BOB ABERNETHY, host: In Jerusalem, with Secretary of State Clinton on hand, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders continued talks aimed at Middle East peace. One of the toughest and most immediate issues is Israeli settlements on land in the West Bank the Palestinians insist is theirs. On September 26, Israel’s self-imposed moratorium on more settlement construction expires, and no one knows whether Israel will then start building again, and if it does whether the Palestinians will walk out of the talks. Fred de Sam Lazaro visited the dry and windy West Bank.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: Gilad Freund has spent much of his adult life here as a farmer, an occupation not commonly associated with his roots in New York City. But as a Jew, Freund says he has his own concept of roots and geography.

GILAD FREUND: I was brought up to believe that the Jewish people have a historical strong connection with the land of Israel, and even though there’s a good life in America I felt that it was an important step for me to come here.

DE SAM LAZARO: Freund arrived 30 years ago and settled in the village of Tekoa, about 30 miles from Jerusalem, a place that dates back to biblical times.

FREUND: Tekoa is the home of the prophet Amos. He was a real farmer, and in the Book of Amos he prophesizes that the people of Israel will come back to the land and that they will settle on the land, and they will plant gardens and grow fruit trees, and he used these biblical agricultural analogies in his prophesy.

DE SAM LAZARO: Gilad Freund embodies not just that prophesy but also the Zionist vision of a Jewish state that led to the formation of modern-day Israel. Freund is among at least 300,000 Israelis who have settled on the West Bank, land captured by Israel in the 1967 War. They are drawn by religious conviction or often bu just the affordable subsidized housing. The settlements have long been a sticking point in peace negotiations. They’ve angered not just Palestinians but also settlers themselves when Israel has agreed to dismantle some of them, like those in Gaza in 2005. The Gaza Strip and much of the West Bank are areas of Palestinian self-rule. In a two-state solution they would roughly form the state of Palestine. But for many Arabs living here, the concerns are more immediate and day-to-day. In this sparse village outside the city of Hebron, residents complained about the lack of proper roads, electricity, and water. And things have gotten a lot worse, they say, as they became surrounded by Israeli settlements.

PALESTINIAN WOMAN (speaking through translator): Before settlements, the range for our animals was very large. There used to be a lot of grazing land, a lot of water. Now, because of the settlements, we are restricted from grazing, and we cannot access the cisterns.

DE SAM LAZARO: These village women complained of raids by Israeli security forces, who they say accuse them of harboring illegal Palestinian migrant laborers or terrorists on their way to Israel.

MOUSSA ABD RAHMAN (Palestinian farmer, speaking through translator): They try to intimidate us. They come at night, make trouble for our young people. They don’t have title to this land. They don’t have the right to take our land and prevent us from having access to any part of this area.

DE SAM LAZARO: Across the rural West Bank, complaints were common about intimidation and vandalism. The settlers’ response was difficult to get. Settlers are reticent, suspicious of outsiders, and they’ve long complained of a perpetual terrorist threat. What is not in question is the stark gap in the standard of living between Palestinians and settlers, a gap vividly evident in the fields. Israeli farmers enjoy water at subsidized rates. Palestinians farmers do not.

NADER AL-KHATEEB: If you look around us, we will see that the Palestinian land is totally bare now. There is no farming here because there is no water. And also this has been very much affected by the Israeli control of the water. And next to us here we can see a big farm owned by one Israeli settler who is taking the water from a well, while the Palestinians have no access or right to dig any new well to tap the groundwater.

DE SAM LAZARO: Nader al-Khateeb and Gidon Bromberg belong to Friends of the Earth Middle East, an environmental group with Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian members.

GIDON BROMBERG: Shared water resources are not being shared fairly. That’s critical to the peace process. That’s critical as an issue that creates animosity between Palestinians and Israelis, and we believe that this is not fair, this is not just, this is not sustainable.

