The Episcopal Peace Fellowship’s Palestine/Israel Network [PIN] was formed in 2010 in response to the Kairos Palestine Document’s call for Christian support to end the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian lands. The fundamental mission of EPF-PIN is to work for a more vibrant response in The Episcopal Church to the rapidly deteriorating situation for Palestinian human rights in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, not to mention the millions of Palestinian refugees, confined in camps in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza, whose lives are severely impacted by the loss of UNWRA funding in 2018.
PIN speaks to the church, not for the church. Yet our church has not been silent. Over thirty years of prayerful decision-making in General Convention, our denomination’s highest authority, has called for justice and security for all in Palestine/Israel: hold in escrow U.S. aid to Israel by an amount equal to funds invested in expansion of Settlements in West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem (1991); Israeli settlements in the occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal under international law (1994 ); affirms the principle of the right of return for every Palestinian (2000). demolition of Palestinian homes in the Occupied Territories is illegal under international law (2003); call for “the withdrawal by Israel from all occupied Palestinian territories” (2006); calls on the U.S. Government “to press the State of Israel to end the blockade of the Gaza Strip” (2006, 2010, 2014).
Since 2010, PIN has worked with allies like Jewish Voice for Peace, American Friends Service Committee, Sabeel, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights to offer testimony on behalf of our resolutions at General Convention. It has been persuasive and educational for deputies to hear the voices of Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, and fellow Christians raised in personal witness on behalf of Palestinian human rights. In 2018, the most recent Convention, six resolutions became Episcopal Church policy, among them: safeguarding the rights of Palestinian children from night arrests, blindfolds, separation from parents, isolation, coerced confessions; confirming the status of Jerusalem as the shared capital of Israel and a future Palestinian state; reinstating U.S. funding for UNRWA and USAID projects for Palestinians; adopt the Evangelical Lutheran Church’s model for an investment screen based on human rights violations, to establish a no-buy list for church investments, including U.S. corporations profiting from the Occupation.
The Episcopal Church policy does not at this time formally support the BDS Movement, although the precedent of support for the boycott to pressure South Africa is part of our history. EPF-PIN, in its foundational charter, responded to the 2009 Kairos Palestine Document’s prayerful call by Palestinian Christians to use economic pressure to end the Israeli Occupation. PIN believes economic tactics are justified after fifty years of ever-intensifying military Occupation and settlement expansion, deadly violence against unarmed
Palestinian civilians demonstrating at the Gaza security barrier, along with political developments such as the Jewish Nation State Law, threats of annexation and the overt racism against Arab citizens expressed in recent Israeli elections.
BDS remains controversial and pro-Israel voices condemn BDS proponents for trying to wipe Israel from the map, among other charges. It is PIN’s observation that the people being wiped from the map with ethnic cleansing, land seizures, water seizure, house demolitions, sniper fire at the Gaza border, etc. are not Jewish Israelis but the native Palestinians. Gaza will be uninhabitable by 2020 after a decade of total land, air and sea blockade. Furthermore, PIN does not see these developments as novelties, but logical extensions of policies rooted in the Nakba at the very foundation of the State of Israel. Thirty years of resolutions in our church have had no impact on our own government or the expansionist Israeli policies that trample on the human rights of the millions of Palestinian people who share the land. The nonviolent tactic of economic pressure appears to PIN to be an international strategy for effecting peace with justice in line with our Baptismal Covenant. We see boycotts, sanctions and divestment as a high form of free speech and quite an effective mode of communication, protected by our Constitution.
On Sept. 17, 2019, twenty-two Christian leaders sent a letter to the Trump Administration in response to the expected release of Peace to Prosperity: a New Vision for the Palestinian People. EPF-PIN supports this letter, signed by the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, the Rt. Rev. Michael Curry. We believe the vision for peace that this letter spells out is in accord with 30 years of Episcopal Church policy: “A truly viable peace can only be achieved by lifting the Gaza blockade, by ending the Israeli occupation of territories captured in 1967, through the realization of Palestinian self-determination, the recognition of Jerusalem as a shared capital for Israelis and Palestinians and the recognition and fulfillment of the rights of Palestinian refugees. Such a peace can only be reached in consultation with leaders representing both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.”