What role can religion play in finding peace in the Holy Land?

Ancient Roman paving stones inside Jerusalem’s Old City that have been worn smooth over time mark the path where tradition holds that Jesus carried the cross. It is called the Way of Sorrow, or the “Via Dolorosa.”

Today along that path, a procession of Christians, including Palestinians who are members of the dwindling Christian minority in Palestine, will mark Good Friday, the most somber day on the Christian calendar. For the faithful, it is a day of reflection on the events in Jerusalem more than 2,000 years ago that led to Jesus being betrayed by one of his disciples, sentenced to death under the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate and crucified and buried. The sorrow of Good Friday is followed three days later by the joyous celebration of Jesus’ Resurrection on Easter Sunday and the Christian belief that the crucifixion prepared the way for salvation for all of humanity.

While Christians observe their Holy Week, Muslims are fasting for the holy month of Ramadan and Jews are preparing for the coming of Passover celebrations next month. Springtime in Jerusalem, when these three faiths observe these important days on their respective calendars, can be a powerfully spiritual experience and a time of great hope in a land wracked by decades of conflict.

This year with the war in Gaza raging it will be very hard to feel that spirituality or to experience any hope. Not with some 150 Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas in the tunnels beneath Gaza after the terrorist organization's brazen attack inside Israel on October 7 that killed 1,200 people. Not with the punishing Israeli military retaliation and the waves of indiscriminate airstrikes that have now killed more than 32,000 Palestinian civilians. Not with the Gaza strip reduced to rubble and some 2 million Palestinians displaced from their homes. Not with international aid agencies saying that six months of war and an effective blockade by Israel have left Gaza on the brink of famine. And not with this week’s UN resolution calling for a cease fire going unmet. Not with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that Israeli forces will apply more military pressure with an imminent invasion of Rafah in the southern end of the Gaza Strip.

But even under the dark cloud of war, the common themes that tie these three religious observances together are still there: sacrifice, renewal, and spiritual deliverance as a gift from God.

Extremism in religion has done a great deal to leave Israelis and Palestinians, deeply divided, but as most observers would agree the heart of the conflict is not really about religion. It is ultimately a conflict about land, and its resolution will have to be about finding a formula to share the land that all three faiths claim as holy. Christians are, sadly, a dwindling presence in the land where their faith was born. But the indigenous Christians, who are Palestinians living in Bethlehem and Nazareth and Jerusalem, still represent approximately 2 percent of the overall population, and despite their diminished numbers they have a quiet, but potentially resonant, voice that deserves to be heard, a point of view that is expressed in my book, The Body and The Blood: The Middle East’s Vanishing Christians and the Possibilities for Peace.

So, what is the way forward to return to the path to peace?

To most political analysts, the only way forward is to try to get back to the specific requirements within the peace agreement, which calls for both the Israelis and Palestinians to recognize their legitimate rights to share the land as two separate states. Obviously, this will be very difficult, and it will certainly take a very long time. But it is still possible, and it will ultimately require not just political leadership but faith leaders to bring the people from both sides to see this as the only path forward, and to guide them down that path. The U.S. and Christian leaders around the world can and must play a role in this leadership, but it is truly only the people — Palestinian and Israeli, and members of all three faiths — who can take the steps required to find the way back to the path toward peace.

A resonant voice for peace in the Holy Land is the Rev. Mitri Raheb, a Palestinian Christian and theologian from Bethlehem and a Lutheran minister who now runs a small college. I got to know Raheb and he was always one of my first stops when I would return to the Holy Land to cover different chapters of history as it has unfolded in the last 30 years. Raheb has just released a YouTube video that I found online in which he articulates his hope for this Easter with these words:

“Imagine the impact we could make if from every corner of the world, our collective call for action , for a cease fire, for a liberation of all captives becomes impossible to ignore. May we receive during this Easter time the power to leave behind our fears and complicity and become agents of transformation. Let this Easter mark not just a day of celebration but a day of mobilization, a day we choose to be catalysts for hope and action for a long lasting and just peace.”

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