DE SAM LAZARO: Even as they criticize what they call discriminatory Israeli policies, both men agree the Palestinians also suffer from internal problems—corruption, mismanagement, and a bloody leadership struggle that has divided the Palestinian territories. On the other hand, settlements have been largely well served with roads, water, and security under successive Israeli governments—whether left-leaning or right, whether the communities were officially sanctioned or built without government approval by private or religious organizations. One of the settlers’ strongest allies is Israel’s minister of infrastructure. He’s with the nationalist Yisrael Beitenu Party, a coalition partner in the government, though his views sound far more strident than official government pronouncements. Uzi Landau refers to the West Bank by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria, and says it’s an integral part of the Jewish homeland.

(speaking to Uzi Landau): You’ve been quoted as calling Arabs the occupiers. Is that an accurate quote, and what did you mean?

UZI LANDAU: It is an absolutely accurate description. They are modern crusaders. This land has been always our land. This land—so many occupiers. Jews were driven out, many of them, during the Roman period. They saw the Iranians, the Farsi, they saw the Ottomans, they saw the Arabs, they saw the British, the Marmlukes, you name it. Every occupier replaced the one and was replaced by the occupier that came after him. The Arabs are one of the occupiers. They are living over there. They have and should have all the rights as a minority has in every democratic country. But we claim that this is our land, definitely.

MOUSSA ABD RAHMAN (speaking through translator): We insist that we will stay on this land, even if it means we will die here.

DE SAM LAZARO: Palestinian farmers we talked to have their own historical starting line.

KAMAR MOUA RABA (Palestinian farmer speaking through translator): First, there were Arabs here before the Jews, so we could use the same argument to say that previous generations of our people were here before you. This is not a solution, because we are all sons of Abraham, them and us. We must appreciate each other because we are cousins.

DE SAM LAZARO: Settler-farmer Gilad Freund says he’s grown used to living with the seemingly intractable, often tense dispute over land. But all historic grievances take time to address, he says. Just look at the US and civil rights.

GILAD FREUND: Once segregation ended, it was not overnight that things changes, and there’s still a lot of problems today. There’s ghettos, there’s unemployment, there’s a lot of problems today that still have not been solved, so processes take time. Americans like to think that there are overnight solutions—overnight solutions in Iraq, overnight solutions in Afghanistan. In the Middle East there are no overnight solutions.

DE SAM LAZARO: Whether the new peace talks continue seems to depend on some compromise within the family of Abraham—whether Israel will build settlements after September 26, and if they do whether the Palestinians will keep negotiating.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly this is Fred de Sam Lazaro.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: In Jerusalem’s Old City, the Spafford Children’s Center is a welcome oasis from the turbulence that is all too present here. Both Israelis and Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital, and the ongoing conflict can take a heavy toll on the city’s children. Located in the Arab section of Jerusalem, the Spafford Children’s Center tries to help Muslim and Christian Palestinian kids deal with the trauma.

DR. JANTIEN DAJANI (Spafford Children’s Center CEO): I always say there is hardly anyone in the Palestinian society that is not traumatized.

LAWTON: The center is run by Dr. Jantien Dajani, a Dutch pediatrician who came here 35 years ago. Back then, the center provided medical services for East Jerusalem’s children, as it had since the 1920’s. But center leaders realized they were dealing with problems that went beyond the physical. David duPlantier, dean of Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral in New Orleans, is on the Spafford Children’s Center board.

REV. DAVID DUPLANTIER (Spafford Children’s Center Board Member): So it was a chance to really strengthen the health of the children, not just in the medical sense, but in the psychological and social sense.

LAWTON: About 400 children up to age 18 come through the center every week for after-school activities and Friday sessions. The center also sponsors summer camps and special cultural programs. The children learn skills to help them in future jobs, things like computer and English. Everything has an educational component, even the most uproarious game. There’s play therapy, art therapy, and drama therapy, all designed to help the children deal with trauma and stress they may not even realize they have. A psychologist comes in several times a week for one-on-one sessions, and there is also group counseling.

