NEWS FROM
LUTHERAN WORLD RELIEF
April 12, 2002
For more information contact Jonathan Frerichs at (410) 230-2802.
In this news release:
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Help Needed: Food and Medicines For Palestinians
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Bethlehem Pastor Tells ABC News That War Won't Work
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PBS Show Covers Coffee That is Fair to Farmers and Good For Lutherans
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East Africa Odyssey: Join LWR Study Visit On-Line
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Afghanistan Earthquake Aid Delivery Completed
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An Open Letter To U.S. Secretary Of State Colin Powell in Jerusalem
HELP NEEDED: FOOD AND MEDICINES FOR PALESTINIANS
Baltimore, April 12, 2002 -- Lutheran World Relief is requesting donations for urgently needed food and medicines for Palestinians trapped by two weeks of burgeoning violence.
As funding permits 10,000 families are receiving food packages from a local partner organization of LWR. The parcels go to families whose homes are destroyed or who are cut off from their jobs or farms. The project costs $550,000.
At Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem medical supplies are needed for 13 new dialysis patients. The new patients-a 40-percent increase over normal capacity for the dialysis unit-have reached Jerusalem with great difficulty from besieged towns like Nablus in the West Bank.
The LWF hospital sent relief to Nablus two days ago in a convoy accompanied by peace monitors from Icelandic Church Aid and DanChurchAid of Denmark. The shipment included critical supplies for a hard-pressed hospital in that densely populated city, where militant Palestinians have been fighting Israeli troops, tanks and helicopters. Augusta Victoria is seeking $770,000 for emergency care in East Jerusalem and primary care at village clinics in the West Bank. For months now, most sick and wounded Palestinians have not been able to reach the refugee hospital in Jerusalem.
LWR has allocated $30,000 for these emergency needs and welcomes contributions of further funds. In recent months LWR has provided some $800,000 worth of aid for medical, relief, rehabilitation and vocational programs among Palestinians.
The current two-week invasion of the West Bank has cut off whole towns and villages. Hundreds of thousands of people are without adequate food, water, electricity and basic services. There has been widespread destruction of buildings and infrastructure, soldiers have prevented ambulances from reaching casualties, and health services have collapsed. Loss of life is still unknown.
An LWR partner organization based in East Jerusalem, the YMCA, reported this week that Israeli forces blew up part of its offices there and in Ramallah. Staff were unable to reach the Ramallah premises because of the siege and curfew there. YMCA staff in the occupied territories has been trapped in their homes-- including experts in physical rehabilitation and trauma counseling whose work is supported by LWR.
To contribute: Donations may be made by credit card via 800-number, on-line or by check. You may designate your gift: "Middle East Crisis." Please consider making an unrestricted donation, which will enable LWR to use your gift where it is needed most.
Lutheran World Relief
P.O. Box 17061
Baltimore, MD 21298-9832
1-800-LWR-LWR2
BETHLEHEM PASTOR TELLS ABC NEWS THAT WAR WON'T WORK
Bethlehem, April 9, 2002 -- ABC Nightly News today interviewed Rev. Mitri Raheb, the pastor of Bethlehem's Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church. Raheb showed damage to his home, church and offices, including 38 damaged doors and more than 50 blown-out windows. He told ABC the military onslaught against Bethlehem and its residents may have captured 15 radical fighters but it will motivate 1,500 more people to resist. Raheb, his family and parishioners have endured two weeks of attacks. Israeli soldiers interrupted today's interview at gunpoint and forced the press to leave.
PBS SHOW COVERS COFFEE THAT IS FAIR TO FARMERS AND GOOD FOR LUTHERANS
Baltimore, April 12, 2002 - "Market to Market" on PBS television stations will cover fair trade coffee and the LWR Coffee Project in its show during the weekend of April 19. The program is broadcast in twenty states, mostly in the farm belt, including Iowa (where it is produced), Minnesota, both Dakotas, Wisconsin, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, Ohio and Texas. (See local listings for times in your area or visit http://www.lwr.org/coffee/tv).
With world coffee prices at record lows, fairly traded coffee is helping increasing numbers of small, low-income farmers to keep their land and livelihoods. Fair trade puts poor farmers first in the economics of growing coffee, guaranteeing a minimum price, affordable credit and fair terms for doing business. About 2,000 Lutheran parishes participate in the LWR Coffee Project that brings fair trade coffee to congregations, individuals and communities.
