It's a long way from the Netherlands to battle-torn Jerusalem, where Father Guido Gockel distributes food and medical supplies.

Father Guido Gockel

The Dutch-born priest joined the Catholic Near East Welfare Association's Jerusalem staff in 1996. On a recent visit to the United States, Father Gockel spoke with Register correspondent Wayne Laugesen.

How did your work get started?

In the beginning of our work, the priority was to coordinate all the work of the Catholic organizations all together, and out of that grew a greater cooperation between all Catholic organizations, like Catholic Relief Services, the Latin patriarch, ourselves, etc., so that we were aware of one another and what we were all doing.

It became apparent to us that the greatest need was for these people to work. As you know, people can tighten their belts a bit more and live minimally when faced with crisis. But people cannot live without work. Life without work destroys the family life, and that was the biggest crisis these people were facing—life without work.

Why is that?

I don't think one can be happy without work, under any circumstance, whether it's inheritance or war reparation. I had a very wealthy friend in Belgium years ago, who was a multimillionaire. One day he lost his job, and he was trying to get work, but he couldn't. There's something creative in all of us that wants to give to others. This friend wanted work, he couldn't get it, and he basically burned out before he was 50. Knowing this, I began to see a lot of Palestinians sitting in their homes, not doing anything, waiting for help. They were creating this tremendous tension and the aggression that comes with unemployment, and it was directed sometimes toward the children. When a family is out of work, you see aggression toward the children and from one spouse to the other. So I said, Let's do something that puts them to work.

I started what I call the Labor Intensive Community Development Project. The stress is on community development. What we did was try to get the people of the institutions—municipalities, hospitals, churches, schools, homes for handicapped, etc.—to think about ways they could improve their institutions or their services to the community at large. As they identified needs, we would create jobs for people—jobs that made these improvements happen at the institutions. If there was construction involved, the institutions would provide the materials, and we would provide the labor. The institutions could take 20% of a grant for material as well, but 80% would go to the people who were working there.

As a result, first of all, services to the community are being improved. Second, the individuals who have been put back to work feel the institutions have helped them, and it has created a link between the institutions and the people. Third, the individuals—now working and getting a salary—feel much happier. At least they can survive. It's creating a greater community spirit among them. These people feel they have some ownership in these institutions.

Do you take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

I think I do take sides. I work mainly with Palestinians. I see this as a little bit like being incarnated in the Palestinian community, with the Palestinian people. I'm so much with them that I know their fears, their anger, their frustration. So their pain and their anger have become a part of me. It's my task as a missionary to be one with them—to be there and to share their feelings of hatred and frustration, and to get beyond those feelings, to surmount all of that. It's a calling, and the situation calls me either to be an angel or a devil. I can either give into the anger and frustration, or I can say, “No, I'm called to something different.”

What about Catholics in the United States? Should American Catholics take sides in this conflict? How does an American Catholic assess where to come down on this conflict?

It's very difficult for a Catholic in the United States to take sides on this, one way or another. With all due respect to the media, the media in the United States are rather biased toward Israel, in my opinion. So what do you have to judge the situation? I do understand the suffering of some Israelis. I have Israeli friends as well. There's an imbalance to the whole situation. People want to give a balanced view about a situation that's imbalanced. So I don't expect people in the United States to make a judgment. They cannot. But they can at least listen to both sides, whenever given an opportunity.

What about Christians in the West Bank and Gaza? What is this like for them?

The Christian community in the region is suffering a great deal in this whole situation. In one way, Christians can identify with the course of the Muslims, yet they know if we don't identify with them now, when there's a Palestinian state, they will kill us. This is their big problem that they have now. They're caught in the middle. They're in between a rock and a hard place.

Please explain, in a broad sense, the injustice being suffered by the Palestinians.

Israel is trying to create a ghetto state and does not really want the Palestinians to be there. They want a state only for Jewish people, and as for the others, well, there is no place for them. Ariel Sharon, and people like that, talk openly about the transfer, getting the non-Jewish people moved out of that country.

How did you get involved in this conflict?

I'm a member of the Mill Hill Missionary Society in England. I was working in Malaysia as a pastor. I had a sabbatical, and during that sabbatical I was invited to the Holy Land. I was not able to go back to Malaysia because of visa problems, so I was looking for something else to do. To be very frank, until that pilgrimage to the Holy Land, as a Dutchman I had grown up very much in love with Israel and the Jewish people as a consequence of the war. So for me it was a shock to find out what was happening to the Palestinian people.

Wayne Laugesen is based

in Boulder, Colorado.