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NC ANALYSIS
PAGE 3—December 20,1973
Some Hidden Causes of
Mideast
Conflict
BY DESMOND SULLIVAN
JERUSALEM (NC) - An in-depth
study of the causes, strategy and
consequences of the recent Middle East
war has been undertaken by a
commission of inquiry recently set up in
Jerusalem.
Under pressure from the
parliamentary opposition, this
commission is being urged to complete
and publish its work before Dec. 31 -
Israel’s parliamentary election day - so
that voters can decide on whether to
return the present government to
power.
One professor of the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, Israel Shahak,
has published an inquiry into the inner
source of Arab hostility to Israel.
Claiming to reveal one of the best
kept secrets of the causes of the war, he
said that “no peace is possible (except
by military force and oppression) unless
these facts are known in Israel and in
the world at large.”
He has examined the number of Arab
villages existing in Israel in 1948 and
recorded the number destroyed by
Israel since that date.
He lists each district, the number of
villages and the numbers destroyed. In
many cases, he says, the villages were
obliterated, even walls and cemeteries
removed to leave no trace. In some cases
the tribes of inhabitants cannot be
traced. In one village, at the tourist site
of Banias, a whole forest has been
planted.
Shakak alleges that the reason behind
those actions was to make room for
settlers and to reinforce the myth
that the land was empty of people
before 1948.
His citing of evidence collected by a
fellow research worker, Aref El-Aref of
Ramallah, lists over 300 villages in the
Gaza district that have disappeared. In
the now heavily populated Jewish areas
of Haifa, Safed and Beth Shean he lists
35, 68 and 46 villages, respectively,
which have ceased to exist. The
Jerusalem district used to have 33 Arab
villages; of these, 29
destroyed.
have
been
In the years since
1967,
and
especially in the months immediately
preceding the latest war, there has been
another kind of action inside the
occupied territories acquired in the
1967 Six Day Arab-Israel war. The
villages were not destroyed, but Arab
land was confiscated for military or
government use.
The actions against Arab landowners
seemed to have a twofold aim: the
compulsory occupation of land
encircling Jerusalem and the planting of
strategic Jewish settlements in the
conquered areas.
The encirclement of Jerusalem
consists of an inner and an outer ring of
Jewish settlements. The 1967
annexation of East Jerusalem and the
expansion of the city limits as far as Ein
Kerem, the airport, and the edges of
Bethlehem was followed by the building
of an arc of highrise apartments for
Jews enclosing the Arab area of the city.
In August of this year steps were
announced to build an outer ring of
settlements on the perimeter of the city.
At Anata in the north many acres of
Arab land were scheduled for industry;
and beyond Bethlehem in the south
more acres at Sanukat and Iskaria were
fenced off by the military in July. Plans
to complete this circle include the Arab
areas of Nebi Samwill, Beit Sahur and
Beit Jala.
When completed, those virtual
annexations would secure for Jerusalem
“safe” borders against any peace
settlement adjustments.
The second area receiving attention is
the outer borders of Israel. The desert
road to Gaza is to be blocked by a large
Jewish new town in Egyptian territory
south of Gaza called Yamit.
The Golan Heights are scheduled to
receive a settlement of 30,000 Jewish
immigrants and dotted along the Jordan
valley on the West Bank,
government-sponsored kibbutzim
(collective farms) are being established.
A pattern of all the actions against
Arab landowners has emerged. The first
step is a military one, to declare the area
a security risk. This stage had been
applied to Bedouins in the Golan
Heights just before the recent conflict.
The second stage, already reached in
Golan and the Jordan valley, is
agricultural. The vacant land, empty for
security reasons, is acquired by the
Israel Land Authority, which specializes
in reclaiming waste land for Jewish
settlement. The classic case is Ikrit and
Biram. In 1948 it was cleared for
military reasons; in 1952 it was acquired
by the Land Authority, and now the
land is part of a Kibbutz. The
government pioneer stage of creating
Jewish agricultural outposts has created
over 400 such settlements in strategic
places within Arab lands.
The Arab landowners have had no
power to stop the growing annexation
of land by Israel. Israel was too strong
for any significant Arab action.
The basic principle of the Israeli
policy was aimed at the future. Land
acquired by Jews and settled by them
constitutes a title to political
sovereignty over them by Israel.
