible spell it out. To be called a child of God is to be a peacemaker. All God’s children have been given a ministry of reconciliation.^[4] This reconciliation includes the vertical and horizontal aspects—reconciliation with God and fellow human beings. Accomplished reconciliation through Jesus continues with the reconciled now united as the body of Christ/Messiah.

 Conflicting Narratives and Theologies

The critical divisions in the body of Christ in Israel and Palestine are the axes of narrative and theology. Both are in conflict and are mutually exclusive. These axes are the boundaries of estrangement. Narrative is the story of the history of separate people groups. Theology is the story of our identity as followers of Jesus. In Israel and Palestine, the narratives of each party reflect that community’s experience and its interpretation of its history in the land.

For Messianic Jews, their narrative recounts the ongoing existence of the Jewish people who are divinely destined to be permanently established in the land of Israel.^[5] The narrative regarding the land of Israel is one of irrevocable divine promise, conquest and possession, exile and return. Exile from the land of Israel did not eradicate the desire for return. On the contrary, it became an integral element in the identity of the Jewish people. 

The late 19^th and early 20^th centuries saw a renaissance of Jewish settlement in Palestine. However, the final push for settlement and statehood in Palestine was the failed genocidal Nazi final solution that threatened Jewish existence. This led to massive waves of settlement in Palestine and the declaration of Israel as a sovereign state in 1948.

The Palestinian narrative maintains that Palestinians are the legitimate indigenous people of geographical Palestine. Historian Nur Masalha’s book, Palestine: A Four Thousand-Year History, claims an unbroken history of Palestine as a geographical area and home for Palestinians.^[6] Palestinian nationalism as such emerged during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. By then Palestine had become predominantly Muslim, with a minority Christian population. 

The connection of Palestinians to the land is deeply embedded in their experience and claim to their continuing presence, proprietorship, and functional ownership of the land. Christian Palestinians view themselves as descendants of the early Christians who remained faithful in the land, preserving Christian holy places for posterity. For Palestinians, Palestine is their ancient homeland. Israel’s 1948 declaration of independent statehood in the land of Israel-Palestine was the ‘Nakba’, their catastrophe. The Nakba is one of the foundational elements of Palestinian identity, signifying great loss.

Messianic Jewish Theology Versus Palestinian Christian Theology

Many theologies could be examined in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both ecclesial communities have been influenced by Western evangelical Christianity. However, today the dominant theologies are forms of Christian Zionism adopted by the Messianic Jewish community and forms of post-colonial theology adopted by many Palestinian Christian theologians. The land is the common denominator and a pervasive central theological concern.

Messianic Judaism has its roots in the early Jewish Church. By the second century, Jews who had come to know Jesus were a minority within the Gentile church. However, they did not disappear from history.^[7] The mid-twentieth century saw large numbers of Jews come to faith in Jesus. They found a welcome in evangelical Christianity. Many wished to express their newfound faith in ways consistent with their identity as Jews. This was the birth of the modern Messianic Jewish movement. The dominant theology of the Israeli Messianic Movement is Protestant and Fundamentalist-Evangelical.^[8] The land of Israel is seen as a physical and spiritual eschatological restoration, with the State of Israel being a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.^[9]

The theology of Israeli Palestinians is the legacy of evangelical Western theology with Baptist and Mennonite influence. In recent years, theology stemming from the evangelical wing of the Palestinian Church in the West Bank has shifted from a supersessionist understanding of Scripture^[10] to a postcolonial theology that draws deeply from Liberation and Indigenous Theologies.^[11] This theology views Israel as a Settlement Project with its roots in the geo-political sphere.^[12] Issues of systemic injustice are the primary focus for Palestinian Christian theologians, whereas Messianic Jews are concerned with their survival in their land of divine promise.

What is Happening?

Israelis and Palestinians were in confrontation even before the foundation of the State of Israel. Much of the conflict revolves around issues of land and access to resources. Today the Israeli-Palestinian situation is one of military occupation and ongoing conflict, defined as intractable.^[13] Intractable conflicts are a specific category of conflict.^[14] Parties in an intractable conflict cannot disengage from their goals as they are perceived as existential. As a result they cannot enter into a meaningful dialogue with one another.^[15]

These conflicts affect every aspect of daily life. Two salient facts are crucial to understanding this conflict. One is that Palestine is controlled by Israeli Military Governorship, which includes entrance and exit of people, goods, and services. Two is that all Jewish citizens from age eighteen are required to do military service. Many of them serve in occupied Palestine. These facts affect all residents of Israel and Palestine. For people of faith, crossing the border is at best a challenge, and at worst, illegal. 

