Religious Peacebuilding

Since the beginning of the First Intifada in the late 1980s and even more so from the onset of the political peace process in the early 1990s, there have been a handful of religious leaders who began functioning as ‘insider religious mediators’ informally and discreetly working together, in particular Rabbi Menachem Froman and Sheikh Abdullah Nimer Darwish. Perhaps the earliest example of religious leaders serving as insider religious mediators attempting to work together to mitigate a crisis situation occurred in the context of the abduction of the Israeli soldier, Nachshon Wachsman in October, 1994.

Following the kidnapping, Wachsman’s parents turned to Rabbi Froman to see if he could speak with his acquaintances in Hamas (through his connections with Sheikh Abdullah) and try to reach an agreement to release their son. Rabbi Froman, related in an interview many years later that he had reached a telephone agreement with Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior figure in the Hamas political leadership, according to which Nachshon Wachsman would be released in return for the release of Hamas religious and political leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin (1937 – 2004) from Israeli prison. However, when this agreement reached the hands of the Israeli prime minster at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, he replied that he (Rabin) does not make deals with Hamas. Wachsman was later killed by his hostage takers in a failed special forces attempt to free him. In an interview of Sheikh Abdullah in Haaretz (February 12, 1995), he also related how he had attempted to mediate between Hamas and Israel in various incidents, such as the abduction of Nachshon Wachsman, and how he had called upon Hamas to spare the lives of soldiers.

Throughout the 1990s, Rabbi Froman and Sheikh Abdullah continued to approach senior religious and political leaders in efforts to include them in religious peacebuilding. Prof. Hillel Cohen, an Israeli scholar who studies and writes about Jewish-Arab relations in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, related in his eulogy for Rabbi Froman, that in 1996, Rabbi Froman worked out another agreement with senior Hamas leaders that would bring about a cease fire between Hamas and Israel as well as the release of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. However, at the exact time that Israel, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was supposed to be reviewing the terms of the draft agreement, the Israeli Mossad carried out a failed assassination attempt on Hamas leader, Khaled Mashal in Jordan. The end result – Israel was forced to accept far less favorable terms for the release of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. In 1997, after the release of Sheikh Yassin, Rabbi Froman went to Gaza to meet Sheikh Yassin once again and deliver a letter from the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, regarding advancing a religiously sanctioned long term ceasefire. Rabbi Froman was met there by other insider religious mediators, Sheikh Abdullah Nimer Darwish, and Sheikh Imad Faluji. However, these early attempts of insider religious mediation were not taken seriously by the Israeli government or by the international community. Indeed, his visit to Gaza drew strong opposition from Rabbi Froman’s own community including the daubing of his home and threats on his life.

In January 2002, the first major public gathering of senior religious leaders organized by insider religious mediators took place, ”the Alexandria Summit of the Religious Leaders of the Holy Land”. The primary insider religious leaders who helped make this happen were Rabbi Michael Melchior, drawing on his influence both as a religious leader and as Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister at the time, Rabbi Menachem Froman, Cannon Andrew White, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s envoy to the Middle East and Sheikh Talal Sider, an Islamic religious and political leader from Hebron who was initially one of the founders of Hamas and later a minister in the Palestinian Authority, to convene senior religious leaders for the first ever religious peace summit to be held in the Middle East. Sheikh Talal Sider, who testified that his own change of heart was as a result of his many meetings with Rabbi Froman, fell ill shortly after the summit and ultimately passed away in 2007. Rabbi Melchior described him as “a senior and full partner to attempts to persuade the leaders of the three faiths to turn religion into a lever for peace, brotherhood and hope.”

