By: Dr. Peter Makari, Global Relations Minister, Middle East and Europe
Peace. Prosperity. Security.
Be divided, robbed, ruled, killed. Be destroyed.
For the past two years, the world has witnessed a genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza. More than 69,000 people have been killed – surely a conservative number, as so many people are still unaccounted for. Almost all of Gaza’s Palestinians have been displaced, many multiple times. And while the world has rightly focused on Gaza, but Palestinians elsewhere have been impacted as well.
Before 2023, between two-thirds and three-quarters of the people in Gaza were already refugees, having been forced from their homes and communities in 1948. The Nakba, or “catastrophe,” has caused the Palestinian people to be fragmented geographically for much of the past eight decades. Palestinians live scattered in Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, inside Israel, and as refugees in neighboring countries. But their geographic division has only separated them physically; families and communities remain connected, one people, united, rooted in good soil.
When we pray for the peace of Jerusalem and those who reside there, we include their relatives and friends in other geographies, near and far. When we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we pray for abolition, for a vision of freedom that holds at its heart safety, care, and flourishing for all. When we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we pray for the abolishment of physical barriers that fragment communities. We pray for a peace with justice.
Palestinian Christians have asserted, “In the absence of all hope, we cry out our cry of hope. We believe in God, good and just [whose] goodness will finally triumph over the evil of hate and death that still persist in our land. We will see here ‘a new land’ and ‘a new human being,’ capable of rising up in the spirit to love each one of his or her brothers and sisters.” [Kairos Palestine, “A Moment of Truth,” 2009, §10]. May it be so.
Prince of Peace, we long for your new realm of peace and freedom to be manifest in our midst.
As we journey through this season of waiting and preparing,
keep us grounded in the radical hope that peace is possible.
Until your kindom comes, we pray. Amen.
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Over the last two years many if not all of us have seen images of Gaza in ruins and Palestinian people suffering under military violence, displacement, and starvation. It has been important to bear witness to this reality and to allow our actions and understandings to be changed by it. But these are not the only images we can hold of Gaza and the Palestinians who live there. Take a moment to imagine peace in Jerusalem and in Gaza. Imagine rights respected, schools and hospitals rebuilt, olive groves planted, people with the resources they need. Imagine the apartheid wall in pieces on free soil. How does this imagination invite you to change your actions and understandings? Seed your imagination and check out the UCC Movement for Palestinian Solidarity’s Toolkits and Resources for more ways to pray for peace in Jerusalem.
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