Dr. DAJANI: And what we try to do is to create in the center several safe areas, safe rooms where they can say anything, and it will not come back to them.

LAWTON: Dajani’s philosophy is to keep the kids busy with positive activities so they won’t get pulled into drug abuse or violence, common problems among Palestinian youths. She tries to teach them to make the best of their circumstances, no matter how difficult those circumstances are.

Dr. DAJANI: I always say I cannot change for you the situation we are living in. That’s impossible. That needs political solutions from high up. But at least what I can try is to change a bit your perception of the situation.

LAWTON: The center itself has a colorful past, tracing its roots to Horatio and Anna Spafford, an evangelical couple from Chicago. After suffering heavy losses in that city’s Great Fire of 1871, Horatio sent Anna and their four daughters to Europe. While en route their steamship, the Ville du Havre, sank after colliding with another ship.

Rev. DUPLANTIER: Before the Titanic, I think it was the most significant cruise ship disaster, and the daughters all perished.

LAWTON: Anna sent Horatio a telegram which said, “Saved alone. What shall I do?”

Rev. DUPLANTIER: He’s heartbroken to find out his daughters have perished, and so he takes a boat over to meet Anna, and when the captain shows him roughly the place where the shipwreck had taken place, he was inspired to write a poem that later became the hymn “It Is Well With My Soul.”

WINTLEY PHIPPS (singing): “When sorrows like sea billows roll…”

LAWTON: “It is Well” remains one of the most popular Christian hymns, sung in churches around the world and recorded by multiple gospel artists.

Mr. PHIPPS (singng):  “…it is well with my soul.”

LAWTON: After their tragedies, the Spaffords decided to move to the Holy Land. They believed the end of the world was near and that Jesus would soon come back to Earth on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives. The Spaffords and a small group of fellow believers called the Overcomers wanted to be close by when that happened. As they waited, they established a commune in East Jerusalem that became known as the American Colony.

Rev. DUPLANTIER: They weren’t there to try to convert people. That was one of the unique things about them. They didn’t proselytize. They said their prayers, they welcomed people, they offered food when they had it. But they were not there to try to convert other people, which was very different than especially evangelical Christianity in that period.

LAWTON: The American Colony eventually moved to the former palace of an Arab pasha. Jews, Christians and Muslims were all welcome there.

Rev. DUPLANTIER: From the absolute beginning they were generous, they were known to share their food. They really were thought to be a place of hospitality and, you know, Christianity at its core, it really is a faith of hospitality.

LAWTON: But there was also controversy. After Horatio died in 1888, Anna took over leadership of the colony. Her style was authoritarian, and she imposed a rigid set of rules.

Rev. DUPLANTIER: She kind of dictated how life would be. Certainly they were unique and different than mainline Christianity of today in how they lived. They were very disciplined. There was a period of time where men and women, even if they were married, apparently lived separately.

LAWTON: DuPlantier says after Anna died in 1923 the religious zeal of the colony changed.

Rev. DUPLANTIER: In any kind of community like that it’s always going to be a challenge to sustain that over a period of time. So I think partly that’s why the religious fervor fell away in the next generation, because you know it was very much based around the personal faith of Anna and Horatio.

LAWTON: But the charitable work of the colony continued. Anna’s daughter Bertha focused on caring for children.

Rev. DUPLANTIER: That began kind of the ministry that evolved, from taking in orphans to helping with health care and, you know, over a period of time turned into a hospital and then evolved over time into the Spafford Center as it is now.

LAWTON: The Spaffords’ compound has become the famous American Colony Hotel, which has been named one of the leading small hotels of the world. The hotel provides key support to the children’s center. The Spafford Children’s Center is just inside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City near the Damascus Gate. It’s in the house where Horatio and Anna Spafford settled after they arrived here from Chicago in 1881. The house eventually became the headquarters for the Spafford family’s charitable works. Today, the center is not explicitly religious, although it has many faith-based connections. Dr. Dajani says, like their predecessors, they serve people of all faiths, and they try to teach the children religious tolerance.

