Editor’s note: At the end of an article reflecting on his trip (“House to House, Field to Field: Reflections on a peace mission to the West Bank,” to be printed in the July-August issue of The Other Side magazine), Ken Sehested of Clyde wrote this about his recent trip:

There are many and diverse things to be said, however humbly. The following is my top 10 list of things needing to be highlighted.

1. The nation of Israel was created as a refuge for Jews escaping Europe’s holocaust ovens, an episode unparalleled in the history of human savagery — in its systematic intention and implementation if not in sheer magnitude. Indeed, the brutal legacy of anti-Semitism (in which the Christian community shares responsibility) in many parts of the world is well-documented. Nevertheless, the Jewish safe-haven that is Israel was built on the backs of an indigenous population, one that is also Semitic, 726,000 of whom were displaced from their homes and ancestral lands.

2. Theological claims that the land of ancient Palestine was promised to the Jews by God may be emotionally satisfying but cannot be privileged in a world where gods, like gang leaders, inhabit every other block. Palestinians (both Christian and Muslim) and Jews each have legitimate claims to the land, which if not shared could become a perpetual killing field, maybe even trigger an international nuclear exchange.

3. I am among those raised on “cowboy and Indian” movies in North America, where the latter were stereotyped as barbarous, untrustworthy and bloodthirsty savages who prey on the weak and innocent. A similar portrait of Arab peoples has been painted by modern movies and news programs. Until that field of vision changes we will continue to be clueless in reading history and in charting a redemptive future.

4. The so-called “Oslo Accords” is utterly inadequate in its projected division of land between Israel and Palestine. The proposed map of the Palestinian nation is more like a patchwork of reservations, each encircled by, and thus controlled by, Israel. Jeff Halper has noted the fact that 95 percent of the Occupied West Bank would be part of the new Palestinian nation is a grossly misleading statement. Inmates occupy some 95 percent of a prison. It’s what happens with the other 5 percent that matters.

5. There is significant and growing evidence that Israeli leaders have no intention of returning illegally occupied lands to Palestinian control. Such policies of encroachment (particularly with the expanding settlements) amount to ethnic cleansing.

6. It is certainly true that Arab “terror networks” exist and must be stopped (just as there have been Ku Klux Klan and other terror networks here for over a century). However, addressing terrorism by military means is, in the words of John Paul Lederach, like trying to kill flowering dandelions by hitting them with a golf club.

7. The violence of Palestinian terrorists doesn’t occur in a vacuum. “The first and worst violence,” according to Uri Avnery, former member of the Israeli Knesset, “is the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.” Virtually every major human rights organization (including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, and even B’tselem, the leading Israeli human rights body) insist that Israeli demands for Palestinians to “stop the violence” actually turns reality on its head.

8. Many statements from governments and non-governmental bodies (including churches) have been made decrying the violence on both sides of this conflict. Such statements are actually disingenuous in that they ignore the dynamics of power in the conflict. If both sides were to immediately cease all hostilities, the resulting “peace” would leave Israel in an overwhelmingly dominant position. Any peace agreement that refuses to acknowledge the imbalance of power is destined to harden the realities of injustice and thereby sow the seeds for the next war.

9. The recent plan approved by the Arab League, acknowledging both Israeli and Palestinian rights to exist within secure borders, must be affirmed as the framework for a just peace. It is not unfair to ask if Arab nations are sincere. But there is only one way to find out.

10. Finally, while the United Nations is the proper forum for negotiating a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians, numerous national and regional governing bodies will have distinctive roles to play. Among those must be a commitment by the U.S. to leverage its massive financial aid to Israel as incentive for good-faith bargaining.

(A full copy of “House to House, Field to Field” will be posted soon on the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America website: www.bpfna.org. Founded in 1984, the BPFNA is a network linking Baptists involved in justice and peace issues throughout North America. Its board of directors is composed of members affiliated with 12 Baptist conventions and five racial/ethnic groups in Canada, the U.S., Puerto Rico and Mexico, plus representatives from Baptist convention peace and justice offices. The organization has no official sponsorship of any convention. Its primary purpose is to encourage greater Baptist involvement — at local, national and international levels — in justice and peace concerns and to help clarify understanding of such involvement as essential to Christian discipleship.)