| United Methodists join in urgent Mideast trip By Tim Tanton
United Methodist News Service A delegation from the National Council of Churches will visit leaders around the Middle East this month, listening to their concerns and promoting peace in the face of intensifying Israeli-Palestinian violence. The April 16-27 visit, planned for months, has become all the more urgent, said the Rev. Bob Edgar, a United Methodist and top staff executive of the National Council of Churches. Edgar, quoted in a council news release, spoke after an April 2 interfaith prayer service for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. We go at the invitation of the Middle East Council of Churches to offer pastoral support for Christians in the Holy Land; seek ways churches in the United States and the Holy Land can collaborate to promote a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians; encourage Christians, Jews and Muslims working for peace; and bring our ecumenical witness for peace and justice to U.S., Israeli and Palestinian political leaders in the region, Edgar said. Besides Edgar, the 15-member delegation will include two other United Methodists: Jim Winkler, top staff executive of the denominations Board of Church and Society in Washington; and the Rev. Joe Hale of Waynesville, N.C., former denominational and world Methodist executive who has had a lifelong concern about Middle East issues. Winkler visited the Middle East in February as part of a fact-finding delegation of four United Methodist bishops and three general church agency executives. Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestinian National Authority, was among the leaders that the delegation visited in February. Now, the Israeli Army has Arafat pinned down in his own offices. Watching the destruction of his compound on television is really quite amazing, considering (I was) just there a few weeks ago, Winkler said. Despite the escalation in violence, Winkler said he isnt overly concerned about his physical safety, since the delegation generally will not be in the crowded types of places that Palestinian suicide bombers tend to attack. The presence of U.S. church leaders is important to Christian clergy working in the area, who rely on the visitors to interpret what is happening in the Holy Land for policy makers, the media and church members back home, Winkler said. On his last trip, he also drew a strong sense of how much Christians in the Holy Land felt supported by the presence of the U.S. visitors at a time when violence is a fact of everyday life. Its an enormously stressful situation. The Christian leaders there emphasized to him the importance of ending the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. Simply withdrawing from the West Bank would go a heck of a long way toward making the grounds of peace possible, Winkler said. Hale shares that view, noting that the fundamental issue isnt that Palestinians and Israelis dislike each other. The basic issue is that one side is under occupation and one side is the occupier. That occupation has brought humiliation, curfews, military sieges and the destruction of homes, Hale noted. Young people are being rounded up without charges as the Israeli forces continue their military action despite President Bushs call on April 4 for an end to the incursion, he said. There is no way that kind of activity makes for peace, just bitterness. He condemned the actions of the Palestinian suicide bombers, who he sees as products of a climate in which people are asking: What do I have to live for? As long as theres an occupation and a brutal occupation theres going to be that kind of activity, and it wont be stamped out. | 
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