U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has received a special blessing from religious leaders of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths who appear to agree that Arabs in Judea and Samaria are living "under occupation."
The communique, which was read to the media at a news conference Wednesday in Washington, D.C., was sent to Rice following her visit last week to a Bethlehem church and the Greek Patriarchate in Jerusalem. Rice also met at the time with other religious leaders.
The statement was authored by the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land, which included Muslim sheikhs, leaders of the major Christian sects and the Chief Rabbis of Israel. Meeting in Washington for a State Department-sponsored summit this week, they discussed possible participation in the planned Annapolis, Maryland conference on the Middle East - though this was not mentioned in the communique. The Council began meeting two years ago with the aid of the Norwegian government.
Joining the Chief Rabbis of Israel in formulating the statement was the director-general of the Chief Rabbinate, the Chief Rabbi of Haifa and a Jewish cleric from the American Jewish Congress. Although the rabbis helped author the statement, they did not actually sign it.
Sheikh Hamen Tamimi, a radical Islamist who heads the Sharia (Islamic religious legal) court for the Palestinian Authority, represented the Islamic contingent. Tamimi is known for his past harangues to worshippers at the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
The Greek Orthodox and Latin Patriarchs as well as the head of the Jerusalem Anglican church represented the Christian sector.
The statement said, "We, believers from three religions, have been placed in this land, Jews, Christians, and Muslims. It is our reponsibility to find the right way to live together in peace rather than to fight and kill one another. Palestinians yearn for the end to occupation and what they see as their inalienable rights. Israelis long for the day when they can live in personal and national security. Together we must find ways of reaching these goals."
The mention of the word "occupation" or "conquest" is a red flag for Israel's nationalist camp, which well remembers when Ariel Sharon first used the term and his consequent support for a Palestinian state. Rabbi She'ear-Yashuv Cohen of Haifa explained to Arutz-7 that the rabbis do not agree that Israel is merely a foreign occupier, "but this is what the Muslims feel. In order to reach a common statement, we cannot determine for them what they feel. We, of course, do not agree."
The group side-stepped the conflict over the status of Israel's capital, Judaism's holiest city. The clerics agreed that Jerusalem must remain accessible to people of all denominations – something that proved impossible when the Old City, with its myriad Jewish holy sites, was held by Jordan after the 1948 War of Independence.