Dr. DAJANI: We want them to be tolerant for each other and for different opinions. We take them to the mosque, we take them to the Holy Sepulcher and to other holy places. They are always amazed at each other’s beauty.

LAWTON: For duPlantier, the lasting legacy of the colony is the joy he sees in the children who come to the center, a testament of hope, he says, that turmoil and tragedy need not prevail.

Rev. DUPLANTIER: To see the joy that is just prevalent in the folks really has renewed and continues to renew my knowledge that God finds a way. No matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, God finds a way to redeem them if we look.

LAWTON: And that, he says, makes things well with his soul.

I’m Kim Lawton in Jerusalem.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: It’s a common observation that one of the most important paths to peace between enemies is to learn to see others not as demonized stereotypes, but as unique human beings. When she was in the Middle East last month, Kim Lawton learned about the Parents Circle-Families Forum — Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims who have lost loved ones in their long conflict but have learned to replace hate with reconciliation, even friendship. Here is Kim’s special report.

KIM LAWTON: Since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank have been hotbeds of unrest and often scenes of angry confrontation between displaced Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. Because of the continuing military and political conflict, few Israeli civilians ever venture in. But don’t tell that to Rami Elhanan. On this day, he and his wife Nurit have come to the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem to visit their friend, Mazen Faraj. It’s is an unexpected friendship. Both have lost family members in the conflict. Yet their grief has brought them together.

MAZEN FARAJ: Today it’s our responsibility for our children and for our families to build something new.

RAMI ELHANAN: We put a crack in this wall of hatred and fear that divide these two nations, and we show another way. We show another possibility. We show the ability to listen to each other’s pain, which is essential if you want to get to any kind of reconciliation.

Mr. FARAJ: This was the first room for our house.

LAWTON: Faraj has lived in Dheisheh his entire life. During the early part of his childhood, fifteen people in his family lived in this one crowded room.

Mr. ELHANAN: This is the place he’s always talking about—that you don’t need someone to hate you to teach you how to hate when you grow up in a room like this.

LAWTON: In April of 2002, there was a violent confrontation between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians fighters outside Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, the site where Christian tradition holds that Jesus was born. Palestinian fighters holed up in the church, and Israeli soldiers laid siege. During a lull in the fighting, Faraj’s 62-year-old father went out to Jerusalem to get groceries. He was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers.

Mr. FARAJ: He got killed in April 2002 when he was coming back from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. The Israeli soldiers, they started shooting him and without any reason. No one can kill his soul. They succeeded to kill his body, but without his soul. His soul’s still around us and give us like the power every day, how to keep going in our lives.

LAWTON: But there is great pain on the Israeli side as well. Elhanan had 14-year-old daughter, Smadar. Of four children, she was the only daughter, and the family had called her “the princess.” On September 4, 1997, the first day of school, Smadar went to a popular shopping area in Jerusalem.

Mr. ELHANAN: And she went down the street with her girlfriends to buy new books for the new year. Two suicide bombers blew themselves up, killing five people that day, including three little girls. One of them was my 14-year-old Smadar.

LAWTON: Elhanan says he was overwhelmed by anger and despair.

Mr. ELHANAN: It took me almost a year to understand who I am, to try to recover, and to understand that I have to choose a way for myself and translate these feelings of anger and despair into something constructive and create some hope out of it. And I joined the Parents Circle and I found a meaning for my life.

LAWTON: The Parents Circle-Families Forum was launched in 1995 as a way to bring bereaved Israelis and Palestinians together. The group now has several hundred participants who’ve lost immediate family members because of the violence in this region. Organizers believe it’s the only project of its kind in an area where conflict is still ongoing. The nonprofit group sponsors face-to-face dialogue meetings for bereaved family members and public lectures about reconciliation.

Mr. ELHANAN: The minute I saw in that meeting the first bereaved Palestinian families as human beings I was completely shocked. It was the first time ever in my life that I meet Palestinians as human beings after so many years of demonizing each other. So this was the turning point.

