Churches for Middle East Peace Leader Urges De-escalation as Gaza Faces Siege

In the days after the weekend attacks, Rev. Mae Elise Cannon, executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace, met with dozens of faith leaders to pray. “We had a prayer meeting [Monday] morning with dozens and dozens of people from all different traditions, from bishops to people sitting in the pews,” Cannon told Sojourners. “We’ll have another prayer gathering on Wednesday morning. We’re grieving, we’re lamenting, and we’re also working really hard.”

Over the weekend, Hamas, a Palestinian militant group, sent rockets and armed fighters into Israel, killing hundreds, wounding thousands, and taking scores of hostages. Israel declared itself at war with Hamas, and the Israel Defense Forces launched retaliatory attacks. As of Oct. 10, nearly 800 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis had been killed, with thousands more injured.

Cannon said Israel was also enforcing a total siege on the Gaza Strip, cutting off food, water, fuel, and electricity for over 2 million residents, including roughly 1 million children. According to the United Nations, the retaliatory attacks destroyed the homes of more than 180,000 Gazans.

CMEP is a coalition of more than 30 U.S. church communions and organizations from Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and evangelical traditions. Beyond prayer, the group advocates for 12 policy positions that call for equality and justice and the recognition of the humanity of all people in Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, and the Middle East. “We’re trying to do a lot of education amid our grief,” Cannon said. “Advocating for de-escalation and peaceful responses, as opposed to more violence” (Romans 12:18).

Cannon said her organization had staff in the occupied Palestinian territory, in Jerusalem, and among friends, colleagues, and partners in Israel proper, across the West Bank, and in Gaza. She described a conversation with an Orthodox rabbi, a friend whose son, still in training, had been called up to serve in the southern Israeli communities where Hamas fighters had entered. According to Cannon, the son had carried a grandmother out while under fire, and the rabbi was grateful for his son’s safety while grieving the Israelis taken hostage. Cannon said the rabbi, who has worked on peacebuilding, human rights, and reconciliation, also felt grief for Palestinian people and had said that political actors had not listened.

Cannon also said she had been relieved to hear from a Muslim human-rights worker, born in Gaza and raising his children there, that his family was safe. Their greatest fear, she said, was that Israel had cut Gaza off from water, electricity, and gas. “You have 2 million people in Gaza; the vast majority of them have nothing to do with what Hamas has done, and yet they are going to be suffering so greatly under bombs, war, and lack of water,” Cannon said.

Cannon described the work of peacebuilding as holding several commitments together. She said that those who had worked in this space had argued that if the core issues of the occupation and the conflict were not addressed, many would feel so hopeless that violence would seem the only answer, and that this did not justify what had happened. She also said that grieving alongside Jewish families who had lost loved ones, and condemning Hamas’s violence, did not mean compromising on justice for Palestinians. “Peace building can be completely condemning taking civilians as hostages and still working for an end to occupation,” she said.

On the wider stage, Cannon noted reports that the United States was sending the aircraft carrier USS Ford to the eastern Mediterranean, along with statements from President Joe Biden about the U.S. and Israel and discussion of increased militarization of Israel. She said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had stated that Gaza should be prepared for consequences unlike any that have ever been seen before.

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