Local churches in Palestine/Israel are looking to the whole fellowship of the World Council of Churches to play a stronger role in supporting local churches' struggles for a just peace there.
This has been the main finding of a delegation led by the WCC's General Secretary Rev Dr Samuel Kobia who visited Palestine/Israel between 21 and 26 June.
A new advocacy forum launched prior to the visit and ecumenical accompaniment are high on the list of priority actions for the local churches in pursuit of this goal.
"The visit allowed us to confirm that the WCC does have a role to play in strengthening and supporting the churches in Palestine/Israel," said WCC delegation member Rev Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, head of the Church of Norway's Council on Ecumenical and International Relations.
"In so doing, it will be crucial to carefully listen to the churches in the Holy Land and let them decide what kind of support they need," he added.
The Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum was recently launched in Jordan and welcomed by the heads of churches in Jerusalem. Kobia said the new forum would be "a privileged tool to facilitate greater involvement of the WCC member churches in advocacy efforts for a just peace in the region".
"It will enable our member churches to increase the work in awareness raising as well as in education both of their constituencies and the public at large," he said.
WCC central committee and youth body member Christine Biere, from the Evangelical Church in Germany, was also part of the ecumenical delegation. She said that youth issues should be "on the front-line" of the forum's concerns and identified peace education for youth and children as a "key factor" for success as well as a main concern of the local churches.
The WCC's Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine/Israel (EAPPI) has received wide endorsement as a way for churches worldwide to get involved in the struggle for a just peace.
The WCC delegation has already had a first-hand introduction to the accompaniers' work, having seen EAPPI volunteers at work in Jayyous, a small West Bank town that has been cut off from its farming lands. The WCC delegation has also been to the Palestinian city of Hebron where commercial life is being hampered by 400 radical Israeli settlers, Aida, a refugee camp of some 4600 people displaced by the 1948 war, and Bethlehem, which the WCC said was "being suffocated" by the Israeli Government's separation barrier.
"Ecumenical accompaniers are the eyes and ears of the ecumenical family in the midst of the conflict on the ground," said Kobia at the end of his tour of gates, checkpoints, and empty streets with closed shops.
The WCC delegation met the mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, as well as the two chief rabbis of Israel, Rabbi Yona Metzger (Ashkenazi) and Shlomo Amar (Sephardi). Issues of education for peace and reconciliation, inter-religious relations and dialogue as well as common values were discussed.
"An education founded on solid moral ground needs to replace the propaganda-type education that demonises the other and encourages hatred," said Kobia. "If extremists on both sides are allowed to define what it is to be Palestinian or Israeli, then we are in trouble."
The delegation visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem's Old City. The group also attended a Shabbat service at the synagogue Kol HaNeshama, prayed at the Western Wall, and paid a tribute to Holocaust victims at the Yad Vashem memorial.
The delegation visited Christian holy sites in Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem. They also visited Augusta Victoria Hospital of the Lutheran World Federation on the Mount of Olives; met with members of local Christian organisations in Bethlehem, and worshipped at St George's Cathedral in Jerusalem.
CEC central committee member HE Metropolitan Emmanuel (Adamakis) of France from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople was also part of the WCC delegation, which was accompanied by Ruth Kobia, and other WCC staff members.