Participants in the Division and Hope course were treated to a masterful address by Fr. David Neuhaus, SJ as he presented the 2016 St George’s College Peace Lecture. Fr. Neuhaus chose a bold topic: Division and Hope in the Holy City, The Role of Christians in the Israel/Palestine Conflict.

David Neuhaus began by sketching the diversity within the Christian communities in Israel/Palestine, together with a brief consideration of their demographics.

Within Israel itself, excluding Palestine, there are about 160,000 Christians, with another 50,000 in Palestine and East Jerusalem. Christians represent 2.4 of the population of Israel, and just under 2% in Palestine.

Around 120,000 people are Palestinian Christians. These constitute the local Arab churches of the Holy Land, of which the Greek Catholics (Melkites) are the largest single community.

One of the great gifts of this lecture was the way that Fr. Neuhaus addressed the question of the Israeli Christian community. These are people who are rarely considered when we discuss the profile of Christianity in Israel/Palestine, but this lecture brought them into the light of day.

The largest single community of Israeli Christians is comprised of Russian Orthodox people who moved to Israel as part of the exodus of Russian Jews in the 1990s. There are between 30,000 and 40,000 Russian Orthodox Christians.

There is also a very large and diverse community of guest workers who have come to Israel on temporary visa and are often people of Christian faith. Their numbers are estimated between 120,000 and 150,000. These people have no right of residence and they are excluded from Israeli citizenship, but their children attend Israeli schools and speak Hebrew. They are a large community within the Hebrew-speaking Catholic Christians of Israel.

The Israeli Christians largely identify with Israel. They speak Hebrew. Their children serve in the Israeli army. Palestinian Christians, on the other hand, mostly identify with Palestinian national aspirations and they share a common experience of discrimination, dispossession and occupation.

In his lecture, Fr, Neuhaus invited us to see reconciliation and unity among the Christians of Israel and Palestine as the great challenge and the immense opportunity before us. If we cannot be one people in Christ, then we have no gospel to share. If we can overcome the divisions between us and live the reality that in Christ there is neither Israeli or Palestinian, then we indeed have some good news to share with our Jewish and Muslim neighbors.