Objective: To promote religious reconciliation and in particular a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Commitment: To provide funding for select projects to further efforts in peace and reconciliation projects. “The Holy Sites Initiative”, lead by Search for Common Ground (SFCG), aims to allow key Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders to find common ground regarding the holy sites in the Holy Land.

The Holy Sites Initiative will lead to a declaration by religious leaders of the three faiths across the Middle East that formally recognizes and respects the attachments of the faiths to their respective sites. The declaration will include issues of access, preservation, education for mutual respect and a concrete mechanism for dealing with joint concerns. This declaration is to be signed in the presence of world religious leaders at a large international gathering.

Background: Search for Common Ground (SFCG), a non-partisan, non-profit, international NGO, is launching a regional Middle East project whereby key Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders are finding common ground regarding the holy sites in the Holy Land.

The Initiative requires the involvement of top religious leaders from five key Arab constituencies: the Palestinians, Egyptians, Saudis, Jordanians and Moroccans, as well as the Israeli religious leadership, and the heads of the Christian churches in the Holy Land. This involvement would take place with the full knowledge of their respective political leaders.

Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering is convening the project through SFCG’s Jerusalem offices. Presently the Senior Vice President for International Relations of the Boeing Company, Ambassador Pickering is a highly experienced diplomat who has held positions as U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and as former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Israel, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Russian Federation, among others. SFCG has also brought together a group of influential religious leaders of the three faiths, who are directly involved in inter-religious reconciliation in the region, to provide guidance and advice on the process.

Benefits of the Holy Sites Initiative:
1. Demonstration of “common ground” between faiths over contentious and sensitive issue
2. Provides the political process with positive ground for movement on Holy Sites
3. Counterpoint to global misunderstandings between “East and West”
4. Furthers possibility of local cooperation between religious leaders in Jerusalem

Update:
March 2006:
A series of meetings with top-level religious and political leaders in the target countries has been completed. Additional funding has been received through the Dutch Government. Funding in the amount of $42,000 from Danny Abraham was fulfilled.

June 2006:
Notification was received from the Dutch Foreign Office that the request for a €56,000 budget extension for the Holy Sites Initiative has been approved. This is in addition to the €150,000 in funding from the Dutch which enabled carrying out activities during 2005. With anticipated funding from the Spanish government of a further €60,000 this month, there are sufficient funds to carry out activities until the end of 2006.

Despite the difficult prevailing political situation in the Middle East, meetings were held with key players in Washington, Seville and Sharm El Sheikh as well as Jerusalem and Ramallah, to advance the process. A Religious Leaders' Council for Jerusalem, comprising the leading Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious institutions of the city, has been set up and the hope is to finalize the Holy Sites Declaration text by working closely with it. At the same time efforts are being made to ease travel restrictions for Muslim leaders into Jerusalem which, in turn, will create a more favorable environment for the initiative.