Â鶹Éç

Good morning.

It was in the spring of 1995 that I went with the Â鶹Éç to be part of a Songs of Praise programme in the Holy Land. It was a glorious mix of pilgrimage, singing and programme making. We visited the traditional holy places and listened to Christians, Jews and Muslims talking about their hopes and fears. On a previous trip I’d made during the first Intifada - which had ended a few years earlier - there had been visible hostility on the streets of Jerusalem and constant watchfulness on people’s faces.

But by 1995 everything had changed. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had shaken hands at the White House, and when we arrived, the whole atmosphere was different. We went to the West Bank, to the birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem, and found streets full of new buildings, as Palestinians who had left for America and Europe had come home and were investing in the future. We also went to the Golan Heights, a flashpoint for conflict since the Six Day war. There we stayed overnight in an Orthodox Kibbutz. The residents told us how after a great deal of soul-searching they had begun to reach out to their Arab neighbours and try to forge a new relationship with them. In the September of the same year the Oslo 2 Peace accord was signed in Egypt which paved the way towards a resolution of the conflict between Israel and what was then the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.

Then in November at a rally in Tel Aviv to support the peace accords Yitzhak Rabin was shot dead by an Israeli assassin.

I call this to mind today because the moment of hope that I witnessed was so striking, so real. The money and effort being invested in new building and infrastruture gave me a surprising new take on the well known remark of Jesus that ‘where your treasure is there your heart will be also’. It felt as though a real change of heart had taken place and bricks, mortar and neighbourliness were signs of a better future breaking in. Of course people on both sides of today’s conflict will say that the Oslo accords were simply not good enough, the problems were too intractable, the present hostilities can never be resolved.

Memory can be poisonous, locking people into narratives of hatred, but memory can also be redemptive. Today I treasure that moment of hope. Today I can only pray that it will come again, and when it does the longing for a just peace will be fulfilled.

Show less