Arab protest against those measures
seem ineffectual.
The occupied areas are under military
rule and the minister of defense, Moshe
Dayan, is the minister responsible. His
policy seems to be to establish the
factual existence of Jewish settlements
at those points where a military outpost
is strategically useful for Israel. His
bargaining power from military strength
at a peace conference is thus reinforced
by the greater power of actual civilian
possession of the land by Jews.
The local Arab people are powerless.
Protests go unheeded and their patron
nations, like Syria and Egypt, seem
more concerned with international
politics than the welfare of the peasants
and Bedouins of Bethlehem and the
Neghev. The dispossessed Arabs,
therefore, have changed their demands.
They no longer call for the defeat of
Israel; they ask for some form of
democratic say in their own area.
The Arab voice, in the matter of land,
has been muted by Israel, by the noise
of the terrorists, and by the
international haste to settle the Middle
East conflict. In quiet, measured words
the Catholic bishops of the Holy Land
have condemned any unilateral
decision-making that leads to
domination by one ethnic group. They
have called for a healthy pluralism in
politics to favor “full understanding and
harmonious collaboration between
ethnic groups.” Pope Paul VI has asked
for a reverence not only for the holy
places, but also for the people who live
around those places, for a “free
enjoyment of their legitimate rights.”
The voice of the people actually on
the land does not seem to figure in the
present international negotiations. In a
very real sense international politics are
seen by those people as a huge
distraction from the real problem. The
root of the Middle East conflict is about
5 million people in a corridor of land
searching for security.
The mutual distrust, the conflict of
rights in justice, the hatred engendered
by attrition against people and property
will remain the central problem. An
international peace worked out under
power pressures will be a phoney peace
unless the voices of the 5 million are
heard and are effective. The fostering
and growth of an Arab voice -- Christian
and Moslem - within the Holy Land
seems an imperative of the present
situation.
uscc
Committee Recommends Chile Statement
SEMINARY TO BE TORN DOWN ~ St. Mary’s chapel (right photo). The chapel has been declared a
Seminary, Paca St., Baltimore, first in the United national historical monument by the federal
States will be demolished for park space. The adjacent government. The seminary building houses Model
convent and Mother Seton House (left in left photo) Cities programs for Baltimore. (NC Photos by Thomas
will be preserved, along with the seminary’s restored N. Lorsung)
BUILDING DEMOLISHED
First Seminary Site to Be Sold
WASHINGTON (NC) - The U.S.
Catholic Conference’s Social
Development and World Peace
Committee recommended Dec. 5 that
the bishops of the USCC’s
administrative board express concern to
the U.S. government about violations of
human rights in Chile.
In an article in the National Catholic
Reporter, a national Catholic weekly
published in Kansas City, Mo., James T.
Cotter, assistant director of the USCC
Division for Latin America, reported
that the committee “drafted a suggested
statement which they recommended
that the U.S. bishops issue at their
earliest convenience.”
The statement read, Cotter said:
“In this anniversary year of the
United Nations’ Declaration (on human
rights), we are deeply distressed by the
violations of human rights currently
taking place in Chile. We are also
concerned that in the face of these
violations our government is escalating
its financial aid to the Chilean junta.
“Therefore, we urge the U.S.
government to condition all aid to Chile
upon demonstration that human and
civil rights have been restored in that
country.” .
Cotter said the bishops on the
USCC’s administrative board will receive
copies of the proposed statement along
with a National Catholic Reporter
article by Father Frederick McGuire,
director of the USCC Division for Latin
America, in which he gave his personal
views on human rights violations in
Chile. Additional background
information will include a report by
Father McGuire on current conditions
in Chile.
Msgr. Harrold A. Murray, secretary of
the USCC Department of Social
Development and World Peace,
confirmed the existence of such a
statement but said he could not release
it before the February administrative
board meeting.
Cotter said the background report by
Father McGuire quoted Church
personnel serving in Chile without using
their names because they had told
Father McGuire that they feared
reprisals.
The report quoted a Sister who
served for several years as a missionary
in Chile: “These have been weeks of
horror, fear and confusion for the
working class and for anyone who
sympathized with the aims of the
Allende government. (The government
of Marxist President Salvador Allende,
overthrown by a military coup in
September).
