Solidarity with the Palestinian People

Palestina

Missionary of Guadalupe José A. Amesty Rivera

On International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, since long ago, in this country, it seems that a dystopia is unfolding, “a perverse utopia in which reality happens in terms contrary to those of an ideal society.”

For example, in Jerusalem, an operation of ethnic cleansing seems to be taking place, one of the last events related to such would be the prospective forced eviction of the Palestinian inhabitants of Sheikh Jarrah and its consequent occupation by Israeli invaders.

This article is not intended as to create a polemic about the rights of Israel or those of the Palestinian people, but to throw light on the atrocities against the latter. In connection with this, the Fourth Commission of the UN General Assembly adopted this past 14 November 2022 the Palestinian resolution project to request a legal advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the nature of the israelí occupation in Palestinian lands, including Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian people suffers a real genocide to which they are subjected by Israeli administrations. Please, note we refer to the Palestinian people and the Government (Israeli administrations).

Historically, those who in 1967 represented almost 98% of the population (Palestinian,) and its substitution by Jewish invaders who represented around 55% of the Jerusalem population in 2021.

Furthermore, since 1948, the existence of the Palestinian population has been through turbulent and critical situations, which lately has only worsened repression and deaths.

We know that the UN’s Independent International Commissions of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, that includes Western Jerusalem, has determined that the Israeli presence in Palestine, especially when there are “reasonable grounds” for concluding that the Israeli occupation breaches the international law. It has been seventy-four years since the beginning of this tragic conflict.

Unfortunately, a relentless genocide is still committed against the Palestinian, against children, women, and elderly people. Too much time has elapsed since the ilegal and unpunished occupation; unreasonable use of violence, forced transportation of people, condemnation of lands, destruction of homes and colective punishment, the tragedy never stops.

We are christians and revolutionaries, loyal to the exposure of the violence against the weakest, and we want to express that any theology or committed pastoral set of ideas must make it their priority to take care of the pains and aspirations of oppressed peoples and ignored communities.

Likewise, the painful situation of the Palestinian people forces us to question some crucial and unavoidable theological matters.

A theological matter to review, we believe, is the one connected to the “people chosen” by God, that has been a classic theological dilema. Theologist Luis Rivera-Pagán points out that “the dangerous concept of “the people of God” has therefore nothing to do with a so called genetic progeny. It refers more to the interpretation of times in a prophetic hermeneutics of oppression and liberation.”

The other theological matter is to see Jerusalem as the holy city. It so happens that through its long history, Jerusalem has been simultaneously blessed and cursed by the claim that the three main Abrahamic monotheist religions stem from it as a holy city.

Rivera-Pagàn emphasizes that “the holiness associated with various locations in Palestine, Jerusalem first, has been the sad ground for endless violent and bloody conflicts. Do we have, as posed as a challenge by Palestinian theology, the intellectual and spiritual resources to reset this debate as to make the concept of holy ground a set point, not for holy war but for the dialogue, the understanding and the solidarity among the three main monotheist religions that share memories and sacred scripts? The answer to this crucial question would greatly decide the happy or unfortunate faith fo the different peoples that inhabit the lands of Palestine and, even, the peace of the world.”

Finally, we wish to finish with this topic, a thorny one for many of us who permit the theology of liberation highlight the hard, yet desirable, path of bond between justice and reconciliation, prophetic exposure and pacifying efforts, recovery of grievances history and healing forgiveness of two people’s memories: Israel and Palestine.

We believe in the approach of Isaiah (Isaiah. 65: 21-23), of a new creation, free of violence and belic devastation, a world in which communities in conflict, in this case Palestinian and Israeli “…will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. (…) They will not labor in vain, nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune.”

We are sure that this is the dream of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples, a dream of peace and reconociliation, which is also a longing for other peoples, acknowledging that both peoples need to heal historic and returning wounds of the Jewish holocaust and the Palestinian catastrophe.

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