The foundation works predominantly in Israel, Palestine, and Iraq, and it's involved in a wide variety of political and religious encounters, particularly between political leaders and religious leaders. But I also run things like the Iraqi Institute of Peace, and I'm the priest of the Anglican Church in Baghdad. I also look after the chaplaincy in the International Zone. Our organization is based in London, but I probably only spend two or three days of the month there. I spend most of my time between Baghdad and Jerusalem and Gaza, and a little time in America as well, seeing as they run the world.The fact that Hamas has been elected did not surprise us. The reality was that in the West Bank and Gaza, we were seeing an increasing influence from Hamas, so we weren't surprised at all. What it does say to us, though, is that our understanding of democracy really does not work in the Middle East. The whole peace process is now in jeopardy, and the whole methodology of our work. We can understand why Hamas [was] elected, not least because of the corruption within the Palestinian Authority and Fatah. But the results are really quite worrying.
Let's look at the last three recent elections. We've had an election in Iran, and I haven't heard anybody say that that was good thing. We've had an election in Iraq whereby they still have not chosen the leader of the nation. And we've had the election in Palestine whereby terrorists were elected. So we've got to face the reality that so often in these parts of the world there is a desire to have a strong leader. And one of the other things we have to take seriously is the role of religion in the Middle East. We see that religion has power, and that power can be abused as well as being creative.
The sad fact is that as we look at the countries which really work in the Middle East, countries like Jordan and Morocco, we see that they're actually benevolent dictatorships. How do you guarantee that somebody is going to be a benevolent dictator? It's not an easy thing to do. The other reality is that democracy took a very long time to develop in America and certainly in Britain as well, and we shouldn't imagine that Middle Eastern democracy will be exactly as we would like it in the West immediately. It may take many years indeed.
The fact is that benevolent rulers seem to be the most successful way of running Middle Eastern countries. In Iraq, one of the sad problems was that no one took seriously the reinstatement of a king in Iraq. If we had a king in Iraq and a constitutional monarchy and system of democracy, I think that may have worked. And the rightful heir to the Iraqi throne was just up the road in Jordan all the time.
I think the West has to take seriously the religious dimensions [of international politics and life in the Middle East]. We can't continue to pretend that they don't exist because we don't know how to deal with them. We have to take very seriously the religious motivations of the people. The fact is that in difficult times, people tend to become more and more religious. It's only when we take seriously the engagement between the religious and the political that we can actually move forward.
At the Clinton Global Initiative this year, I was talking to Madeleine Albright at one point, and she said one major mistake that she made in her years as secretary of state was that she didn't actually take seriously the religious contribution to peacemaking. Now she's writing a book called THE MIGHTY AND THE ALMIGHTY, which deals with this very subject. I think to start with we have to take seriously the religious leadership and realize that religious leadership often is behind our attempt for a democratic process. Even in Iraq, we saw Ali al-Sistani, the Grand Ayatollah, saying he wasn't going to support a particular Shiite list this time as he did last time [in the election]. But at the same time he said quite categorically that the people were to vote for religious Shia, and they did in masses.
If the issue of religion is a problem, and it certainly is, we've got to also realize that it's part of the cure, and so much of our work [is] to engage with the religious leadership and get them to engage with the political leaders as well.
Certainly looking at the coalition in Iraq and the quartet in Israel and Palestine, at every level we see a real fear amongst Western politicians and diplomats to really engage with the religious issues.
The majority of the funding of the Palestinian Authority comes from Western governments, in particular from the European Union and the United States of America, and they can't be seen to be supporting [a] Palestinian terrorist organization. At the same time there's a very real concern and fear about the effect that this withdrawal of funding will have on some of the welfare institutions, such as the clinics and the hospitals and even the schools -- how will these be run without funding? We've got to find new ways to fund individual institutions without giving the money to the Palestinian Authority.
All of the religious leaders of Israel and Palestine have been involved in the religious track of the peace process, which I coordinate, including the Christian leaders. We've got to understand that the election of the Hamas does actually make things rather difficult for many of the Christians as well, though it's interesting that in the last election, more Christians were elected than any time before. Ten Christians were elected to the Palestinian Authority, and they're all Fatah members, so a quarter of the Fatah's elected members are, indeed, Christians. But the key thing is, how can we move forward in a peaceful way, at the same time acknowledging that a democratic process has taken place?
The Christians are saying, some of them are saying that they have been under constant Islamic pressure and attack for considerable time, certainly before the Bethlehem siege [in 2002], which I was very involved in. And they have seen that the Christians have really been the people caught in between. On the one hand, they have been used as channels for violence from some of the Islamic militants. On the other hand, they have been attacked by Israel as well. And then there are a group of Christians who would like to be under Israeli sovereignty rather than the Palestinian Authority.
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