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BY LINDA WORTHINGTON
UMCONNECTION STAFF

David Hosey, a delegate from the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference, speaks during a May 2 debate at the 2012 United Methodist General Conference in Tampa, Fla. Hosey spoke in favor of divestment from corporations profiting from Israeli settlement of occupied Palestinian territories. Hosey was a United Methodist mission intern in the Holy Land. The petition to require divestment was defeated. A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey.

“I lived in Israel and Palestine for 1 ½ years,” said David Hosey, a young adult alternate delegate to General Conference. “Each day, I saw destroyed homes and packed check points.”

Hosey spoke eloquently of the daily destruction of Palestinian homes and the difficulty of getting to work because of the check points, as did other speakers who addressed some 13 petitions on the Palestine-Israel issues being considered May 2.

The divestment proposal did not pass, but an alternative petition was approved.

The divestment proposal targeted three companies: Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions. It called for United Methodist monies to not be invested in those three companies, which provide equipment through the U.S. Government that causes harm to Palestinians when used by the Israelis.

Many non-delegates, as well as delegates, rallied in support of the divestment proposals, led by the United Methodist Kairos Response group. Calling a press conference April 26, in the nearby Waterside Marriott Hotel, many people who wished to attend were turned back because the room was overflowing with its limit of 100 people.

One person supporting the divestment proposals is Bishop Mary Ann Swenson of the Los Angeles Area. She was one of an ecumenical group of female bishops who toured Palestine-Israel and Jordan last fall, where, she said, that U.S. investments in Israel are not working.

She spoke about the hardships Palestinians face living under Israeli occupation, surrounded by Jewish-only settlements and the separation wall that Israel is building illegally on Palestinian land in the West Bank. She said she saw “people that had to climb down the back alley and carry their babies through a back window to get into their homes.”  At the same time, 1500 soldiers protect a few people in the settlement.  “I saw the homes being demolished by Caterpillar,” which provides earth-moving equipment and other machinery to the US government, (which) supplies Israel.

"The harsh reality endured by millions of Palestinians requires people and organizations of conscience to divest from those companies … profiting from the occupation and subjugation of Palestinians,” said Archbishop Desmond Tutu. "Such action made an enormous difference in apartheid South Africa.”

A speaker at the Kairos press briefing, Daoud Nassar, a Palestinian Christian and founder of a non-profit group called Tent of Nations, has spoken in churches in the Washington area. His family has been struggling for two decades against the Israeli government that is trying to  confiscate their family farm near Bethlehem, bought in 1916. “We are not allowed to have running water, electricity, or building permits,” he told the standing-room-only crowd.  

Many people, who were against divestment, were strong in their support of investment in companies who work in Palestine.  The Rev. Alex Joiner, from the Virginia Conference, circulated a paper explaining his and others’ viewpoints. He said, “Encouraging economic investment in Palestine is a positive, potentially transformative strategy, and it is to be preferred to the punitive options of encouraging divestment and boycotts of Israel or of companies doing business with Israel.”

While investment does not take the place of a political solution, it can improve the lives of Palestinians even under the current situation, in which the per capita GDP is $1,500. Palestinians who are empowered financially are in a better position for political empowerment.

“What better way for the church to act as peacemakers than to engage in actual investment,” Joiner said. Wise investment can help to build up Palestinian society and infrastructure, which will help to ensure a sound and viable sovereign state when a political solution is found,” he said.  

Last March, the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, asked Episcopalians to consider investing “in legitimate development in Palestine’s West Bank and in Gaza.” Divestment or boycott of Israel will only end in punishing Palestinians economically, she said.

Kairos activists were disappointed in the outcome of the divestment petition, but felt a victory, nevertheless, because of raising awareness of the suffering of Palestinians living under Israel’s nearly 45-year-old military occupation and the colonization of their lands. “The myth that Christians are leaving the Holy Land because of Muslim pressure has been exposed as false,” a spokesperson said.  

Many American churches and American Christians have relationships with Palestinian Christians, and question how to be positively engaged and effective. How do we acknowledge the complexity of the conflict and help Palestinians and Israelis move toward the day when they live at peace as neighbors, is a question we all must consider.