LAWTON: Faraj, who was dealing with his own feelings of anger and revenge, went to one Parents Circle meeting where Elhanan spoke.

Mr. FARAJ: And it was this man talking about his suffering and his pain, too. But I told him, “What do you know about suffering and pain? You just live in Jerusalem. ou are Israeli, you are the occupier, you are everything.” And then he starts to talk about his daughter, and then really I found out that, whoa, it’s the same pain.

LAWTON: The two men became close friends. Elhanan was drawn by Faraj’s humor.

Mr. ELHANAN: He’s the only guy in the world that makes me laugh.

LAWTON: Faraj couldn’t believe that Elhanan was willing to visit him in the refugee camp. They built a deep mutual respect.

Mr. FARAJ: He’s just a human being, and you can deal with him in an easy way, and you can build a discussion with him with easy way, and you can build the fight also in easy way, too. But the most important thing’s that he’ll respect the other.

Mr. ELHANAN: What he’s doing needs a lot of guts, and his ability to face the world, tell his truths after all the things that he’s been through, I think it’s admirable, and I really respect him for it.

LAWTON: Faraj and Elhanan started doing joint lectures for the Parents Circle.

Mr. ELHANAN: We use this enormous respect that the two societies have for people who paid the highest price possible to convey this message, to convey the message of dialogue, of reconciliation, of peace.

LAWTON: Elhanan and Faraj have given more than 1,000 joint lectures in Palestinian and Israeli schools. They say most of the kids have no idea that Palestinians and Israelis can be friends.

Mr. ELHANAN: If there is only one kid at the end of the class who nods his head with acceptance to this message, we saved one drop of blood. According to Judaism, this is the whole world.

LAWTON: The Parents Circle is nonsectarian, but is supported by several Muslim, Christian, and Jewish groups. In 2008, Catholic Relief Services brought Faraj and Elhanan on a speaking tour across the United States.

BURCU MUNYAS (Program Manager, Catholic Relief Services): They are giving a message of hope in the midst of hopelessness in the Holy Land. So we thought that this would be a strong message to bring to our US Catholic audiences.

LAWTON: For their part, Elhanan and Faraj try to keep the focus on relationship, not religion.

Mr. FARAJ: It’s the important things that we don’t want to make this conflict like a religion conflict.

LAWTON: Their work isn’t always easy. Both men have received sometimes strong criticism from within their respective communities.

Mr. ELHANAN: People tell me that I’m a traitor or a — but I think more people are impressed by my ability to translate the pain into hope.

Mr. FARAJ: I really believe in what I’m doing and — but not all the people they really accept that, but anyway, if you believe in something you have to continue.

LAWTON: Parents Circle supporters hope these relationships can be a model for others, which they believe will help further the political peace process.

Ms MUNYAS: By building trust with each other they become more and more ready to trust the other side, to compromise, and to tell their leaders that they are ready, that they can move ahead, they can compromise, and they can sign the peace agreements.

LAWTON: Faraj and Elhanan agree.

Mr. FARAJ: We have a different culture, a different religion, and different, also, conditions on the ground, too. So how we can find a way? This the problem. It’s not about that’s it, I found the solution for the conflict. No. But the first step, we have to know each other.

Mr. ELHANAN: I devote my life to go everywhere possible to tell the very simple truth that we are not doomed. It’s not our destiny to keep on killing each other, and we can stop it by talking to one another — that simple.

LAWTON: Simple in theory, much more elusive to work out. But they hope their relationship proves it is possible. I’m Kim Lawton in the West Bank.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a discussion today of President Obama’s speech to the Muslim world and the reaction to it. Kate Seelye was a longtime Middle East correspondent, based in Beirut. She is now a vice president of the Middle East Institute in Washington. Vali Nasr is a professor of international relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and is also serving as a special adviser to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who is leading US diplomacy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Professor Nasr speaks here for himself, not for the US government.