The summit, despite taking place in the midst of the Second Intifada, received the backing of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Participants included Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron (1941-2020), the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Sheikh Taisir Tamimi, Chief Justice of the Palestinian Sharia’ Courts, Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy (1928 – 2010) the Grand Mufti of Egypt and Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University at the time, one of the most influential Islamic institutions in the Muslim world, the Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, as well as other senior Muslim, Christian and Jewish religious leaders. The summit resulted in the Alexandria Declaration, a statement by these senior religious leaders in the region stating that killing in the name of G-d is a desecration of the Divine name, a commitment to resolve their disputes peacefully and a pledge “to continue a joint quest for a just peace”.^{9 The complete document and list of participants can be found in English in a report by the United States Institute for Peace, “Healing the Holy Land: Interreligious Peacebuilding in Israel/Palestine” (Y Landau, 2003, 16-25, 51-52)}

Getting the various religious leaders to not only participate in this summit but also agree on the exact language of the declaration was far from straight forward and took tremendous efforts by the insider religious mediators, as is described in detail by Canon Andrew White^{10 See Clayton Maring, “War Junkie for G-d: Andrew White, Iraq”, in Peacemakers in Action: Volume 2: Profiles in Religious Peacebuilding, (Ed, Joyce S. Dubensky), Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp 90 – 93}. The summit and its declaration won praise from world leaders, however, it was also harshly criticized by the more extremist worldviews, namely Hamas.

A month later, a group of religious leaders who had participated in the summit, paid a visit to Archbishop Carey at Lambert Palace in London. The visitors included Rabbi Melchior, Latin Patriarch Sabah and Sheikh al-Sider, and received the prestigious Coventry Prize. Rabbi Froman saw this first post-Alexandria gathering in London as an opportunity to engage politicians like Prime Minister Tony Blair in the religious peacebuilding initiative. A few months later the religious leaders were invited by Sheikh Tantawy, who had attended the Alexandria Summit, to pay a historic visit to Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Rabbi Melchior had the opportunity to address the large student body of future Islamic scholars about religious peace. Two years later, the group of religious leaders returned to Al-Azhar to speak to many of the key Islamic leaders and judges, including from some of the most extreme factions, from around the Sunni world, including from the West Bank and Gaza. A week after the first visit to Al-Azhar, in 2002, the group flew to the Vatican to meet with the ailing Pope John Paul II and received his blessing.

The Alexandria Declaration also made ripples around the world. On August 22, 2002, ‘insider religious mediators’ in Nigeria, Imam Muhammad Ashafa and Pastor James Wuye, signed the Kaduna Peace Declaration together with twenty other religious leaders and carved it into a stone monument with a text almost identical to the Alexandra Declaration.

Following the Alexandria Summit and subsequent process, there was a strong desire to continue and build off of this historic successful gathering of religious leaders. In 2005, participants from the Alexandria Summit, including Rabbi Melchior and Rabbi David Rosen, a world leader in advancing interreligious dialogue and peace, established the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land (CRIHL). The member institutions of CRIHL were the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, the leaders of the local Churches of the Holy Land, the Minister of the Islamic Waqf at the Palestinian Authority and the Islamic Sharia Court of the PA. As religious leaders, the council strove “to prevent religion from being used as a source of conflict, and to promote mutual respect, a just and comprehensive peace and reconciliation between people of all faiths in the Holy Land and worldwide.” CRIHL however, ceased to operate on a regular basis since 2013, but did reconvene to meet with Jason Greenblatt, the U.S. administration’s Special Envoy for International Negotiations in 2017.^{11 For more about CRIHL and Rabbi David Rosen see Yvonne Wang, How Can Religion Contribute to Peace in the Holy Land? A Study of Religious Peacework in Jerusalem, PhD Thesis University of Oslo, 2011, pp. 197 – 209}

In 2002, in the aftermath of the Alexandria Summit, the Mosaica Center for Inter-Religious Cooperation was established by Rabbi Melchior and Gitta Hazani –Melchior (married to a relative of Rabbi Melchior), which engaged numerous Jewish and Muslim religious leaders in Israel primarily through joint educational activities. These interreligious educational programs continued to operate until 2015.

In 2005, the first formal network of insider religious mediators was established. Rabbi Melchior, Sheikh Abdullah Nimer Darwish, the founder of the Islamic Movement in Israel, and Sheikh Imad Faluji, a former Hamas spokesman, established a strategic network between them, as insider religious mediators, and their centers which they each directed. This partnership was initially referred to as “Alexandria Process Part II” and later renamed The Religious Peace Initiative in the Middle East. Sheikh Imad’s center in Gaza and Sheikh Abdullah’s center in Kfar Kassem were later renamed the Adam Center for Dialogue of Civilizations, and Rabbi Melchior’s center was named, Mosaica, which continues to be located in Jerusalem until this day. Together, these three insider religious mediators, with their centers and other partners, continued what had been started in the Alexandria process. However, this time, they aimed at engaging the more extreme and influential religious leadership on both sides, who were not part of the official Israeli or Palestinian establishment, and who had been critical of the Alexandria process. The goal was to reach out to the religious leaders who had far more influence on the religious worldviews in conflict, namely the Islamic leaders aligned with Hamas and the larger global Muslim Brotherhood movement as well as the right-wing religious Zionist rabbis.

