Heads of churches in Jerusalem have called for an urgent conclusion to the conflict wracking their land. They are convinced that peace-seeking negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians are the only way to provide for "the wellbeing of all our peoples", and that the violence "will only end when both parties in the conflict make a determined effort to respect each other's rights".

The Jerusalem cross

They ask for "protection for all our people in order to assist the re-establishment of mutual trust and security for Israeli and Palestinian" - a tactful reference to the hundreds of Palestinians, many of them children, who have died at the hands of the Israeli defence force and Israeli settlers since last year. Palestinian paramilitaries have retaliated by killing a smaller number of Israelis, many of them also children. The heads of churches also ask for "even greater assistance" for those suffering from the Israeli economic blockade of the occupied Palestinian territories, many of whom are "desperate for food, clothing and the like".

A report on Jerusalem presented to the general assembly of the Church of Scotland in May says that Jerusalem represents in concentrated form the most significant issues contributing to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: sovereignty and occupation; settlements and land resources; and the burning question of Palestinian refugees. It needs to be recognized that the Oslo peace process has failed, the report claims: Israel's withdrawal from occupied territory (often just a redeployment) has been minimal, with massively increased settlement activity and increasing violations of human rights. "The longer this continues, the more intractable the situation becomes".

When Ariel Sharon made a provocative visit to the noble sanctuary/temple mount in September 2000 and the next day Palestinian demonstrators were shot at the same location by Israeli forces, many ordinary people in the occupied territories took up active protest against the occupation. This "al-Aqsa intifada", the report says, "can only be interpreted as a clear rejection of the Oslo process", which has resulted in a "bantustanization" of the occupied territories: the "creation of small enclaves of Palestinian-controlled territory surrounded by Israeli settlements, roads, and military outposts".

The general assembly affirmed "the right of Israelis and Palestinians to live within secure and fixed boundaries in states of their own; and of those refugees who wish to do so to return to the land from which they fled"; recognized "the fundamental difficulty represented by the fact of occupation or illegal annexation of territory by Israel"; and reaffirmed that "withdrawal from such occupation is the first step towards a just and peaceful resolution of the conflict". It also accepted proposals for a study into the theology of land, to unmask Christian Zionist assumptions that modern Israel has a "special right" to the land and resources of Palestine "over and above the rights of all others".