Compassion for the inestimable loss and suffering on both sides is eclipsed by the justification of the rightness of their stance and the delegitimization of those who have a different perspective. The unity of the body of Christ is compromised by growing extremism and the failure of the church to live and love according to the teachings of Jesus and the values of the kingdom of God.

For over a century, both parties have invested vast sums of money, and oceans of blood in attempts to claim the land as their own. Historian Rashid Khalid analyzed the current situation, concluding that the conflict has ‘passed the hundred-year mark with circumstances more daunting than perhaps at any time since 1917.’^[16]

On 7 October 2023, the Israel-Hamas war, the latest in this intractable conflict, began with a Hamas-led attack on Israel with a massacre of 1,200 Israelis and over 200 taken hostage. Israel’s response was immediate. Citing self-defense, Israel has invaded, blockaded, and bombarded the entire Gaza Strip in an effort to eradicate Hamas and bring home the hostages. 

After 6 months, neither goal has been fully met and the war shows no signs of resolution. The casualties in Gaza^[17] have reached 32,490.^[18] Since the war’s outbreak, to date, ^[19] Israel has lost 1,200 civilians and over 253 soldiers^[20] with approximately 200,000 people internally displaced.^[21] In Gaza, 1.7 million people have been internally displaced and 60 percent of Gaza’s housing units destroyed;^[22] 438 Palestinians, including at least 106 children, have been killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.^[23] The numbers are increasing daily.

The body of Christ in Israel and Palestine has been seriously impacted by this war.^[24] The pain, grief, anger, trauma, and fear are palpable in both communities. This situation has led to further division, with each side focusing on its own situation to the exclusion of the other. Globally, this war has galvanized already polarized Christians to take a strong stance on the either-or of social gospel versus Christian Zionism and evangelization. Each side claims their view as God’s way. Compassion for the inestimable loss and suffering on both sides is eclipsed by the justification of the rightness of their stance and the delegitimization of those who have a different perspective. The unity of the body of Christ is compromised by growing extremism and the failure of the church to live and love according to the teachings of Jesus and the values of the kingdom of God.

Where Do We Go from Here?

How then should Christians live amid such suffering? What is the role of the gospel in times of conflict? How should the international church respond?^[25] The questions are many.

Simply stated, living in any conflict is traumatic. Despite decades of intractable conflict, the Israeli-Hamas war is unlike the predictable cycle of violence of the past 75 years. The scope of this war has touched every person in Israel and Palestine. Many peacebuilding initiatives are compromised. Propaganda and false news have proliferated. Both sides are trapped in the horror of 7 October and Israel’s ongoing military response. 

If we do not live according to Jesus’ words and actions, to comfort those who mourn, to be peacemakers, to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God, we will have failed God’s mission to be living witnesses to the way of the cross and the gospel of peace. It is precisely in times of conflict and suffering that the body of Christ is charged to lay aside the things that divide, to love and to bear one another’s burdens.

Few believers from Israel and Palestine reach out and pray for each other. Fewer joint initiatives provide aid in the ongoing displacement and suffering of both communities. Cries for justice from the Palestinian church are vociferous, whereas the justification of Israel’s response to Hamas is unremittingly defended. There is no justification for the Hamas attack and massacre of 7 October. Neither is there any justification for Israel’s massive response that has already killed tens of thousands. 

The body of Christ, locally and globally, is called to live and love according to the way of Jesus and the values of the kingdom of God, regardless of circumstances. This is a time of great spiritual, emotional, and cognitive stretching. If we do not live according to Jesus’ words and actions, to comfort those who mourn, to be peacemakers, to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God, we will have failed God’s mission to be living witnesses to the way of the cross and the gospel of peace. It is precisely in times of conflict and suffering that the body of Christ is charged to lay aside the things that divide, to love and to bear one another’s burdens. By this, the suffering world has a chance to know that Jesus is Lord.^[26]

Our challenge now is to look forward and together work toward the promised future when reconciliation is complete—when from every tribe and nation, estranged brothers and sisters, their sons and daughters, all God’s children stand as one.