Today, The Religious Peace Initiative (RPI), continues to serve as a strategic network of insider religious mediators, Rabbi Michael Melchior, Sheikh Ra’ed Bader, Sheikh Imad Faluji, and their centers, the Mosaica Center and the Adam Centers. Together, these insider religious mediators work to advance religious peace and help mitigate crisis situations along the way.  These crisis situations can be of a religious nature, such as the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa Crisis of 2017 (see below), or simply any crisis that risks the lives of thousands, such as efforts to help mediate between the World Health Organization and senior religious and medical leaders in the region in the fight against Covid-19.

In 2019, Rabbi Dr. Daniel Roth  established a new initiative focused on engaging religious leaders on the community level, in particular within mixed Jewish –Arab cities and areas within Israel where tensions are often high. The goals are for local religious leaders to ultimately work together as insider religious mediators between their communities and advance religious peace and mitigate crisis situations as they arise.

Rabbi Melchior, in an article he published in the Israeli newspaper, Makor Rishon, September 18, 2020 entitled “Peace of Believers”, described in detail about one particular meeting he and Sheikh Ra’ed attended, while still withholding certain identifying details:

“Several years ago, I traveled with my Muslim friends to a meeting, one of hundreds, with senior Islamic leaders… as part of Mosaica’s Religious Peace Initiative in the Middle East. This meeting was not just another meeting. I waited months, perhaps years. The leader who I met with was the leading Islamic religious leader after the assassination of Sheikh Achmad Yassin (the leader of Hamas). He and his family spent much time in jail with us (Israelis)…. He agreed to meet with me in his home after much urging from his partners and his students, that the senior amongst them was the Sheikh Abdullah Nimer Darwish, of blessed memory.”

Rabbi Melchior describes in detail how they sat for seven challenging hours during which they discussed religious principles of war and peace, ceasefires as opposed to peace and how religious peace is what has been missing from the secular political peace processes.

“The Sheikh was quiet. And then pounded on the table and said: ‘the young rabbi is right. There is a time for war and a time for peace.’ Other than us, there were twenty people who sat the whole time quietly and vigilantly, religious leaders primarily from Hamas, who were in shock from the turn of events: ‘what will people say? Your whole life, you instructed us otherwise?’ The Sheikh responded in a resolute manner: ‘No one ever presented peace as a religious project. And in addition, my whole life, I never was afraid from what people would say. I am only afraid of Allah.’ We hugged, took a picture together, prayed each one in his corner and we parted in peace.”

Rabbi Froman worked hard to constantly engage religious and political leaders and had a particularly unique method of trying to arrange meetings: through writing letters. Rabbi Froman sent tens of letters to heads of state upon their inauguration, well-known writers and thinkers (such as a letter to Elie Wiesel in 2010) and religious leaders, urging them to consider his proposal of advancing peace through religion instead of without it. For example, in 2008, Rabbi Froman, together with Gershon Baskin, a non-religious insider mediator, sent such a letter to U.S. President Barak Obama shortly after his election victory. They urged him and his new administration to think differently about how Middle East peace had been conceptualized for the past 20 years. While Rabbi Froman never had the opportunity to meet with President Obama, he did meet with Turkey PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2010, with his partner and long-time Islamic peacemaker, Sheikh Ghassan Manasra. The meeting took place soon after the incident of the Mavi Marmara, which significantly damaged Turkey-Israel relations.

