Members of the General Board of the Canadian Council of Churches approved a statement this week on the Middle East after two days of vigorous debate and re-writing. The council endorsed the resolution in the last hour of a three-day conference in Windsor. The motion calls for a peace conference to be held at the earliest possible date which would provide for the security and integrity of Israeli and Arab lands and a just settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem.
An attempt to pass the Middle East resolution earlier in the conference failed because of disagreements in its sense and wording. The Canadian Council of Churches is a coordinating organization of the major Protestant churches in Canada. Among its constituents–in fact the largest–is the United Church of Canada, a section of which, typified by its former Moderator, the Rev. Ernest Howse, and the editor of the United Church Observer, Rev. A.C. Forrest, is regarded as pro-Arab in its views.
The most serious dispute over the Mideast statement involved a section that recommended the peace settlement be based on “secure and defensible borders to guarantee the safety and integrity of the Arab nations.” The final resolution omitted any reference to enforcing a United Nations proposal that Israel withdraw.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
