Palestine, the first of the seminars, the first results

Dr. Michel E. Abs

Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches

In the context of working to rehabilitate social capital, restore the concept of human dignity, and improve relations between the groups that make up the Middle East, leading to a cohesive society, the team in charge of this program in the Middle East Council of Churches launched a series of cultural and intellectual seminars that will last for a year, at a rate of one per month.

The first of the symposia was about Palestine, which was held on Friday, July 29, online, firstly because of the resurgence of the pandemic and secondly for technical reasons related to power supply failure in Lebanon.

The topic of the symposium was about the people of Palestine's quest for freedom from a Christian perspective. The Secretary-General and the program's work team participated in the symposium, in addition to four speakers that addressed the issue from various aspects. The seminar was attended by 100 people, in addition to about 75 who could not enter for technical reasons. The recording of the episode will be available over the next few days on the MECC's social media networks.

The first thing that draws attention in this symposium is the diversity of the attendees in terms of national, religious, ethnic, professional and age affiliation due to the importance and uniqueness of the topic at the present period. Some of the senior persons have forgotten - and those who are younger are not aware - what Christians and Christianity, Palestinian and Arab, did for Palestine, the cause and the people, so it was necessary to remind and update the information about Christian contribution to the Palestinian cause.

In the seventies and eighties of the last century, before and during the outbreak of the Lebanese war, Christians of all political affiliations, including the Middle East Council of Churches, rendered outstanding services to the Palestinian people, on the land of Palestine and in the diaspora, in all the countries of the diaspora, including Lebanon, where hostility has spread between the two peoples to the point of lethality, massacres and expulsion. We will not go through a political assessment of the matter, as it is behind us, but history has proven the correctness of the trend that urges fraternity instead of wars that destroys everybody and everything.

Our starting point was, we, the conciliators that wars are managed foreign powers, and that the privileged beneficiaries are the enemies of this nation and the industry of arms and ammunitions. As for the victims, they are always and forever the innocent civilians who have nothing to do with what is going on and who reap all the results of the frenzy of violence.

When we listen to the lectures and especially the interventions of participants, we realize to what extent people are ignorant of each other, and try to demonize each other, thus attributing to each other intentions that are not always correct.

Many have discovered that the Lebanese in general do not hate the Palestinians, and that the Christians, both Lebanese and non-Lebanese, have done to the cause of this suffering people

what no one else has done. The Lebanese war, which lasted for 15 years, from 1975 to 1990, made the Palestinians develop the feeling that the Lebanese, especially the Christians, hate them, and this matter was told to me directly more than once. As for the historical and geographical reality, the south of Lebanon is the same as the north of Palestine, whether in terms of family affiliation, dialect, customs, culture and folklore. We can also generalize this to both peoples in terms of many civilization, cultural and other elements. Have people forgotten that Lebanon and Palestine historically formed the homeland called the land of Canaan?

This first symposium opened many doors for dialogue between peoples, who are essentially one people transformed into nations by virtue of division and fragmentation. The more we bring together groups of different national, religious, or ethnic affiliations who are apart or antagonize each other, the more we fight the notion that man is the enemy of what he ignores. Seminars are a means of dialogue, acquaintance and mutual maturation between peoples and cultures.

Dialogue is our goal as much as knowledge is our goal as well. We cannot dream of a homogeneous and reconciled Middle East unless we promote a culture of dialogue and interaction. It is a war on shattering and fragmentation, and what we mention here applies to Syria and Iraq. The constituent groups of these societies have become alienated from each other after having lived in harmony and social unity for thousands of years, despite the crises that afflicted their serenity from time to time during their history.

In the context of this presentation and this explanation, we must draw attention to the fact that if there were Christians who struggled for Palestine from a political point of view, a large number of Christians struggled, with the same illumination of determination, from a religious point of view, based on the human and social values that Christianity exuded, whether through the words or actions of the Incarnate Lord of Salvation, or through what the sayings and deeds of the apostles and martyrs.

Christianity is the supporter of the weak, the marginalized, the stranger, the refugee, and the heavy burdened, everyone who is under the weight of hard life, and everyone who is overwhelmed by sufferings. Christianity is the way to truth because truth is freedom.

Christians who support the Palestinian cause find the elements of their struggle from the words of the Master, His stances, and His actions. They also rely on the basic principles that make up Christian theology and values, which constitute an unparalleled source of struggle.

I conclude this article with some excerpts from the audience:

"I did not expect that there are people engaged in their love for Palestine and in working for Palestine in this way"

"To a large extent, there is work, struggle and solidarity with us, as if you are sharing the suffering and occupation with us."

"I used to say a long time before I got to know you that the people of Lebanon hate us... I was shocked by the extent of what I found, not only solidarity, but involvement in work for Palestine."

"The poet was right when he said that Beirut is our last tent...You are the ones who stayed with us."

"Peace to you from Jerusalem, peace to you from Palestine."

The suffering people of Palestine, under occupation, daily oppression and crucified for three quarters of a century, are inspired by the Master who incarnated on this land, who defied annihilation and rolled the stone.

His resurrection is to come.