Welcome to you both. Professor Nasr, let’s begin with you. The reaction throughout the Muslim world — what do you hear?

Dr. VALI NASR (Professor of International Relations, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University): Very, very positive. There’s no doubt that the speech exceeded expectations from the vast majority of Muslims all the way from Indonesia to Nigeria. Even though the president did not go deeply into policy, I think the level of respect and empathy and seriousness that he showed in terms of engaging the Muslim world was very well understood by the public and very much appreciated.

Kate Seelye

ABERNETHY: On the other hand, Kate, there was a lot of criticism, wasn’t there, or some guarded comments from officials?

KATE SEELYE (Vice President, Middle East Institute, Washington, DC): Well, there were. I think people are—there are some who are holding reservations. They want to see if he’s going to translate his words into action. There was also some disappointment on the part of democracy activists who wanted him to be tougher, let’s say, on Arab leaders, who wanted to put more pressure on them. And there were some who wanted him to be tougher on the Israelis. But by and large, people were very positive and felt that he went out of his way to try to bridge this gap between America and the Muslim world.

ABERNETHY: What could be the deeds now that would satisfy the people to whom Obama was talking?

Dr. NASR: I think one of the ways to look at this is that the speech or the series of speeches he’s given is a deed in itself. In other words, our habit in this region is that administrations come up immediately off the bat with a plan of action for something, whether it’s Iran, Arab-Israeli issue, Afghanistan. This president understood that there is no point trying a new policy before you change the context in which you engage the other side. So I think his very first policy, his very first deed has been to gain trust, and I think the first way in which he has to be measured is by trust, and I think Kate’s point, which is correct, there are — I think he’s been successful enough that some actors like the Iranian government or Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood may worry that he’s quickly changing the game on them very fast and effectively, and some of the reaction we’re seeing has to do with that.

Bob Abernethy

ABERNETHY: But a specific deed now to follow this, Kate, what could that be?

Ms. SEELYE: Well, I mean everybody’s waiting to see what he’s going to do vis-a-vis the Arab-Israeli peace process. What steps he is going to take to pressure the Israelis perhaps to halt settlement building. This is what Arabs and Muslims are looking for — concrete deeds with regard to the peace process, frankly.

ABERNETHY: Did you feel on that that he was tilting a little bit toward the Palestinians?

Ms. SEELYE: Well, he acknowledged the Holocaust, he acknowledged the suffering of the Jews, and he also acknowledged the suffering of the Palestinians, and this was really a first. Many presidents have acknowledged the need for a two-state solution, but few have said, you know, I feel for the suffering of the Palestinian refugees. He won high marks for that.

ABERNETHY: I was struck by the language, especially the references to the Qu’ran and other phrases that come out of the Islamic tradition. That can’t help but have helped him in the Muslim world.

Dr. NASR: Absolutely. I mean, there are ways of using the Qu’ran and then there are ways of using the Qu’ran. Often Western commentators or leaders usually use the Qu’ran in order to hit the Muslims on the head with it. In other words, use their own scripture in order to preach to them very selectively. This president, I think, has used a very light touch in terms of trying to use the Qu’ran to convince the Muslims that he believes they belong inside the tent — that there is no such thing as a Judeo-Christian tradition with the Muslim standing out there. The way he used the Qu’ran, particularly at the end, was to say that there is an Islamic-Judeo-Christian civilization—that your values are the same as our values and our values are the same as your values, and look, here is the example by referring to all three scriptures at the same time, and I think that’s what’s most effective.

ABERNETHY: And as you said, this attempt to build respect with the audience he was talking to is the first step in new policy?

Vali Nasr

Dr. NASR: Well, absolutely. If you looked at the Bush administration, their approach was that you are either with us or you’re against us. It’s either black or white, and the burden was on Muslims to prove themselves innocent. In other words they’re guilty unless proven innocent, and they set down a set of markers which basically meant abandon your faith, change it, reform it, change everything, and then you’ll be sort of acceptable. This president is starting from a very different point of view. First of all, he’s creating a massive gray area in the middle. It is not either us or you, that we have a common arena in which we share, and the burden is not on Muslims to prove that their religion matters or that their values are world values. He immediately off the bat said, “I agree with that, and I’ll give you better examples than you can yourselves.”