“The methods of repression are
becoming more refined and subtle,” she
said. “They are beginning to settle in as
a fact of life in the junta’s efforts to
‘Cleanse Chile from the Marxist cancer’
and return to normalcy.”
The report quoted a Catholic source
as saying: “The absolute control of the
news media has been the key instrument
utilized by the military in carrying out
its campaigns of fear and, later, of
self-justification.”
“A priest who worked with urban
laborers and rural farmworkers
described the carnage he witnessed and
his futile attempts to protest this
bloodshed to the authorities,” Cotter
said. “He learned the junta’s total
disregard for what happens to
‘undesirables’ and realized that it is
dangerous to protest.”
The junta estimated that only 95
people had been killed during the
fighting and mop-up campaign against
resisters, Cotter said. He added that
“CIA estimates were that from two to
three thousand people had been killed.
Some reputable European
correspondents were reporting that
scores of thousands had been killed.”
Cotter said a high official of a Chilean
Catholic agency reported that a highly
respected Catholic communications
specialist told him that his office had
estimated a death toll of 15,000 but
that the junta censors had forced them
to remain silent.
“This is the situation in Chile,”
Cotter concluded. “It is this grotesque
scenario of human rights violations that
has caused the director of the Division
for Latin America of the U.S. Catholic
Conference to ask the Church in this
country to denounce these abuses.”
BALTIMORE (NC) - The site of the
first Catholic seminary in the United
States - St. Mary’s Seminary, Paca St.,
Baltimore -- will be sold to the city of
Balitmore, and the century-old seminary
building that once housed over 400
students will be demolished to make
room for a park.
Not included in the $450,000 sale are
the historic St. Mary’s Seminary Chapel,
Mother Seton House, and the convent
building that once housed nuns who
served the seminarians.
A victim of declining vocations, the
Paca Street building was closed in 1969
in a consolidation of St. Mary’s (then a
two-year senior college) with St. Charles
in Catonsville, Md. (then a two-year
junior college), to form St. Mary’s
Seminary-College, in Catonsville.
The seminary’s history began when
four Suplician priests and five students
from France arrived in Baltimore in
1791 to form the first U.S. seminary at
Paca Street.
In 1807, shortly after her conversion
to Catholicism, Elizabeth Seton was
invited by the Sulpicians to form a
school for girls on the Paca Street site,
and it was there that she founded the
American Sisters of Charity. Her
original home is now a shrine.
St. Mary’s Seminary Chapel, also
built in the early 1800’s, was the first
Gothic Revival building in the United
States. Its interior was renovated in
1968-69, and it is still maintained as a
chapel by the Sulpician Fathers,
although it is used only on occasion.
St. Mary’s was a major seminary, with
two years of philosophy studies and
four years of theology, until the
theology section was moved to Roland
Park, a North Baltimore neighborhood,
in 1929. Before the split St. Mary’s
housed over 400 students for the
priesthood, and afterwards it had about
200 philosophy (senior college) students
per year until it was closed in 1969.
Currently there are only 160 students
in the full four-year program at St.
Mary’s Seminary-College in Catonsville.
“In the last ten years the bottom has
dropped out of seminaries,” said Father
J. Carroll McHugh, provincial treasurer
of the U.S. Sulpicians.
After the Paca Street site was closed
as a seminary, the Sulpicians tried to
interest private developers and city
agencies in making use of the
century-old, four-story building, which
is on the U.S. Interior Department’s
National Register of Historic Sites. But
no one was interested in it.
“It’s just a monster,” said Franz
Vidor, head of planning for Baltimore’s
Department of Housing and Community
Development. “It’s solidly built, but
that’s about all you can say about it.”
Father McHugh said the Sulpicians
plan to maintain a “Catholic presence”
in the area, which is a strange melange
of inner city slums and historic
buildings, some dating back to the end
of the 17th century.
About four or five Sulpician priests
will live at the former convent, he said,
and will use that as the base for their
apostolates in the area.
A SMOOCH FOR STEPHANIE -- Four year old Stephanie Edwards, 4,
gets a big kiss from Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia at the cardinal’s
annual Christmas party for children in institutions supported by
archdiocesan Catholic Social Services. (NC Photo by Robert S. Halvey)
Christmas Is When You Take Time to Act Out Peace
BY SISTER JANAAN MANTERNACH. O.S.F.