Endnotes

1. Israeli Messianic Jews are less than 0.5 percent of the population, according to Serner and Goldberg, Jesus Believing Israelis: Exploring Messianic Fellowships (Caspari Center, 2021), 3-5. Serner and Goldberg’s research is the only comprehensive academic survey of the Messianic community. Larger numbers are often quoted but they are anecdotal or based on minimal research. Palestinian Christians (in Israel and Palestine) are less than 2 percent of the population. See Jonathan Kuttab, ‘Palestinian Evangelicals and Christian Zionism,’ Jerusalem Quarterly, 76, 2018: 70–78, https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/jq-articles/Pages_from_JQ_76_-_Kuttab.pdf, and Central Intelligence Agency, ‘Explore All Countries–West Bank: People and Society,’ The World Factbook, updated 20 February 2024, https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/west-bank/#people-and-society.
2. For Messianic Jews, Christ is a Greek term for Messiah that communicates a foreign religion that has historically persecuted Jews. Jewish followers of Jesus do not use the term Christian since it seriously complicates communication with fellow Jews.
3. The ‘mission’ of missionaries is perceived as severing Jewish people from their identity and heritage as Jews.
4. Editor’s note: See article entitled ‘Embracing Reconciliation’ by Daniel Munayer, Lausanne Global Analysis, January 2022. 
5. This understanding is founded on the biblical story of the people of Israel from its inception; the unfolding narrative beginning with Abraham, and continuing until the present.
6. Nur Masalha, Palestine A Four Thousand Year History (London: Zed Books, 2018), 10.
7. Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik, eds., Jewish Believers in Jesus, the Early Centuries (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007).
8. David Serner and Alexander Goldberg, Jesus Believing Israelis: Exploring Messianic Fellowships. (Jerusalem: Caspari Center, 2021), 39.
9. Serner and Goldberg, Jesus Believing Israelis, 47.
10. Supersessionism is the academic term for what is popularly known as replacement theology, meaning that the Church has replaced Israel as the people of God. 
11. John S. Munayer and Samuel S. Munayer, ‘Decolonizing Palestinian Liberation Theology: New Methods, Sources and Voices,’ Studies in World Christianity 28:3, (2022): 87-310, https://doi.org/10.3366/swc.2022.0401.
12. Nur Masalha and Lisa Isherwood, eds., Theologies of Liberation in Palestine-Israel: Indigenous, Contextual, and Postcolonial Perspectives (Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 2014). 
13. Christopher Mitchell, The Nature of Intractable Conflict: Resolution in the Twenty-First Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
14. Daniel Bar-Tal, Intractable Conflicts: Socio-Psychological Foundations and Dynamics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
15. Intractable conflicts are identified and characterized by several major factors. They are long-lasting, violent, highly resistant to resolution, central to both parties, require much investment, and are perceived as zero-sum and unsolvable. 
16. Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine (London: Profile Books, 2020), 242.
17. Statistics are increasingly difficult to verify. See Gabriel Epstein, ‘Gaza Fatality Data Has Become Completely Unreliable,’ The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, March 26, 2024, https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/gaza-fatality-data-has-become-completely-unreliable.
18. ‘Disclaimer: The UN has not been able to produce independent, comprehensive, and verified casualty figures; the current numbers have been provided by the Ministry of Health or the Government Media Office in Gaza and the Israeli authorities and await further verification,’ OCHA United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid, ‘Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel – reported impact | Day 173,’ March 27, 2024, https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-173.
19. March 29, 2024.
20. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘Swords of Iron: IDF Casualties,’ March 28, 2024, https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/swords-of-iron-idf-casualties. 
21. TOI staff, ‘About 200,000 Israelis internally displaced amid ongoing Gaza war, tensions in north,’ The Times of Israel, accessed February 22, 2024, https://www.timesofisrael.com/about-200000-israelis-internally-displaced-amid-ongoing-gaza-war-tensions-in-north/. See also Zehavit Gross, ‘Israel’s North, South evacuees have been forgotten amid Gaza war – opinion,’ Jerusalem Post, March 23, 2024, https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-793164, (This article shows that at this time numbers of the evacuees are returning to their homes.)
22. OCHA United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid, ‘Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel – reported impact | Day 173,’ March 27, 2024, https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-173. 
23. OCHA-Relief-web, ‘UNRWA Situation Report #96 on the situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.All information from 26-27 March 2024, is valid as of 27 March 2024 at 22:30,’ March 29, 2024, https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/unrwa-situation-report-96-situation-gaza-strip-and-west-bank-including-east-jerusalem-all-information-26-27-march-2024-valid-27-march-2024-2230.
24. Through personal contacts I am informed of the following information. There are approximately 1,000 Messianic Jews and 600-700 Christians on active duty in the Israel Military. The Christian Palestinians in the West Bank are experiencing an escalation of restrictions and an upsurge of violence.
25. Editor’s note: See article entitled ‘Reflections on the Baptist Response to the War in Ukraine,’ by Alan Donaldson, Lausanne Global Analysis, June 2023.
26. Editor’s note: See article entitled ‘The Impact of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict on Ministry to Muslims,’ by Thomas Harvey, Lausanne Global Analysis, January 2013, and article entitled ‘Living the Gospel in Conflict Zones,’ by Eraston K. Kighoma and C.J. Davison, Lausanne Global Analysis, July 2023.