Ms. SEELYE: Yes, and if I might add to that, I mean he was very sensitive about language and Muslim sensitivities. He never once used the word “terrorist,” because over the past eight years the word terrorist has become synonymous with the word Muslim and Islam. So he avoided these words, and he used language that people applauded. When he talked about the Prophet Muhammad he said “peace be upon him.” That was very important for Islamists and traditionalists watching his speech.

ABERNETHY: What about nuclear weapons? What can you divine in the speech about how that problem can be addressed now?

Dr. NASR: That’s a problem that has to be solved at the negotiation table, and we will not see where it is going until the day the United States and Iran are sitting at the table and discussing it. But I think the president is trying to make it easier or in some ways compel the Iranian government not to hide behind excuses that Americans are not sincere, they’re not serious, there’s no point talking to them. To say that you — look, there is a pathway for you to come in, and the United States is going to engage Iran over these very serious issues from a position of respect.

ABERNETHY: Kate, did you hear anything from people you know in the Muslim part of the world about what we’re talking about? Did anybody say anything to you?

Ms. SEELYE: Oh, absolutely. I had some blogger friends from Saudi Arabia say that they were thrilled by this speech because it wasn’t directed toward Arab leaders. Obama never once mentioned the name of Hosni Mubarak, the host. He was speaking to the youth, to the women, to the people of the Arab world, and that’s very rare in a region where people don’t feel like they’re being addressed by their leaders. Here was this leader of the world superpower saying, “I care about you. I want to help you. Your education is important. Let’s invest in you.” That was profoundly appreciated.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks to you, Kate Seelye, and to Professor Vali Nasr.

Rabbi RON KRONISH (Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel): Every step that the pope takes in every place he goes, including the Temple Mount or the Western Wall, is a gesture of reconciliation to both sides, and he’s tried during the week he’s here to play a balancing act, and it never quite works out perfect for everybody.

LAWTON: Pilgrims came from around the world to be part of the pope’s visit here, but his main focus was on the local Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The visit certainly encouraged the region’s shrinking Christian population. In 1948, Christians made up about 20 percent of the population here. Today, because of emigration and declining birth rates, they represent less than two percent.

Reverend IBRAHIM FALTAS (Latin Parish of Jerusalem): We are worried about the Christians here in Jerusalem and all the Holy Land. To be here is our mission, to be here, to continue to be here in this land.

LAWTON: Benedict urged the Christian population, predominantly Palestinian, to persevere. His support meant a lot to local Christians.

HANAN NASRALLAH: He is the big man, the holy — well, you consider the holy man and representing the Catholic Church over the world, so for him to come in an area where there is a conflict — a very small country, but it’s a big issue here, I think it’s very important for his visit.

KHALIL ANSARA: The talk is always about the relationship with the Muslims and the Jews, but it’s very important for the pope to come here too with the relations with the Christians.

LAWTON: Meanwhile, many Jewish leaders had high expectations that this visit would be a visual demonstration that their community still has strong relations with the Vatican, despite recent tensions after Benedict lifted the excommunication of a traditionalist bishop who denies the Holocaust.

Rabbi DAVID ROSEN (American Jewish Committee in Israel): Most people don’t know about statements and declarations. Most people don’t read properly, but nevertheless people do view the visual images.

LAWTON: Benedict met with Israel’s chief rabbis and visited the Western Wall, where he left a prayer for peace in the Middle East. He also visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial. But his speech there generated controversy. Some Israelis were upset that he did not acknowledge the role Christian anti-Semitism played in the Holocaust, and he did not refer to his own background as a German growing up in the Nazi era.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the pope had addressed those points before and didn’t feel the need to repeat them.