Though much of the meetings and gatherings of senior religious mediators are discreet and far from the public eye, there have been a few public gatherings in which the mediators have brought senior religious leaders from both sides together to express support for religious peace. The first was the Alexandria Summit of Religious Leaders of the Holy Land in 2002, described above. Over the years the Religious Peace Initiative continues to serve as the platform for numerous discreet gatherings of religious leaders (such as Norway, 2011 and Athens, 2015). In 2015, several of the Religious Peace Initiatives’ senior insider religious mediators, Sheikh Abdullah Nimer Darwish, Rabbi Melchior, Sheikh Ra’ed and Rabbi Avi Gisser, all spoke as part of a panel at the Haaretz Peace Conference in Tel Aviv, entitled, “Jerusalem and the Religious Aspect of the Conflict: Towards Reconciliation or Explosion?” This was a rare occasion that these leaders spoke about religious peace in public and in a forum which is predominately liberal and secular and the notion of ‘religious peace’ is considered at best, exotic and at worst, a threat to their own worldview.

The most historic gathering of senior religious leaders, since the Alexandria Summit of 2002, was the Alicante Summit of Religious Leaders for Peace in the Middle East which took place in November 2016 in Alicante, Spain under the official auspices of the Spanish Foreign Ministry and the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC). The Religious Peace Initiative’s senior religious mediators participated and helped organize the historic conference, including, Rabbi Melchior, Sheikh Ra’ed, Sheikh Imad and Rabbi Gisser. Similar to the Alexandria Summit in 2002, one of Israel’s Chief Rabbis participated,  Rabbi David Lau, and the Palestinian Authority‘s top Sharia judge, Dr. Mahmoud al-Habbash also attended. However, at this summit more ‘extreme’ worldviews were included as well.

On the Jewish side, one of the most influential leaders of the Torani religious Zionist movement Rabbi Yaakov Ariel attended, and on the Islamic side, Dr. Naser A-din Al-shaer, Senior Professor at Al-Najah University in Nablus and Minister for Education and Deputy Prime Minister on behalf of Hamas in the Palestinian Cabinet was also scheduled to attend Alicante. The professor, however, was unable to attend due to permit issues. The participants condemned all religious violence stating that “the proper means of solving conflict and disagreement is by negotiation and deliberation only” and they committed “to relentlessly seek peace in the Land.” The historic summit was also covered in the English, Hebrew and Arabic media.

A year later, in 2017, at the invitation of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), many of the senior insider religious mediators and leaders who had attended and helped organize the Alicante Summit, including, Rabbi Melchior, Sheikh Ra’ed, Sheikh Imad, Dr. Nasser, and Rabbi Gisser as well as Rabbanit Adina Bar Shalom, presented their work at a special seminar on The Role of Religious Leaders in Peacebuilding in the Middle East at the United Nations in NY.

Insider religious mediators with their vast network of connections to other religious leaders within their communities have played an important role in mitigating crisis situations in mixed Jewish-Arab cities in Israel. Often religious Jewish Israelis and Islamist ‘Palestinians of 48’ (Arab citizens of Israel) live in the same neighborhoods within these mixed cities, which leads to constant tension. These mixed cities, in certain ways, serve as a microcosm of the larger Arab – Israeli conflict. Tensions in these cities are often high, but they are particularly so around religious holidays. In 2008, rioting broke out in the mixed city of Acre due to an incident that had taken place on the holiest day in Judaism, Yom Kippur. Rabbi Michael Melchior and Sheikh Abdullah Nimer Darwish quickly made public calls for peace. Drawing on religious symbolism from the Jewish festival of Sukkot, which immediately follows Yom Kippur and commemorates the temporary shelters built by the Israelites on their way from Egypt to the Promised Land, the religious leaders sat together in a sukkah which they called the ‘Sukkah of Peace’. Rabbi Melchior condemned the violence: “We will not accept any form of incitement . . . In Israel’s sukkah there must be room for its Muslim and Christian citizens. We must cast out those who incite, and who hate, and leave room only for the good.”

In 2014, Yom Kippur and the most joyous day of the Islamic calendar, Eid Al-Adha fell on the same day. There were police warnings that there would be an eruption of violence, particularly in mixed Arab-Jewish cities, such as had taken place in Acre in 2008. This time, Rabbi Melchior and Sheikh Ra’ed a leading Islamic authority and a top student of Sheikh Abdullah who served beside him in directing the Adam Center, reached out to “the most radical” Muslim leaders and asked for their support in attempting to avoid violence. The Muslim leaders issued a historic fatwa [Islamic religious ruling] which was published in the Palestinian press and posted on the walls of mosques calling on their co-religionists to respect Yom Kippur. In parallel, Rabbi Melchior arranged for senior rabbis to publish a statement explaining the significance of Eid Al-Adha to Muslims. Rabbi Melchior and Mosaica also arranged a series of meetings between rabbis and imams explaining the sensitivities and encouraging them to work together to prevent violence.

