c. 2005 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ Sally Hunsberger, a Washington-based statistician, doesn’t spend much of her precious vacation time with her husband and two children.

That’s because Hunsberger, 41, has made a three-year commitment to be a “Christian Peacemaker,” a voluntary role that requires travel to the Middle East as often as possible to assist beleaguered Palestinians. Critics say Hunsberger’s religious organization, and others like it, have taken sides in the thorny Arab-Israeli conflict.

But Hunsberger says she is merely living out biblical values.

“As Christians we believe in nonviolent peacemaking, that we need to act out of love and not violence,” said Hunsberger, explaining why she decided to become a Peacemaker.

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) is one of a handful of Christian activist organizations that maintain a full-time presence in the West Bank or Gaza Strip. Some are also active in hot spots like Iraq.

In the Holy Land, volunteers live among Palestinians, accompany them on their way to school or through Israeli military checkpoints, stand in front of Palestinian homes slated for demolition, and report what they perceive to be human rights abuses.

Many of these volunteers took part in an April 13 demonstration against the U.S.-based Caterpillar machinery company, saying the bulldozers it sells to the Israeli military enable Israel to commit what they consider war crimes against Palestinians.

Those who run the organizations, which include the Italian Catholic group Operation Dove and the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestinian and Israel (EAPPI), insist their motives are purely religious, not political.

The organizations require volunteers to pay their own way, often with the help of sponsors, and to attend an intensive course in nonviolent resistance where they learn how to intervene between adversaries, such as civilians and soldiers engaged in face-to-face conflict.

A joint project of the Brethren, Quaker and Mennonite churches, CPT has sent Christians of various denominations to the often-violent West Bank city of Hebron since the mid-1990s. Its stated goals are to “protect through nonviolent presence, engage in public policy advocacy” and “show solidarity with the churches and all those struggling against the occupation.”

Critics say that focus is one-sided.

“I’ve found that the organizers of these groups intentionally limit the volunteers’ understanding of this complicated situation. As a result they buy into the image of Israel as the evil occupier that must be challenged like Don Quixote and his windmills,” said Clarence Wagner, the international chairman of Bridges for Peace, an evangelical Christian organization that brings 300 volunteers to Israel every year.

Even some supporters of the Christian peace groups see a problem.

Rabbi Arik Ascherman, executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, a group of Israeli rabbis working for social justice, works with CPT and groups like it.

Ascherman, who was recently convicted by an Israeli court for interfering with a military bulldozer sent to destroy an illegally built Palestinian house (he was sentenced to community service), said the “ecumenical accompaniers” he knows try to view the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from both perspectives.

But, he said, “I think there is still an imbalance” in favor of the Palestinians.

Whatever the motivation, promoting nonviolence in this region takes courage.

During an incident in February, for example, Hunsberger and other Christian activists were attacked by two men _ allegedly Jewish settlers _ while accompanying a group of Palestinian shepherds and their flocks near the village of At-Tuwani, in the southern West Bank.

Palestinian shepherds, as well as schoolchildren, “were often harrassed by settlers,” Hunsberger said, explaining why the activists often accompany them.

The attackers, one concealed by a black knitted mask and one by a scarf, “came at us,” Hunsberger said. “We told them that we had come in peace and wanted to talk with them.”

The report the activists filed with the U.S. consulate and the Israeli police stated that the men broke the jaw of one volunteer and lightly injured another. Hunsberger was not hurt.

“It was frightening, but I feel Christians must stand with the oppressed,” Hunsberger said.

Larry Fata, communications officer for the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestinian and Israel, said Christian beliefs also motivated him to move to the Middle East.

“Our Christian faith compels us to follow a nonviolent approach to ending the (Israeli) occupation since the occupation is the cause of the suffering on both sides,” Fata said.

EAPPI was established in 2001 by the World Council of Churches (WCC) _ which has angered Jews by calling on its Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox member churches around the world to divest themselves of investments in companies that participate in Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Fata said his program “aims to find a just solution for people of both faiths. By ending the occupation we’re working to end the suffering of Israelis as well.”

When asked whether EAPPI does any volunteer work on behalf of Jewish Israeli civilians such as terror victims or the poor, Fata replied, “That isn’t our mandate. Yes, there are people suffering on both sides; however the occupation is impacting on the Palestinian population more than the Israeli population.”

While EAPPI and CPT volunteers generally meet very few Israelis aside from like-minded activists, Operation Dove, a program of the Pope John XXIII Association, requires volunteers to spend time with both Palestinian and Israeli civilians.

“It is important to ride on Israeli buses,” said Pierre George Rosetti, a full-time project volunteer, referring to the fact that Israeli buses are frequently targeted by terrorists. “Doing so, you feel what it means to be a victim in Israel.”

Rosetti offered the view that many Israelis feel abandoned.

“They see internationals supporting Palestinians and not giving the same level of support to them,” he said.

It is difficult, he said, to navigate through the seemingly intractable Arab-Israeli conflict, where simmering religious and ethnic tensions often boil over.

He stays focused, he said, by thinking of Jesus.

“The highest example of nonviolence you can find is in Jesus. What he did wasn’t only for good people; it was for all people.”

MO/RB END RNS

Editors: Check the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for photos of members of the Christian Peacemaker team.