Reverend FEDERICO LOMBARDI (Vatican Spokesman): He had already spoken many times about these problems.

LAWTON: Rabbi Ron Kronish of the Interreligious Coordinating Council of Israel said he believes, overall, the visit was a positive thing for the Jewish community.

Rabbi KRONISH: It strengthens Israel’s place in the family of nations and in the world community. So I think that people are going to be happy about it when they look back. He went to Yad Vashem; he went to the Western Wall; he went to all the right places. He’s made all the right gestures that count for both peoples, and I think we ought to not focus on all the things he could have said or not said.

LAWTON: Benedict also did some fence-mending with the Muslim community, where tensions linger after his controversial speech in 2006 where he quoted a Byzantine emperor who linked the Prophet Muhammad and violence. Benedict was the first pope to visit the compound of Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, one of the holiest sites in Islam and a place of deep contention between Muslims and Jews.

Muslim leader Issa Jaber is an Israeli Arab who helps coordinate interfaith dialogue.

ISSA JABER (Association for Jewish-Arab Coexistence in the Judean Hills): We believe that His Holiness’ visit to the Mosque of Al Aqsa and the Dome Rock was very important and may open new dimensions of dialogue — a new dialogue between the different religions, especially Islam and Christianity.

LAWTON: But the complexities of interreligious dialogue here were also evident. At an interfaith gathering, Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi, an Islamic court judge in the Palestinian Authority, made an impromptu 10-minute-long diatribe against Israeli occupation, prompting some of the Jewish representatives to walk out of the meeting.

Mr. JABER: Maybe it was not exactly on the agenda of the program, but for Sheik Tamimi it was very important to show the pope and to let him understand the painful — the pains of the Palestinian people in Jerusalem and outside of Jerusalem.

ELANA ROZENMAN (Trust-Emun Group): It demonstrated our reality here, and if things were simple and the religions could easily get together and meet together without any problems we would already have peace.

LAWTON: Elana Rozenman is part of an interfaith movement called the Abrahamic Renunion, which seeks to build personal relationships and trust among people of the three major religions.

Ms. ROZENMAN: Yes, the reality of conflict and war and killing exists daily. Right now people are being victims of violent acts here. We know that, but also there is another level of reality that exists of peaceful, harmonious, loving relationships between Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

LAWTON: She works closely with her friends, Eliyahu McLean, a fellow Jew, and Ibrahim Ahmad Abu El-Hawa, a Muslim.

IBRAHIM AMAD ABU EL-WAWA: We are stubborn people. We are the children of Abraham. We are from the same seed. Okay?

ELIYAHU MCLEAN (Jerusalem Peacemakers): This is a point that Ibrahaim always makes, that God chose two of the most stubborn people in the world, the Arabs and the Jews, to live in this land, and it is actually God’s decision, and this is why it’s also so difficult to make peace, because we’re both very stubborn. But at the same time we need to be stubborn to be peacemakers.

LAWTON: The three say the pope’s visit encouraged them in their work.

Mr. MCLEAN: I really felt personally empowered when the pope gave a specific blessing to the peacemakers, to the Jews and Arabs, Israelis and the Palestinians who are working to make a better future for the children of Abraham in the land of the prophets, in the Holy Land.

LAWTON: The pope may have urged the religious community to be a force for peace, but many leaders in the movement for interfaith dialogue acknowledge that politics can’t be separated out.

Rabbi KRONISH: The road ahead is bumpy. It’s not a smooth road, because we are linked to the political processes. We try to keep a flicker of hope alive in a sometimes desperate situation, and we believe that when the peace process moves forward, we will be able to move, in cooperation with governments, in bigger and more systematic ways in the future.

LAWTON: Benedict prayed for peace at every stop in this week-long Holy Land pilgrimage, and in spite of everything else, Christians, Muslims, and Jews alike said they hope that message of peace is the ultimate legacy of this trip.

I’m Kim Lawton in Jerusalem.