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 PrintableVersion Letter from AmericaPeace in our time?It was not that long ago — though it seems an age — when Yasser Arafat and Clinton and Co. were touting the latest round of peace initiatives. With cosy pictures in print, editorials eagerly trumpeting a new day, it was appealing to believe that we were on the verge of a solution to the most troubled of troubled places on the earth. Since then the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has not only dragged on, it has flared into new entrenched hostilities. The ‘two-state’ solution to the area appears intractable. I’m reminded of a British Foreign Office report on the area from much earlier in the 20th century that simply calculated that no political solution was possible because the claims of the peoples were directly competitive. No quick fixSince Clinton, of course, the buzz word has shifted from the latest ‘round of peace talks’ to various attempts at ‘regime change’, or as Condoleeza Rice most recently put it, a ‘New Middle East’. Fundamentally, the current policy appears to eschew any quick fix solution in an attempt to restructure the foundational dynamics of the region. Good luck. Certainly, as Christians, we are not to run shy of all grandiose idealistic positive changes. Afghanistan, though perhaps on the verge of more difficulties now, was remarkably quickly pacified militarily, despite it being the graveyard of many a previous empire. Yet to this observer at least, admirable as the attempts at political solutions may be, there can only be one solution to the Middle East: a spiritual one. Without doubt the US will attempt to use its superpower clout to bring a semblance of order, and the government of the day is responsible to discern the best and surest route to achieve the goal of peace, yet we do not need a course in Biblical Theology to realise that the ideological issues of land, of the city of Jerusalem, of Temple, and space, can only be resolved within a New Testament framework of Christ and the heavenly Jerusalem. That is not to say that Christians have not waged war in this region themselves (to deny that would be historically impossible), but that a true and lasting peace can only be achieved under the joint banner of the Prince of Peace himself. Swords and ploughshares?British commentators tend to point to the American dispensationalist theology that drives a religious fervour towards Israel’s protection. Indeed, a recent conference chaired by an American evangelist in support of Israel had as invitees the Israeli Ambassador and wishes of good will from the current administration. The seamless connection between God-Republican-Israel is a concerning phenomenon to those who still hold to a high view of the separation of church and state, and a fear of a return to a Constantinian-like religious political machine. On the other hand, those who justly tremble at a rebirth of monstrous anti-Semitism are hardly encouraged by Mel Gibson’s hastily retracted and recanted drunken comments about Jews being the cause of the wars in the world. Surely a hornets’ nest of competing ideologies, agendas, nationalities, and ancient enmities, can submit to no hasty simplistic remedy. Who can tame the scorpion? Who can charm the snake? Who can make the lion lie down with the lamb? Who can beat the swords into ploughshares? Who can make a Jew whose children were murdered at the hands of an Arab hug an Arab whose father was massacred at the hands of a Jew? And to that question there can be but one answer: Jesus. Josh Moody,
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