Israel and Palestine was high on the agenda at the sixth annual UN advocacy week in Geneva, organised by the  World Council of Churches (WCC). Representatives from churches, ecumenical organizations and civil society organizations, including Israeli peace activists, gathered in Geneva from 27 September to 1 October 2010 to address questions of power and structural injustice and to lobby for peace and human rights. The event coincided with the 15^th session of the United Nation’s Human Rights Council also being held in Geneva.

Nora Carmi (pictured), a Palestinian Christian from Jerusalem, introduced the Palestine Kairos Document to the conference. Launched in 2009, the document, officially called “A moment of truth,” is a call from Palestinian Christians for the international community to stand by the Palestinian people in the face of oppression, displacement, suffering and functional apartheid for more than six decades. It stands in the tradition of an earlier Kairos Document, launched by Christians in 1985, that addressed the political situation in South Africa during its apartheid era.

Carmi, a member of Sabeel, an Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre in Jerusalem, introduced the document.

“When we introduced a similar argument to end apartheid in South Africa, not many believed in this branch of diplomacy. But it did work. That is why we are embracing faith and hope to deal with a situation which has resisted all efforts of morality as well as legal efforts,” she said. (More…)

A group of Israeli and European Jews including a holocaust survivor and a former Israeli air force pilot attempted to break the Israeli siege of Gaza by boat in late September. Israeli naval forces intercepted the boat, “Irene” and forced it to dock at an Israeli port. In May, Israel killed nine Turkish activists on an aid boat to Gaza, after which the UN Human Rights Council accused Israeli forces of “incredible violence.”

The organizers of the “Jewish Boat to Gaza,” members of Jewish groups from America, the UK, Germany and Israel, left Cyprus in September on “a nonviolent, symbolic act of solidarity and protest – and [a] call for the siege to be lifted to enable free passage of goods and people to and from the Gaza Strip.”

But the Israeli Navy intercepted “Irene” on Tuesday 28th September and forced the crew to dock her in the Israeli port of Ashdod. Jewish Israeli conscientious objector Yonatan Shapira, who was on the boat, told Haaretz that when forces boarded the boat they treated the activists “atrociously.” 

To read more about Jewish work for a just peace, click here.

Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, visited Israel and Palestine recently to meet local people affected by the occupation. He met religious leaders and toured Jerusalem and Hebron, meeting Ecumenical Accompaniers and Palestinians living with constant violence and harassment by Israeli settlers. Following the killing of four settlers in the West Bank on the eve of negotiations, Tveit unequivocally condemned violence and said that to bring security to both Israelis and Palestinians, “negotiations must stop the occupation and all the injustices that ordinary Palestinians experience each day.”

A recent WCC conference in Geneva focused on adding momentum to global advocacy for peace in Israel/Palestine and Nigeria. Keynote speaker Afif Safieh, a former Palestinian ambassador, asked the world’s churches to lobby American society for a just peace, re-awakening American idealism.