EAST AFRICA ODYSSEY: JOIN LWR STUDY VISIT ON-LINE
Baltimore, April 12, 2002 - "Although it rained very hard today," says the East Africa diary on LWR's web site, "the spirits of our group remain high thanks to the faces of children and what LWR and its many partners are accomplishing."
An LWR study group in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania is now visiting people and projects that address H.I.V. and AIDS.
"We were impressed by the multi-faceted approach to H.I.V./AIDS. The good news is that the infection rate has dropped...hope," the diary continues, "is being realized now. Please continue to remember Africa in your prayers."
The 17 group members are filing diaries and photos on-line at http://www.lwr.org/study.
AFGHANISTAN EARTHQUAKE AID DELIVERY COMPLETED
Baltimore, April 12, 2002 - Since an earthquake hit northern Afghanistan two weeks ago, the inter-church emergency alliance ACT has delivered enough tents, bedding, food, jerry cans and plastic sheeting to help 3,500 families in the affected area. The relief goods were drawn from stocks already in Afghanistan for post-war aid work. LWR is a member of ACT. A less powerful earthquake occurred in the same area today.
AN OPEN LETTER TO U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN POWELL IN JERUSALEM
[This letter to Secretary Powell is from expatriate Christians who work in the Holy Land, including the Lutheran pastor in the Old City of Jerusalem. It explains many of the circumstances afflicting the people that LWR partner organizations serve in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.]
Dear Mr. Secretary,
"... No one can remain indifferent to the injustice of which the Palestinian people have been victims for more than fifty years. No one can contest the right of the Israeli people to live in security. But neither can anyone forget the innocent victims who on both sides fall day after day under the blows of violence. Weapons and bloody attacks will never be the right means for making a political statement to the other side. Nor is the logic of the law of retaliation capable any longer of leading to paths of peace." John Paul II (January 10, 2002)
We, the undersigned, have experienced and can attest to the truth of these words of Pope John Paul II. We are members of several English-speaking Christian communities in the Holy Land who have been living in Israel and in the Occupied Territories. Our length of residence ranges from six months to twenty years. We represent a number of English-speaking nationalities, predominantly American but also many others, and a wide variety of backgrounds and professions. We include students and professors, parents and clergy, US government/USAID personnel, heads/personnel of American and other non-governmental aid agencies, international diplomats, officials working for UN agencies and health and education professionals.
We are writing to you out of a deep concern and urgency. The violent and horrible events in this land have escalated in recent weeks. America is deeply involved in this conflict both as a broker of the peace process and as a supplier of weapons. The increased violence has underscored the failure of successive American administrations to implement defined policies for the resolution of this conflict.
Twenty-five years have passed since President Sadat visited Jerusalem and opened the way to the Camp David peace process. Camp David was eventually succeeded by the Oslo Accords, then the Wye River Agreement, and more recently by the Mitchell and Tenet reports. None of these agreements have been implemented. A generation of Israeli and Palestinian youth has grown up observing the lack of political will of the United States government to implement our defined policies for the Middle East.
Moderates on both sides of this conflict have been marginalized and discredited by the failure to bring about a just and lasting peace. Both the Israeli creation of "facts on the ground," and the terror attacks against innocent civilians, have succeeded in delaying the timeframe and in presenting further obstacles to the search for a just and lasting peace.
The US government has accepted such negative developments with apparent equanimity. It has capitulated to the demands and excesses of the extremists and radicals on both sides who have no interest in peace and reconciliation.
To date, it has failed to address the major cause of the problem - the oppressive and illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The legitimate human and civil rights of the Palestinian people and their right to their own national homeland have been denied - rights that most peoples of the earth enjoy and take for granted. Palestinians daily face the expropriation of their land and the unrelenting construction on this land of Israeli settlements and settlement roads.
Over the last 18 months ordinary Palestinians have also suffered under the Israeli 'closures' and military siege, which have cut them off from their places of employment, study, basic health-care and families.
