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“If one drop of water would say, ‘I am nothing,’ there would be no ocean,” Father Piotr Zelazko told me. Father Zelazko is the patriarchal vicar of the Hebrew-speaking Catholic St. James Vicariate. He likened the relatively small size of the peacemaking community in the Holy Land to those drops of water.
I found that while it may be small, the community is not afraid to make itself heard peacefully and even joyfully in its small ways.
Once a month, the Hebrew-speaking Catholic community and members of the Jewish traditional Zion community of Jerusalem join for biblical text study. Zion community of Jerusalem Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum said they create an alliance against extremism, racism and hate, and their meetings are an action of faith within the abyss.
In mid-May, Jews, Christians, Muslims and Druze marched from the Jerusalem International YMCA to Jaffa Gate in the Old City in the annual Interfaith March for Human Rights and Peace in Jerusalem.
These convictions — of steadfastness to the idea of peacemaking and of hope that the actions will make a difference — wove their way through all the interviews I conducted to learn about the peacemaking efforts, not only between Israelis and Palestinians or Jews and Muslims and Christians, but also between Muslims and Christians.
Growing fundamentalism, decades of conflict and social separation have fostered stereotypes and division, though Christians and Muslims live side by side in both Israeli and Palestinian communities, Pontifical Mission Jerusalem Regional Director Joseph Hazboun and others told me.
A new three-year sports program organized by the Bethlehem Bible College and supported by Pontifical Mission bringing together youth from Christian and Muslim sports clubs will be launched in the fall.
Shireen Awad, director of outreach of the Bethlehem Bible College, spoke about the need to help Muslim and Christian youth form connections, challenging preconceived notions through personal interactions.
Dialogue programs bringing together Christians and Muslims give Christians hope, she said. And as a journalist who has covered this region for over 30 years, being reminded that there are still people who, through their faith, continue to work towards peace, gave me hope as well.
Read more about what Christians in the Holy Land are doing to promote peace in “ ‘Times Will Be Better,’ ” in the September issue of ONE magazine.