In every part of the Palestinian population, Christian and Muslim alike, there is a continuing agony as they continue to live in captivity without hope and always behind the barricades of hatred and malice.

For 10 years, ever since the Palestinian uprising known as the Intifada, the Israeli government has systematically oppressed an entire people. To complicate matters, the international media have done little to convey the squalid conditions of the Palestinian refugee camps, the injustices against working people or the brutality of living without hope.

Yes, there have been moments of hope when Palestinian and Israeli leaders reached agreements, shook hands and promised a future of peace and prosperity. But always the Palestinians remain in refugee camps, and their only hope is that relief agencies will keep them one step ahead of starvation.

One relief agency official, Tom Getman, executive director of World Vision, Jerusalem, calls the situation in Israel a "murky vortex" with Palestinians being drawn steadily deeper into a subhuman existence. Getman says there is a a growing antipathy to the anti-peace measures of Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu.

Now progressive Jews, Christians and Muslims living in Israel are beginning to see that politics is not the answer, that conservative leadership in Israel will continue to force Palestinians into oppression. Further, it is clear that Palestinian leadership does little to improve the situation.

Into this void of leadership comes a coalition of relief agencies: World Vision, Lutheran World Relief, Catholic Relief, CARE and many others. Their job is to feed people, build adequate housing and create a mechanism that will allow peace to flow like a raging river.

But politics works against peace in Israel. The relief agencies want to do more than feed people. They want to bring the two sides together, not in huge international meetings that promise change, but in small groups that will begin the real work of reconciliation. Even that effort is stymied by reality.

Of the 63 projects run by international relief organizations, only four are aimed at forgiveness, reconciliation and economic development. The other 59 projects simply rush to stem the tide of illness and hunger that plague the refugee camps day by day.

The only hope is for Israelis to stop demonizing Palestinians, to see them as human beings who yearn for the same opportunities offered to those living on the other side of the barricades and check points.

Of course, that works both ways, but it is more difficult for the oppressed to reach out in peace to an oppressor. But relief officials working there say that is the only way peace will be reached in the Middle East.

It all goes back to 1948, when the state of Israel was established following the Israeli-Arab war. Then hundreds of Palestinian villages were bulldozed or confiscated; estimates claim that about $200 billion of property was taken by the new Israeli government. The spoils of war, some said. The Palestinians will recover, international observers said.

But they have never recovered in nearly 50 years of brutal oppression. As the terrible years roll by, the Israeli government continues to confiscate Palestinian land for Jewish housing developments.

Getman says that if the Israeli government is successful, all Christians, Muslims, and secular or progressive Jews will be shoved out of the Holy Land. That will leave the territory to the ultra-Orthodox Jewish faction creating a Zionist ghetto, an Orthodox Jewish tourist attraction where people of other world religions can visit but never stay.

The tragedy is, Israel is the birthplace of Judaism, Christianity and Islam - and because of that diversity, it belongs to the world. It is difficult to imagine that any people could enjoy living in such a sterile environment, all driven by the same principles, values and history.

Yet the oppression continues and in some ways is encouraged by the billions of dollars of support from the U.S. government. Meanwhile, Israel, far from being destitute, is the 16th-largest economy in the world, according to Getman.

But that's politics. Meanwhile, the alternatives - actions such as forgiveness, love and reconciliation - are not always trusted by people living either in power or in misery. But Tom Getman of World Vision says politics hasn't worked for half a century.

"Peace will be accomplished day by day through the unglamorous struggle for the millions of human beings whose wretched condition is brought about by politics," Getman says.

That sounds as if we're all involved in this struggle. As the tide turns against oppression in Israel, where will we stand as a nation, as religious people, as pilgrims praying for a just world?

Clark D. MorphewNovember 15, 1997