Sharon chooses death

On March 29, eighteen months to the day after Ariel Sharon staged his provocative walkabout at Haram esh-Sharif (Temple Mount) and triggered the second intifada, he sent his tanks and helicopter gunships against the Palestinian people.

World opinion was outraged. Sharon thumbed his nose at world opinion. And George W Bush, after an initial telling-off, let him get away with it.

For over a month, the Israeli defence forces (IDF) attacked the cities of the West Bank, trapped Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat in what remained of his compound in Ramallah, laid siege to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and - notoriously - made a desert of Jenin.

Jenin, where Israel denied indignantly that it had committed a massacre. The dead of the Jenin refugee camp, buried in the rubble of their homes by IDF bulldozers, felt much better when they heard that.

There are two ways of framing the story of Israel's attack on the Palestinian community.

The first is well captured by the name Israel gave its onslaught: Operation defensive shield. We are not attacking anyone, we are defending our homes and our families against wicked, demented suicide bombers. We are destroying the infrastructure of terrorism. Good words, those: suicide bombers, terrorism. They play well on CNN.

In this frame, the only question is George Bush's: Are you with us or against us? For example, will you, Mr Arafat, condemn the suicide bombers and put the terrorists behind Palestinian bars? It's difficult not to get pulled into this frame: as human beings, we are naturally appalled by the sights and sounds of the latest atrocity and, as Christians, we are opposed in principle to the slaughter of the innocent in the name of any cause whatsoever.

Thus, the Church of Scotland on April 3: "We condemn the attacks on innocent Israelis by Palestinian suicide bombers, gunmen and those who encourage them..."

Reformed churches universally repudiate the campaign of terror against Israeli civilians.

But many Reformed and other churches also reject the campaign of terror against the Palestinian community.

"We have repeatedly called for the end of the Israeli occupation, a halting of the building and expansion of Israel settlements and colonies on confiscated Palestinian land, a halt of the continuing humiliation and degradation of the Palestinian people by Israel through collective punishment, demolition of houses, damage and destruction of public buildings, including church structures, invasion of hospitals, schools and church buildings and annexes, border closings, military check points, denial of access to health and social services and religious sites, and even brutal attack on Palestinian police and civilians, including women, men and children inhabitants of refugee camps..." said Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA), on April 5.

"We have encouraged United Nations resolutions aimed at justice for both Israel and the Palestinians, which were adopted but sometimes vetoed by our own government, and most often ignored or defied by Israel."

That doesn't play so well in Peoria. But it springs from the second way of framing the story: one which recognizes the root cause of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in the dispossession of the latter by the former: the illegal occupation of east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, and the more than three million Palestinian refugees created by forcible eviction and conquest.

Thus, again, the Church of Scotland: "The need to end terror in Israel is one side of a coin; the other side is the need to end occupation in Palestine. Violence and fear is rooted in the illegal occupation of Palestine by Israel."

Churches all over the world frame the story in this way. But they are not good at getting the word out - not even, one suspects, to their own members.

"Terror - both of the Israeli government and of Palestinian individuals - touches everyone," says Lewis Scudder of the Reformed Church in America, who has worked for many years in the Middle East. "The power-brokers manipulate, the media distorts, and ordinary lives are destroyed and twisted, made precarious and miserable. Death stalks the streets; evil rampages. These days try each human spirit, and faith is under siege."

Victims and victimizers alike need setting free. "We pray that the liberator God of the ancient Exodus will... look with favour upon the peoples held in bondage of all sorts in the land called holy: military and political bondage, bondage of terror, bondage of despair, bondage of material need, bondage of anger, hurt and bitterness, bondage of history," says Clifton Kirkpatrick. "In hope, we acknowledge that though the land be holy for its historical significance for people of faith, it is not sacred for exclusive claims."

In the book of Deuteronomy, as all Israel is about to enter the promised land, Moses puts before them a choice. If they obey the commandments of the Lord their God - the one true God, to know whom is to do justice - then they shall live and become numerous and the Lord their God will bless them. But if their heart turns away and they do not hear, and are led astray to bow down to false gods - the gods of domination and power - then they will perish: they will not live long in the land.

Justice or occupation. Land or peace. Life or death. Sharon has chosen death.

Páraic Réamonn