Before this Christmas season closes each of us will most likely
have read or heard the gospel version of Christ’s birth, the story
of His coming. It’s an age old story that is ours to read over and
over and over again; a love story with a promise of peace; a
Christmas story that relates Christ’s presence on earth with the
presence of peace. “ .. . peace on earth to those of whom his
favor rests” (Luke 2:14).
Yet, EARTH, 1973 is a world aching and stretching for
PEACE. The need is painfully acute in nations, races, families,
governments, industries, schools, jails, and yes, even in
Churches.
Jesus’ promise of peace is a promise that goes unaccepted and
unfulfilled as long and wherever people are without peace. It is
not that Jesus has not kept his promises; it is only that we are
fumblers who frequently lose it. Perhaps we lose it because we
really don’t know what it means. Maybe we haven’t had enough
personal experience of peace to be motivated or inspired to
work against all odds to achieve it or maintain it.
Recently I put the two words, “Christmas” and “Peace”
together in my mind and thought about them with my heart.
Just doing that gave me a feeling of serenity and well-being.
Admittedly I did this during a time of quiet and what happened
was what could be described as prayer -- a prayer that was
rooted in a phrase quoted earlier from Luke’s gospel: “ . . .
peace on earth to those on whom his favor rests.” Trusting that
His favor rests on me makes me peaceful, and I offer the
following as a description of Peace in relationship to Christmas:
1
Peace is something tangible within the human spirit. It is
nurtured and supported in an environment (created by you and
me) in which people love, trust, and believe in themselves, in
each other and in Someone beyond.
Christ’s coming introduced the seeds of that condition into
the world; his favor rests on each of us. Our work in the world is
to make sure His presence, His peace is felt in our families, our
schools, our offices, our jails, our government, our factories, our
retirement homes and our churches. How? By continually
asking ourselves: “What, in each situation, is the loving thing to
do?” And then DO it. Christmas is an event which reveals Christ
doing the loving thing. We live out this event when we, too, do
the loving thing!”
After I had worked out my own ideas on Peace and
Christmas, I thought it might be instructive and helpful to find
out what a few other people would say were they asked to put
the words together meaningfully. The following are the
unedited reflections of seventh graders from Holy Spirit School
in Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania:
“Peace is loving and caring for one another, Christmas is
when you take time out to act out peace.” Linda Squibb
“Peace is the ending of hostilities between people, countries,
families, anyone at all. Today peace usually occurs after a war,
and after many, many innocent people have been killed, or have
been wounded, and after much suffering. The world has not
known peace for a long time. There has been no peace in my
lifetime except for a few months. The world really needs a
period of lasting peace. How are we going to help the poor, the
sick, and the injured if there are wars all over the world. People
are now trying to work out a lasting peace in the Middle East. If
the world had peace we could make so much progress in all
fields. Peace is necessary for a world to survive. I think the
world is finally working on a lasting peace that I hope will last
for many years.
“The words Christmas and Peace are related because on
Christmas day the Savior of the world came to bring peace. Men
laughed at Him then but now they are finding out that Peace is
the only way we can survive and prosper.” Dennis Dlugos
“To give for the joy of making someone happy to bring peace
to someone’s troubles that is what I think Christmas is all
about.” Bill Cunningham
“Christmas is a happy time and people all over the world
should lie down their arms and be happy. And it doesn’t matter
what you are if you’re black, white, red or yellow. I know that
there will always be a war or fighting. But on Christmas we all
should rejoice and be as brothers JUST FOR ONCE.” Artra B.
Bryant
“These two words relate with each other because they both
mean Love, because when you have Peace you have Love and
when you have Christmas you have Love.” Cathy Jennings
Perhaps you might take a few moments to discover deeper
meanings for Christmas and Peace within yourself. And, if you
do please share them by doing your part to create a peaceful
environment in your home, your office, your school, your
neighborhood, your Church or wherever vou an;. THIS IS TIIE
TIME TO TAKE TIME OUT TO ACT OUT PEACE. Have a
favored Christmas! Copy Right 1973 NC News Service