One of the aims of the visit to Israel by Dr. Rowan Williams, head of the Anglican Church and the archbishop of Canterbury, was to improve relations, even partially, between him and the Church he heads, and the State of Israel and its supporters in the West.That is because the Anglican Church, the third largest in the Christian world - it has some 77 million members - is considered today to be the church most hostile in its attitude toward Israel.
Some of the Church's heads, including Williams himself, have strongly criticized Israel in recent years.
Last week, several senior clergy of the Episcopalian Church, the American branch of the Anglicans, participated in a convention in Boston where they discussed "Israel and apartheid."
Church members have called for preventing investment of church monies in, and divesting from, Israeli companies or international companies that sell equipment to the Israel Defense Forces.
His one-day visit last Wednesday was Williams' fourth in his five years as archbishop; this time, unlike in previous trips, he did not visit the Palestinian Christian communities and did not meet with politicians.
Instead, his time was devoted to a meeting with Israel's chief rabbis and with a special team from the Chief Rabbinate that deals with interfaith dialogue.
Why Assad is worried
The archbishop's visit to Israel marked the end of a hectic tour to various parts of the world in the last few months, including Lebanon and Syria, where he met with President Bashar Assad.
Speaking to Haaretz shortly before returning to Britain, Williams tried to maneuver the conversation carefully and avoid the expressions that had caused controversy in the past.
However, he does not deny the views that drew criticism of him because of the weakness he apparently showed toward extremist Islam.
He politely describes the remarks the Syrians made to him about Israel as "a mixture of reactions - some quite unreconstructed, a lack of sympathy toward Israel, some rather more statesmanlike language on the need for engagement."
Assad told him that he was "very much concerned that a small shift in the stability of any country in the region could trigger a negative situation."
When he returned from Syria last month, Williams strongly criticized the prevailing mood in the United States about the need to attack Damascus and Tehran, and said statements about taking action against these countries were "criminal, ignorant and potentially murderous folly."
He prefers not to comment on the fact that Israel has already acted against Syria, a mere few weeks ago.
"The saber-rattling I've heard on destabilizing the regimes in Syria and Iran was what triggered my remarks," he explains. "That's the last thing we want - another destabilized country in this region. I think that any military initiative against those countries is just throwing another match on the fire."
He relates to the possible plans to prevent Iran from nuclearization in the same fashion.
"The only way of eliminating [the nuclear] possibility," the archbishop says, "would be a preemptive strike, which is against international law."
This he says, would make any possibility of relations with Iran impossible.
Williams believes that the only option is talking with the Muslims.
During his five years at the helm of the Church, he has made feverish efforts to promote interfaith dialogue, but even he has difficulty pointing to any progress on the matter.
His contacts with Iranian clergymen are not held at the highest level.
"We had some informal contacts; there are theological dialogues occasionally between me and the Iranian embassy in London. Some of the religious scholars in Iran seem very well-informed about Christianity and are very open to dialogue," he explains.
"Others in the leadership, not so. I have said in public that the statements of the president of Iran caused me a lot of worry. Anyone who questions the right of Israel to exist causes me worry."
Williams is aware of the difficulty of holding a religious dialogue with Islam, partly because many Muslims delegitimize other religions.
But he is convinced that there are "quite a lot who are prepared to talk - for the purpose of dialogue and not of victory."
He adds that "one of the problems in talking to Muslim communities anywhere in the world is that, of course, it's not a hierarchical religion in the same way.
So who is an equivalent?
They don't have archbishops, they don't have chief rabbis, so we try to identify people like the sheikh of Al Azhar in Cairo with whom we have been in direct dialogue, and the grand mufti in Damascus.
"The points of crossover between political and religious leadership are quite complex."
Meanwhile, he admits, the successes he has achieved in the interfaith dialogue are mainly on communal issues in Britain - local cooperation between churches and mosques on questions of family and education.
"Small things," he says, "but I think the alternative - of doing nothing - is worse."
Difficult in Bethlehem
Another place where relations between Christians and Muslims seem to have encountered difficulties is in the Palestinian Authority.
Tens of thousands of Christian Palestinians have emigrated over the last few years and Christians have become a minority in areas that once were Christian.
After his last visit to Israel, during Christmas 2006, Williams attacked Israel vehemently.
"I would like to know how much it matters to the Israeli government to have Christian communities in the Holy Land. Are they an embarrassment or are they part of a solution? That is the question."
He described his reaction when he went to Bethlehem and first saw the separation fence as "a strong sense of shock."
Referring to the wall near Jesus' birthplace, he said: "It was overwhelming to see it in a place where a child was once born who grew into a man whose life was all about tearing down walls."
He described the wall as "a sign of all that is wrong in the human heart."
During the latest visit, the archbishop tried to sound more relaxed. He described the "human cost" of the wall as "very high," but added: "I realize that the cost of terrorism is very high and I'm not dismissing that concern for a moment. My worry is that sometimes by anti-terrorist activity, we end up producing another seedbed of violence. Listening to a lot of young people in Bethlehem - not radical extreme people but very ordinary students in Bethlehem - the sense of alienation and despair was just gripping; the difficulty of getting to their places of study, that kind of thing. It's a long fuse and it's sizzling. A better option? I wish I knew. I can only point out the cost, which I think is something that affects Israel in the long term. It encourages the departure of educated young Palestinians from their environment."
During this visit, the archbishop also tried to be a bit more diplomatic about Israel's responsibility for the plight of the Christians in the territories.
He spoke only about "the pressure on the Palestinian communities in general, bearing particularly heavily on Christian Palestinians, for a number of reasons."
And he added: "I don't say that's a direct effect, but it is certainly a consequence."
In the past, Williams virtually refrained from talking about the responsibility of Palestinians for the plight of the Christians, but when asked about this phenomenon during this last visit, he responded: "One of the worrying features of the last four to five years is the rising level of Palestinian-to-Palestinian threats, from Muslim communities toward the Christians in Bethlehem. I was told that the presence of communities with their origin in the Hebron area was making life difficult for the Christians in Bethlehem as a traditionally Christian area."
When asked if the PA was responsible, the archbishop replied: "I don't think it's the Palestinian Authority. I think it's the drifting demography in the Palestinian regions."
Unlike the pope in the Catholic Church, the archbishop of Canterbury's ability to impose his opinions on the Anglican Church is limited, especially outside Britain.
His remarks about Israel are greatly influenced by Palestinian Anglicans who are extremely careful not to accuse their Muslim neighbors of persecution and prefer to level their criticism at Israel's policies.
On subjects that have caused great controversy in the Anglican Church, such as the appointment of women or homosexuals as clergy, Williams has been forced to bridge wide gaps, especially between the liberals in the U.S. and the conservatives on the African continent.
One of these stormy issues has been the demand to divest from Israeli companies and international companies that sell equipment to the IDF.
One of the companies that was involved in the disinvestment dispute was Caterpillar, which sells its bulldozers to the IDF.
Williams' aides are on edge when he is asked for his opinion on the matter.
"I have no commitment to a program of disinvestment," he says cautiously. "We have an ethical investment policy and certain kinds of investment, including the Caterpillar investment, needed to be reviewed in that light. They were, and the investments continue. We went through a process that is a routine matter of reviewing our investment policy according to agreed ethical criteria."
When asked once again whether he personally supports, or opposes, the disinvestment policy, Williams repeats the same answer exactly, word for word.
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