During this period, our Christian communities have seen the horrific effects of the work of suicide-bombers and other militants on the people and cities of Israel, and some have narrowly escaped injury in such incidents. Some among us, however, can also testify to having personally eye-witnessed a wide range of violations of Palestinian basic human rights and personal freedoms by the Israeli authorities, including:
... house demolitions with families made homeless;
... uprooting of ancient olive and citrus groves on which multiple families are dependent for their livelihoods;
... families cowering in terror as US-manufactured missiles shower down indiscriminately on civilian areas from US-manufactured Apache helicopters and F-16 bombers, or from Israeli tanks;
... shelling of buildings right beside foreign diplomatic and UN offices in Ramallah and Gaza, recklessly endangering their international and other staff;
... indiscriminate shootings by IDF soldiers at checkpoints of civilians, including children, women, the elderly and the disabled; as well as firing of tear gas at such people crossing the checkpoints on foot by young, seemingly bored or frightened IDF recruits;
... severe harassment and physical abuse of Palestinians of all ages at such checkpoints;
... inappropriate handling of young Arab women at these locations;
... regular obstruction of teachers and students trying to reach schools and universities;
... harassment and obstruction of ambulances trying to carry emergency cases to hospital and blocking of UNRWA and other humanitarian relief operations.
Similar incidents of this kind have been widely reported on by almost all the main Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights and humanitarian organizations.
All the members of our Christian communities unequivocally condemn and reject terrorism and violence as a means of advancing the political cause of the Palestinians, and fully recognize the right of the Israeli people to live in peace and security in their own state. Our experience here also helps us understand why, in their desperation, some young Palestinians see no other options available to them and nothing for them to live for.
The US Administration has focused predominantly on the admittedly horrific and unacceptable violence of the Palestinian militants against Israelis but it has given insufficient attention both to the causes of Palestinian militancy and terror, and the daily terror and war that Israel is inflicting with impunity on the largely civilian Palestinian population. This has, not surprisingly, led to the emergence of a strong sense of moral outrage on the part of the majority of Arabs and Muslims worldwide. It has also generated a major questioning among millions of people of conscience internationally of the credibility, impartiality and moral authority of the US government and its policies. This in turn has contributed significantly to the hostility felt by many people internationally towards the US, its government and its citizens.
There is an urgent need for the resolution of this conflict. There is a solution possible, but it is neither a military one, nor a terrorist one. The parameters of the solution have been clearly delineated and the vision spelled out by you yourself, Mr. Secretary, in Louisville, and by President Bush at the UN. They are expressed in US-sponsored Security Council Resolution 1397, a very welcome initiative indeed; and also in the proposals recently set forth by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and, most tantalizingly of all, in the Taba talks that ended in January last year, which brought the two sides to the brink of an historic breakthrough on most of the highly complex and deeply entrenched issues dividing the two sides.
It is no longer appropriate to discuss proposals about interim solutions or arrangements. These interim policies have been the framework under which Israel has extended and expanded its illegal presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The US government has been a proponent of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now is the time for the US government to operate within the rubric of the United Nations and to finalize a settlement to this conflict in accordance with Resolutions 242, 338 and 1397.
This is a period in history that requires clear policy definition, firm political will, and consistency in action by the US government. The US government needs to display a type of "tough love" that links funding assistance with policy decisions that express its concern for all the peoples of this land.
We welcome General Zinni to Jerusalem and recognize the very severe obstacles he faces. We express the fervent hope that he will continue to receive the firm political backing, and strong, balanced mandate he needs from the top levels of his Administration in order to broker a just and lasting peace.
It is the consensus of the undersigned members of our Christian communities that the only way to achieve success will be a firm, even-handed approach exerting equal pressure on both parties to halt the violence and provocation.
The presence of international observers is also crucial for achieving this halt to violence and facilitating the return to negotiations. Necessary also is a simultaneous move to develop the political dimension, through the implementation of the Mitchell Report and the resumption of final status negotiations.
To demand that President Arafat deliver a unilateral cease-fire while the closures remain firmly in place and Israeli military offensives and provocation continue, cannot and will not succeed.
In the interests of the Israeli people who are suffering so much from the conflict, the United States must also persuade the Israeli government to play its part, by implementing parallel measures to lift the military and economic siege and by progressing toward finalizing negotiations.
Consistency of will to move beyond the rhetoric of US policy and to implement its stated goals will restore the credibility to the peace process and to the role the US government seeks to play as the honest broker of the peace process.
As people of faith, committed to the struggle for peace, justice and reconciliation, we are convinced that greed and arrogance, violence and death, will not have the final word. We have a deep love for this Land and for all of its people.
Our experience here has taught us to make our own this simple insight from John Paul II: One against the other, neither Israelis nor Palestinians can win the war. But together they can win the peace. We hope and pray that all sides in this present conflict come to the same recognition.
[Members of English-Speaking Christian Communities in the Holy Land.]