In addition, Mosaica’s Tochnit Gishurim, which supports tens of community mediation centers throughout Israel, including in the mixed cities, held a number of events and meetings in these cities promoting nonviolence and tolerance on this sensitive, duel holy day. Due to their joint efforts, and the efforts of their partners, Mosaica played an essential role in preventing an outbreak of violence on that day. In November 2019, the Religious Peace Initiative’s senior insider religious mediators, together with Mosaica’s Center for Conflict Resolution, presented recommendations to mitigate crisis situations to the top 300 Israeli police officers.

Religious leaders, such as Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the most influential Islamic authorities in the world, have had a direct impact on the level of violence in the region. His acceptance of suicide attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel in the mid-90’s is a prominent example. In direct opposition to this religious position, Sheikh Abdullah Nimer Darwish wrote a controversial book in 1999 (Auqifu Al-Siyasat Al-Intihariya Li-Hukumat Al-Istitan Al-Israeiliya) in which he openly spoke out against suicide bombings being carried out in the name of Islam against Israel.

Years later, in 2016, Sheikh Qaradawi reversed his ruling on Saudi TV, stating that such suicide bombings were no longer permitted. This historic change in religious ruling attracted the attention of well-known Israeli journalist Zvi Yehezkeli who reported about it on Israel’s Channel 13 TV.

Rabbi Michael Melchior, in his article “Don’t dismiss the Islamic ruling on suicide attacks” explained some of the back story:

“Why did Sheikh Qaradawi reverse his ruling and why now? Just prior to announcing his decision on Saudi television, Qaradawi met with Dr. Nasser al-Din al-Shaer, a renowned Islamic scholar, former deputy prime minister for Hamas in the joint Fatah-Hamas Government and a key Palestinian figure in an initiative my colleagues and I have been working on for several years. The Religious Peace Initiative… Al-Shaer reported to Qaradawi about the Religious Peace Initiative and its unique approach of pursuing peace by including, rather than excluding, religious Jews and Islamists. Al-Shaer also requested Qaradawi’s support and blessing for the Initiative and asked him to publicly renounce his earlier fatwa. Qaradawi reported this meeting on his website and took to the airwaves.”

Insider religious mediators will often be the first religious leaders to denounce acts of ethno-national violence, and in addition, take action to engage others, often more senior religious leaders, to make declarations denouncing violence and/or visit the scene of the crime or visit with survivors. Sheikh Abdullah and his followers in the Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement consistently and sharply condemned the suicide bombings that were carried out by Hamas and Islamic Jihad in early 1996 on the pretext that ‘murder is murder’, regardless of the background to the murder or the motives for carrying it out. Years later, Sheikh Ra’ed, Sheikh Abdullah’s primary disciple and the leading Islamic authority of the Southern Branch publicly denounced the violent murder of the Fogel Family in 2011.

The Jewish – Israeli insider mediators also often acted quickly to denounce acts of violence done by Jews to Palestinians. This meant involving more senior religious leaders. In 2001, Chief Rabbi Bakshi-Doron sent a letter denouncing the murder of three Palestinians through Rabbi Froman to Yasser Arafat. Later, Rabbi Froman was constantly the first to denounce acts of violence known as “price tag”. He would then lead and pay respect, such as following the burning of the Mosque in Lubban al-Sharqiya on May 4, 2010 by Jewish extremists. Several months later on October 5, 2010, another mosque was burnt in the West Bank village of Beit Fajjar. This time Rabbi Froman came to visit the mosque with more senior religious Zionist rabbis from the West Bank, Rabbi Aaron Lichtenstein and Rabbi Shlomo Risken, who were not generally aligned with his views.

