JERUSALEM (RNS) — Hundreds of religious leaders and peace activists walked together through the streets of Jerusalem on Monday (May 18) for an interfaith peace march — a 4-year-old event that took on added urgency this year against the backdrop of ongoing war and mounting intolerance in a city venerated by Jews, Muslims and Christians. 

The Interfaith March for Human Rights and Peace is one of many initiatives spearheaded by the Interfaith Forum for Human Rights that brings together Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druze and other activists and a coalition of 30-plus organizations. Singing “We Shall Overcome” and carrying placards with the word “Trust” in Hebrew and Arabic, participants traveled to the march from across Israel, aiming to bridge religious and ethnic gaps at an especially volatile time in the Middle East.   

Druze Sheikh Younis Amasha, director of the Forum for Religious Leaders in Israel, urged the marchers to speak “with one voice” to proclaim that “human life is a sacred value and there is no place for hatred, extremism and violence.” He also called on them to champion minority communities in Syria, especially his fellow Druze, who have been targeted by extremists.

After his remarks, Amasha told RNS that “events like the march are vital because they bring light to the dark tunnel.” 

The march was created as an alternative to the Jerusalem “Flag” March attended by tens of thousands of Israelis on Jerusalem Day, when Israelis celebrate their military victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, which this year was from May 14-15. While the Jerusalem Day march to the Western Wall has long been a celebratory event for Jewish families, schools and youth groups, many Israelis don’t participate anymore, believing that the event has been hijacked by young ultranationalists who harass Arab residents and shopkeepers while marching through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City.

Instead, this year thousands walked via another route to the Western Wall on Jerusalem Day, or handed out flowers to Arabs in a gesture of kindness and reconciliation. Others stood in front of Arab-owned shops to protect them from ultranationalists and escorted nuns through the streets of the Old City, after violent incidents targeting Christian clergy and property.

For the last several years, the interfaith march has taken place within a week of Jerusalem Day.

The day celebrates the reunification of the city. The eastern and western parts of the city became divided in 1948, after Arab armies attacked the newly created state of Israel. During that war, Israel captured West Jerusalem, and Jordan captured East Jerusalem. Jordan evicted the Jewish residents, destroyed their synagogues and banned Jews from their holiest sites: the Western Wall and Temple Mount. Most of the Arab residents of West Jerusalem were forced out or fled their homes and became refugees.

A day of national pride for Israelis, Jerusalem Day is a time of somber reflection even for Arab residents of the city who do not want to live in a divided Jerusalem.

Outside the Old City, Rabbi Avi Dabush, executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, told the marchers that Jerusalem Day “should be a celebration of this city in all its richness and of everyone who calls it home – not a day of pushing others out.” Violence and racism toward members of other faiths “are a disgrace,” he said, “and doubly so from within our own Jewish moral tradition, which teaches that every human being was created in God’s image.”

“This march speaks clearly: There is another way, a way that recognizes the sanctity of every human life,” he added. 

Listening to the speakers, the Rev. Piotr Zelazko, a Catholic priest who leads the Vicariate of St. James, which serves Israel’s estimated 1,200 Hebrew-speaking Catholics, said he participated in the march because “Jerusalem has seen so many tears. Today, let the city see us walking with hope.”

Zelazko said he understands why some people are skeptical that religion can play a role in peacemaking.

“I have heard many times that religion is the root cause of the problems in the Middle East, but I think that religions can help solve problems,” he said. “In every religion there are commands to love God and one another.”

Iyad Shama, a Muslim peace activist with the Sulha Peace Movement, an Israeli-Palestinian grassroots organization, said peace between Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, must start with personal interactions.

“We are all human beings,” he said. “To live together, to get to know each other, is the only way to break down our boundaries of ignorance, fear and trauma. If I share with you, you share with me.”

Rabbi Yonatan Neril, founder and director of the Jerusalem-based Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, said faith leaders in the city “carry a unique responsibility.” At a time when fear, trauma and violence have become a part of everyday life in the Middle East, “religious leadership must become a force for moral courage — creating spaces of encounter, dignity and compassion that move society away from hatred and toward a shared life.” 

“Peace is not the absence of difference,” Neril said. “It is the ability to live with difference.”