Clergy, Interfaith Activists Aim To Prevent 'Religious War' Among Israelis And Palestinians

Posted: 11/19/2014 8:01 pm EST
Updated: 11/20/2014 11:59 am EST
Jaweed Kaleem
jaweed.kaleem@huffingtonpost.com
Paul Brandeis Raushenbush
pbraushenbush@yahoo.com

In the area around Gush Etzion, a series of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Shaul David Judelman on Tuesday joined Palestinian friends to write a letter to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, pleading for help. They asked Abbas to order clerics from Al-Aqsa, a Jerusalem mosque that’s the third-holiest in Islam, to go to schools and “teach for calming the city.” Jerusalem, the interfaith group wrote, was feeling different these days, with religious tension escalating.

“There is definitely a different tone echoing through the last two months,” Judelman, an American who has lived in the Bat Ayin settlement for more than 13 years, said in an interview, citing armed attackers a who stormed a synagogue on Tuesday, killing four rabbis and a police officer.

Weeks earlier, a Palestinian tried to kill an Israeli activist campaigning for greater Jewish access to the area of Al-Aqsa mosque, which sits on a hilltop holy to both faiths. Members of both faiths can visit, but only Muslims can pray. Jews call it the Temple Mount, and Muslims refer to as the Noble Sanctuary. The violence has bookmarked a series of protests and clashes between Israeli authorities and Palestinians.

But religion, said Judelman, a leader of Shorashim-Judur, an interfaith organization that joins Israelis and Palestinians in cultural exchange and education programs, may also work another way. “People involved in the dialogues and initiatives we're working on are there from their religion, not in spite of it,” he said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/19/religious-war-israel-palestine_n_6188568.html