In the summer of 2015, following the horrific Duma arson attack, Rabbi Melchior was approached by the heads of the national religious rabbinic organization Tzohar who wanted to visit the Duma family for a condolence meeting. Rabbi Melchior, together with his partner, Sheikh Abdullah, arranged a meeting at the Sheba Medical Center in Israel where family members were being treated. The Jewish delegation included Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Rabbi Aryeh Stern, and the heads of the Tzohar organization, Rabbi David Stav and Rabbi Rafi Feurstein. The group of rabbis met with the surviving family members together with Rabbi Melchior and Sheikh Abdullah and committed to peace and ongoing dialogue.

Speaking out against violence has come to also include speaking out against anti-semitism and islamophobia. Rabbi Melchior and Sheikh Abdullah made a pact that every time there is an act of anti-semitism, Sheikh Abdullah would speak out against it, and every time there is an act of islamophobia, Rabbi Melchior would denounce it. In 1997, a young Russian immigrant created caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) which she distributed around Hebron. This enraged the local residents who saw it as a blasphemous attack on Islam. President Ezer Weizman and Prime Minister Netanyahu condemned the act, but these condemnations were not enough to defuse the rage. Rabbi Melchior, in his Facebook post eulogizing the passing of Chief Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi Doron (d. April 12, 2020) tells of how he heard from his Palestinian contacts that the imams in Hebron were preparing incendiary sermons to deliver in the mosques, which could inflame violent riots. He understood that there was a need for a religious voice (and not just political voices) to win the confidence of the Muslim leadership. Rabbi Melchior brought Chief Rabbi Bakshi-Doron to Hebron where they met with the Grand Mufti of Hebron. The Chief Rabbi explained that the woman’s actions were an abomination according to Jewish law. The Mufti was reassured by this response from the highest Jewish authority in Israel. He calmed the imams and bloodshed was avoided.

In 2007, Sheikh Abdullah was the first Muslim leader to speak at the Global Forum for Combatting Anti-Semitism, which convened that year in Jerusalem. He declared, “I am a soldier, and hopefully the lead soldier, in the war against anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the region.” Sheikh Abdullah sharply criticized anyone, including Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who denies the Holocaust, “Tell anyone who denies the Holocaust: ‘Go ask the Germans, did you do it or not?’”. In April 2020, Member of Knesset (MK) Mansour Abbas delivered a speech on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day in which he attested, “As a religious Palestinian Muslim Arab, who was raised on the legacy of Sheikh Abdullah Nimer Darwish who founded the Islamic Movement, I have empathy for the pain and suffering over the years of Holocaust survivors and the families of the murdered.”

It is also important to note the historic visit by Sheikh Muhammad bin Abdul Karim Issa, Secretary General of the Muslim World League based in Saudi Arabia, to Auschwitz in January 2020. The trip took place together with other Islamic leaders along side leaders of the American Jewish Committee and was an important step towards advancing religious peace between Jews and the Muslim world.

As noted above, Rabbi Froman and Sheikh Abdullah already began working to advance religiously sanctioned cease fires and hostage exchanges between Hamas and Israel in the mid-90s. Over the years, Rabbi Froman continued to serve as an insider religious mediator conducting meetings to advance cease fires as well as hostage exchanges. On June 26, 2006, it was reported that Rabbi Froman was blocked by Israeli forces in the middle of conducting a meeting in Jerusalem with senior Hamas leaders including, Mahmoud Abu-Ter as well as Israeli MK Ibrahim Sarsour (who took over for Sheikh Abdullah as leader of the Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement). The meeting was supposedly about announcing a cease fire between Hamas and Israel. On February 15, 2008, Rabbi Froman together with Khaled Amayreh, a Palestinian journalist with close ties to Hamas, attempted to mediate a ceasefire and hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas. They connected senior religious leaders in Turkey with senior religious leaders in Israel in order to free Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit as well as to bring about a ceasefire.

