MIDDLE EAST
JERUSALEM

The Only Policy
that LIBERATES
Us from War
With tensions at the breaking point and diplomacy struggling for breath, the journey toward peace seems blocked as never before. The new signs of Arab–Israeli conflict evoke fear of a third Intifada. FR. VINCENT NAGLE, a missionary priest active in Israel and Palestine, tells us about life where man is a prisoner of ideology, and explains why, “politically,” joy is the most useful thing.

by Alessandra Stoppa

On the surface, things seem clear. The violence that exploded in mid-March in various zones of Jerusalem was the attempt of Islamic movements, beginning with Hamas, to heighten tensions. After the announcement of new Israeli settlements in the eastern zone of the Holy City, those who live there have seen Old Jerusalem filled with thousands of soldiers, and the crossing points to the occupied territories closed for days.
The Palestinian rock throwing and clashes with Israeli security forces were followed by the launch of a Qassam rocket from Gaza to a kibbutz in southern Israel. It didn’t come from Hamas. It is the sign that groups aligned with Al Qaeda have become rooted in the Gaza Strip; they consider Hamas too soft and are ready to exploit the situation of crisis. In the same days that international diplomacy was seeking to re-open negotiations with the visits of American Vice President Joe Biden and EU Foreign Affairs Chief Catherine Ashton, there were widespread calls for violent resistence: Sheikh Kamal Khatib, head of the Islamic Movement in Israel, proclaimed a “day of rage,” reacting against the rededication of the Hurva synagogue in the Old City,  on the site of the Al-Aqsa mosque.

No advantage. A few days later, while in the Gaza Strip Ban Ki Moon, General Secretary of the United Nations, criticized the Israeli blockade, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visiting the American Congress and the White House, chilled the quartet of mediators–the United States, the United Nations, the European Union, and Moscow–by announcing that the request to stop the settlements had been categorically rejected. “Jerusalem isn’t a colony; it’s our capital,” said Netanyahu, threatening that if the Palestinians don’t give up their requests, “the peace talks will cease for a year.” The 1,600 new homes and the synagogue rededication are not the only reasons for the return to violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Recently, the Israeli government published an official list of the sites of national interest, including the Tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem and that of the Patriarchs in Hebron, which are holy sites for Muslims.
“But people don’t want a return to chaos. People know that a third Intifada wouldn’t do any good.” Father Vincent doesn’t have a car, but two or three times a week goes to the West Bank. He lives in the Old City and spends the weekend in Ramallah. He speaks a great deal with the taxi drivers and mixes a lot with the local residents. “The common people see no advantage to violent resistance; those who are influenced are so because they’re at the command of the radical leaders. But at the explicit ‘call’ of the leaders, the response, thanks be to God, was less than they expected.” Many leaders incite, but few are inclined to follow them.
But, numbers aside, those on the streets throwing rocks were all young people. “This fact has only one cause, which is the gravest and is the true problem: here, everything is politicized.” Father Vincent Nagle, a missionary of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Charles Borromeo, works for the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Fouad Twal, and helps in the parish in Ramallah.
For a year after his arrival in the Holy  Land, Nagle lived with an Arab family, where he saw the children, aged 9 and 12, spend all their free time on the Internet, looking at the political sites, scrolling name-by-name through the lists of killed Palestinians. “They begin militancy in the movements at a very young age, at 13 or 14. Most of them haven’t had a good education. For this reason, they are weak and, out of fear that the voice of their people will be lost, they let themselves be manipulated.” In daily life, Israeli pressure has become more harsh. “A few days ago, I was on a bus going to Bethlehem,” he recounts. “A few hundred meters from the old walls of Jerusalem, we were stopped by Israeli soldiers.” They made only the Palestinian young men get off. Nagle watched from the window. Within a few minutes, the check had transformed into a clash. A soldier began screaming in the face of a young man who had provoked him, shoving him in the chest with his fingers. The others joined in and beat him, then handcuffed him. “These provocations are felt very deeply, by both sides. The other mustn’t exist.” This is seen in the maps, where the State of Israel doesn’t exist, or, vice-versa, a Palestinian state doesn’t exist. “This is the mentality that pervades everything. And Israel continues to demonstrate that it has no intention of normalizing relations.” These positions distance the parties from the solution on the basis of “two peoples, two states,” one that also entails restitution of the Golan Heights to Syria.
Living immersed in this situation every day has made Fr. Vincent often think that it is impossible for people to believe that there can be something that comes before politics. Now he is sure of this. “Humanly, it is impossible to think that judgement isn’t political, and to live accordingly. If it doesn’t happen, it’s impossible.” He’s not talking about another thought, or another position to hold in a daily life shattered by such conflict. He’s talking about Pope Benedict XVI’s Mass in front of the Bethlehem Basilica last May, with seven or eight thousand faithful. “An unimaginable joy exploded there. It was the joy of rebirth. The joy and freedom that exploded in that moment were the intuition of man before something that gives him life.”
In the days of the recent tensions, Nagle met with friends to work on School of Community. “Without deciding to do so, we spent the whole time talking about the memory of that day with the Pope, because in that moment we felt looked at, understood, and liberated. Today, this is a discovery to pray for.” For example, now they’re working on charity, beginning with Is It Possible to Live This Way? by Fr. Luigi Giussani. “We help each other to see that the problem isn’t how the judgment of faith changes life, or what I have to do, but what this judgment is, what charity is, the love of God for us. For us, it’s the return to staying with the Pope, the unexpected smile and freedom” that at the time also swept away all the political worries within the Christian and Catholic community, opposed to the “appropriacy” of that visit.

Beyond ideologies. Today, Fr. Vincent lives and enjoys the gratuitous gestures, even the smallest, that shore up everyday life, from all sorts of sources. They enable him to experience another quality of life. “They are a very powerful sign: they erase the balance sheet, because they put us back in relationship with the Creator, who has given us forgiveness and lifted the burden that oppressed us.” Then he stops, saying, “Here, it’s so clear that man does not give himself joy and freedom.” And yet, they are the only things that don’t close him inside ideologies.Everything can be manipulated politically; almost any emotion can be manipulated, fear most of all. Joy, no. “Politically, the most useful thing is joy.”