06241
April 28, 2006

GAC approves suggestion
of task force on Israel/Palestine

Group would ‘develop guidance’
on church policy in embattled region

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE — The General Assembly Council today (April 28) unanimously approved a proposal to ask the General Assembly to establish a working group to seek Jewish, Christian and Muslim input as the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) develops strategies to promote peace in Israel and Palestine.

        Moderator Rick Ufford-Chase — and an ad-hoc group of council members — authored the proposal in order to defuse what otherwise promises to be a hot debate over whether to confirm or rescind an action by the 2004 GA instructing the church to apply shareholder pressure on corporations to change practices the denomination believes contribute to violence in Israel/Palestine.

        If it adopts the GAC’s proposal, more than two dozen pending overtures on the issue of “selective, phased divestment” would be referred to the task force.

        The targeted corporations either assist the Israeli military or support the infrastructure of Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

        The GAC named Ufford-Chase its designated resource person to the Assembly Committee on Peacemaking and International Issues Committee, which will consider the overtures prior to Assembly action.

        The moderator’s proposal will not stall the work of the PC(USA)’s Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee (MRTI), which is already meeting with executives of some of the targeted companies, including Motorola, which provides cell-phone service to settlers and to the Israeli military.

        MRTI makes divestment recommendations to the General Assembly, but has announced that it will not be ready to do so before 2008. The Assembly must vote on any MRTI recommendation to divest.

        Ufford-Chase put a revised document before the council yesterday, altered only slightly from the four-page proposal he presented Wednesday. “We’ve not changed the sense of this, just tightened the language,” he said, referring to a group of GAC members who worked on the measure over the last two days.

        The “advice and counsel” asks:

• That the moderators of the 216th and 217th General Assemblies appoint a seven-member working group to “develop guidance” for the PC(USA) honoring the concerns of Jews, Christians and Muslims in the United States and in the Middle East
  
  
• That the group report its findings to the 2008 Assembly
  
  
• That any overtures or commissioner’s resolutions affecting the church’s divestment policy be referred to MRTI for possible consideration by a future Assembly
  
  
• That policy recommendations developed by the working group be referred also to the denomination’s Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy
  
  
• That the Board of Pensions, the Presbyterian Foundation and MRTI explore new or existing investment opportunities to “promote peace and strengthen the economies both in Israel and the occupied territories,” and bring recommendations to the 2008 Assembly.
  

        The GAC approved a language change proposed by Steve Benz, executive presbyter of East Tennessee Presbytery, striking a sentence suggesting that “most Presbyterians are united in their desires” for an end to the occupation and a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine, substituting a statement that Presbyterians are concerned about “issues of peace and justice” in the region.

        The rationale holds that the church would “benefit greatly” from “a serious effort to listen to one another and seek a solid consensus for our actions in this delicate task of peacemaking in this troubled region of the world.” It also says that the political situation in Israel-Palestine is changing “extremely quickly,” and merits careful monitoring.

        The rationale concludes: “It is clear that, somehow, Christ calls us to stand with our Palestinian sisters and brothers — Christian and Muslim — and our Jewish sisters and brothers. …We can stand with those bold and courageous leaders on both sides of this contentious debate who insist that there is a way to share the land of our forefathers and foremothers in peace and security with one another.”