Another example of insider religious mediators operating behind the scenes in hostage situations is the Siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, between April 2 –May 10, 2002, only months after the Alexandria Summit. Canon Andrew White describes in great detail how he, together with Rabbi Melchior and other insider religious mediators who had participated in the summit, engaged in intense shuttle diplomacy between the religious and political leaders helping to resolve the siege.^{12 See Clayton Maring, “War Junkie for G-d: Andrew White, Iraq”, in Peacemakers in Action: Volume 2: Profiles in Religious Peacebuilding, (Ed, Joyce S. Dubensky), Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp 93-95}

Perhaps the most profound example of the religious peace mediation took place after two Muslim Arab citizens of Israel killed two Israeli police officers on the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa Mosque on July 14, 2017. Israeli police subsequently set up cameras and metal detectors at the entrance to Al-Aqsa, leading to calls of violence, in what became known as the Temple Mount Crisis. The installation caused great offense in the Muslim world and the situation was inflamed by extremists who wanted, according to Rabbi Melchior, to use the sensitivity of the site to Jews and Muslims “to create a world war, a clash of civilizations.” Riots broke out on the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Temple Mount, East Jerusalem and the West Bank with several fatalities. Since the Israeli government had limited channels of communication with senior Palestinian religious leaders, the authorities were unable to defuse the rage. The Jerusalem Police appealed to Rabbi Melchior for help. Rabbi Melchior, together with the other senior insider mediators, met with the eight leaders of the Waqf – the Muslim authority responsible for overseeing the Al-Aqsa Mosque. According to Rabbi Melchior, they negotiated non-stop for a week “before the whole Middle East went up in flames.” Finally, they forged an agreement “with the support of a lot of players in the Muslim world and the Israeli police, approved by the Israeli cabinet.” The metal detectors were removed and the Waqf successfully retook responsibility for ensuring quiet. The intervention was a rare example of this sensitive work of the insider religious mediators being shared with the press that demonstrated how the Religious Peace Initiative was able to help mediate in a crisis situation. This intervention was then strongly criticized by deputy chairman of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, Sheikh Kamal Khatib. He responded to the Ben-Dror Yemini Ynet article describing the work of these insider religious mediators by writing, “It included Sheikh Imad Al- Faluji from Gaza, Dr. Nasser Al-Din Al-Shaer from Nablus, and Sheikhs from the Palestinian interior, whom he did not name (but we know their names). I specifically wish to hear an explanation from Dr. Nasir Al-Din Al-Shaer of the truth of what Rabbi Melchior said.” These accusations about the intervention were later the subject of public discussion and debate in the Palestinian press.

It is important to emphasize that the Palestinian – Islamic insider mediators do not only operate in the context of religious peace. In fact, they work primarily to advance intra-Palestinian reconciliation, in particular between Fatah and Hamas. Sheikh Abdullah, with his complex identity and vast connections, had already begun serving as a mediator between the factions as far back as the First Intifada in the late 1980s. For instance in August 1994, Yasser Arafat asked Sheikh Abdullah and his fellow leaders of the Islamic Movement to mediate between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. From the point of view of the Islamic Movement, the aim of this mediation initiative was to bring calm to the conflict between the two sides and also gain legitimacy and recognition from the PLO and from the Islamists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

A more recent example of such mediation attempts took place in Cairo in 2012, when Sheikh Abdullah led a delegation with the purpose of advancing reconciliation between the factions. The delegation consisted of prominent personalities from the Palestinian Territories, Jerusalem and Israel. The attendees included Dr. Nasser Al-Din Al-Shaer, Dr. Ali Al- Sartawi, Professor Dr. Abdul Rahman Abbad, Secretary-General of the Council of Scholars and Preachers in Palestine, Sheikh Ibrahim Sarsour, Head of the Arab Unity Party/Islamic Movement, Sheikh Safwat Fareej, Vice President of the movement, and Sheikh Ra’ed Bader, Director General of the “Adam Center for Dialogue of Civilizations.”

The Jewish Israeli insider religious mediators (discussed so far) are less invested in the critical work of intra-Jewish Israeli dialogue around peace than their Palestinian counterparts. This includes work between the secular liberal peace oriented worldview and the right wing illiberal religious Zionist worldview. There are, however, several other organizations that are addressing this issue, such as Siach Shalom (Talking Peace), which brings together leaders from the traditional peace camp and rabbis and other ideological leaders from the settlements to talk about their concept of peace. The Citizens Accord Forum facilitated important deliberations about cultivating a language of peace among the religious Zionist and Ultra-Orthodox rabbinic and lay leadership.