Our learning group was quite diverse – in a CRC context. We represented different life experiences conditioned by race, age, gender, nationality, denomination, vocation, and even personality. This was an unusual denominational study group, and those of us used to traveling or meeting with the more homogenous church teams found at least three distinct advantages:

• There was a range of individual reactions to what we saw and experienced during our 10-day visit to Israel and the West Bank.

• There were surprisingly strong common threads in our responses and observations.

• We believe our shared experience was richer because of our diversity and that our report and recommendations are wiser and more realistic.

Here are some of our observations that have deeply influenced our own actions and our suggestions for CRC corporate action.

• There is plenty of bloodguilt to go around, but Israel, with the greatest power, bears the greatest responsibility to act justly and to right the wrongs of occupation.

• The oppressive, pervasive, dehumanizing effects of Israeli power and control in the Occupied Territories were far greater than anything we had imagined.

• We believe that the Christian community in the Middle East, the same community that has existed for 2,000 years under Romans, Turks, Crusaders, Ottomans and others rulers, having survived every conceivable kind of oppression, is now, under Israeli occupation, in danger of dying. 

• The stereotypes of Israelis and Arabs that we acquire through constant exposure to our media and culture are dangerously false.

• We observed that general economic development within the Occupied Territories is being systematically sabotaged by Israeli policy. No significant economic assistance programs can work without the presence of a State structure with sovereignty to formulate and enforce export, import, and tax policies. 

• The wall, as it now stands, is the single biggest barrier to a sustainable peace.

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