Above: The Rev. Larry Clark, a United Methodist pastor from Toledo, Ohio, lights a candle in Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher on Aug. 14, 2024. He and other members of a visiting delegation of U.S. church activists came to the Middle East to accompany threatened Christians and other Palestinians and call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

As war drives away tourists, the Rev. Larry Clark joined 11 other Christians from the U.S. in a trip to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to mistreatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Sept. 4, 2024 | JERUSALEM (UM News)

The Holy Land’s sacred sites overflow with tourists in normal times, but with an intractable war in Gaza and the looming threat of attacks by Hezbollah and Iran, airlines have canceled most flights into the region. Ancient churches normally filled with pilgrims are as empty as Jesus’ tomb. The streets of the old city of Jerusalem are deserted, merchant’s stalls shuttered.

The Rev. Larry Clark, a retired United Methodist pastor in Toledo, Ohio, decided it was the perfect time to visit the Holy Land.

In response to an invitation by Palestinian Christian groups, he joined 11 other Christians from the United States and flew to Jordan. From there the group journeyed overland to Palestine and Israel, shrugging off concerns about their safety in order to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to mistreatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

“It’s important to be a witness. This is a critical moment to be here, to be present with ordinary people as they struggle to survive. A lot of people at home were worried about my safety, but I’ve been here enough that I wasn’t particularly concerned,” he said.

Clark has made 15 trips to the Holy Land since his first as a new pastor in the 1980s.

“I was fresh out of seminary, serving my first church, and I was pretty enthralled by seeing the land and making biblical connections,” he said.

Yet Clark quickly grew disenchanted by commercial tours that focused on holy sites but ignored the people living there. He eventually started working with the Society for Biblical Studies, founded by a former United Methodist missionary here, which wove together biblical history with the present-day experience of Palestinians and Israelis. In recent years, Clark has led several tours for the organization.

He was planning to lead another trip in February, but participants all canceled in the wake of the October attack by Hamas and the subsequent Israeli war on Gaza.

“I’ve wanted to come back, even though every time I’ve come over the years, the situation was worse than the time before. It always got worse. And now you’ve got a government in Israel that, if allowed, would wipe out the Palestinians,” he said.

Although much of the news from the region focuses on Gaza, the delegation spent most of its time in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where displacement and violence have grown apace with the Gaza war, yet haven’t attracted the same international attention.

The delegation’s schedule included interviews with church leaders, nonviolent activists, Palestinian farmers and urban residents whose lands have been appropriated by army-backed settlers, and families whose homes have been demolished to make way for new Israeli settlements. The delegation prayed outside a prison where Israel detains children, met with family of Israeli hostages, and visited a Muslim cleric who’s been silenced by the Israeli government. At the conclusion of several conversations, the delegation members gathered around their counterpart and prayed for God to bless them with safety and courage.

Israeli leaders have ignored the ruling and stepped up the violence against Palestinian communities. Clark’s delegation met with Alice Qaisiyah, a Palestinian Christian whose home in Al-Makhrur, near Bethlehem, was demolished and her land seized to construct a new military-protected Israeli settlement. Accompanied by Israeli human rights activists, who in early August set up a “resistance camp” to support the family, Qaisiyah has promised not to give up, even though she was arrested on Aug. 25. She was released the following day after protests from Israeli and Palestinian rights groups.

Clark said he has long been impressed with Palestinian resilience in the face of settler violence. He cites the example of Iyad Burnat, whom the delegation visited in the West Bank village of Bil’in, where Burnat leads a nonviolent struggle against the Israeli separation barrier and the steady theft of Palestinian farm land.

“He and his family have been tortured and imprisoned, and yet they continue to struggle and not give up. They continue to hang in there. They’re not angry or hateful, no matter what they’ve been through. It’s remarkable,” Clark said.

Such resilience is contagious, said Clark, who has supported efforts in the West Ohio Conference to promote peace in the region by divesting from corporations supporting the illegal settlements.

“West Ohio was among the first conferences to consider divestment, and we formed a committee to study the issue. We had folks on the committee who were very skeptical of what we wanted to do, so we sent three of them over here to see for themselves. They came back completely transformed, and one of them, the most conservative, is today very active in supporting the Tent of Nations,” said Clark, referring to a Palestinian Christian family’s farm near Bethlehem that has faced decades of official harassment.

In May, General Conference delegates approved a resolution calling on United Methodist institutions not to invest in bonds of Israel, Turkey and Morocco because of those nations’ long-term military occupations. Delegates also renewed and updated a resolution opposing Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and approved a resolution addressing Israeli detention of Palestinian children.

On Aug. 19, Clark and the delegation traveled to the border between Israel and Gaza to pray for peace alongside several Israeli rabbis. In an interfaith service at the ancient Maon Synagogue near Nirim, Clark and others offered prayers frequently interrupted by the sharp thud of Israeli airstrikes on nearby Khan Younis.

The service was also interrupted by an air raid siren. Jewish participants ordered delegation members to drop to the ground and cover their heads with their arms. Clark lay face down for several minutes until the all-clear signal sounded.

“The air raid siren didn’t bother me as much as the bombs, knowing that they were falling on people across the border in Gaza,” he said.

According to Rabbi Avi Dabush, who coordinated the interfaith service at the border, the delegation’s visit provided encouragement to Israelis struggling to make peace at a time when many Israelis remain angry and vengeful. As a survivor of the bloody Hamas attack on nearby Nirim, Dabush said he understood how Israelis are angry, but suggested the future of Judaism was at stake in how they respond.

“Our most important struggle right now is over our values. We need your support. We need you to partner with us as we struggle for these values of justice, equality, peace and human rights. Your presence is a wake-up call to us when many simply want to go to sleep over this terrible situation. It’s important for us that you are here,” Rabbi Dabush told the Christian group.

“Otherwise the curse of history will remain. Each one wants to fix the history of their people. As I suffered, I think I can fix that by killing more people and their leaders and their children and so on, again and again. But you can’t really fix history. You can only look to the future, and build another future. And we really hope that from the river to the sea, these two nations, these two peoples will find a way. We have to find a way for our children.”

Church statements on peace in the Middle East

The United Methodist Church officially supports the continuing existence of the Jewish people and their covenant with God, Palestinian self-determination and Israel’s right to exist. The denomination supports a two-state solution and opposes the confiscation of Palestinian lands and water, and it calls for interfaith and ecumenical dialogue to bring about greater understanding and peace.

“Within The United Methodist Church, we struggle with our understanding of the complexity and the painfulness of the controversies in which Christians, Jews, and Muslims are involved in the Middle East,” the church states in its 2016 Book of Resolutions. “The issues include disputed political questions of sovereignty and control, and concerns over human rights and justice. We recognize the theological significance of the Holy Land as central to the worship, historical traditions, hope, and identity of the Jewish people. We are mindful of this land’s historic and contemporary importance for Christians and Muslims. We are committed to the security, safety, and well-being of Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East, to respect for the legitimacy of the state of Israel, to justice and sovereignty for the Palestinian people, and to peace for all who live in the region.”

For more information, see these statements in the Book of Resolutions:

United Methodist Guiding Principles for Christian-Jewish Relations

Opposition to Israeli Settlements in Palestinian Land

A Pathway for Peace in Palestine and Israel

Interfaith Advocacy in Support of Israel/Palestine Peace

Paul Jeffrey is a photojournalist and founder of Life on Earth Pictures. He lives in Oregon.

News media contact: Julie Dwyer at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umnews.org.