Timeline of Quaker Involvement in the Middle East

Quakers have had a deep concern for the peoples of the Middle East and a multifaceted engagement with them from the foundation of Friends Girls School in 1869 until the present. This concern has been shaped and sustained by the missionary work of evangelical Friends among the Palestinian Arabs and by the relief work carried out by the American Friends Service Committee and European Quakers during the Nazi era to help rescue European Jewry. These experiences with peoples who tragically became antagonists have drawn Friends into work to ameliorate and resolve the now century-old Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a conflict that seems certain to persist for at least another generation.

The Collaborative welcomes suggestions for amendments and additions to the timeline. To suggest a change contact pymmecollaborative@gmail.com.

April 10,1867: Sibyl and Eli Jones, travelling Quaker ministers from China, Maine, embark from Boston for parts of the Ottoman Empire, including the Holy Land.

1869: Returning to Palestine after fund raising in England and Ireland Sybil and Eli encounter a young woman in Ramallah named Miriam, who asks them to support education for girls.

1869-1873: In Beirut, Sybil and Eli Jones meet German-Swiss missionary Theophilus Waldmeier, who is working with the British Syrian Schools. The encounter will lead to the establishment of Brummana Friends School.

1901: The Ramallah Mission of New England Yearly Meeting establishes the Boys Training Home at the urging of the local community.

1910: Haverford Meeting and other Philadelphia area Friends contribute funds for the construction of a Meetinghouse in Ramallah.

1922: Four years after the Friends Schools in Ramallah reopen after their closure during World War I, Christina and Willard Jones begin their work at the Schools in the early years of the British Mandate. They will remain in Palestine for nearly forty years.

1931-1945: The American Friends Service Committee, in cooperation with European Friends, aids Jews seeking to emigrate from Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe.

February 1948: As Palestine descends into warfare following the UN Partition Resolution, Clarence Pickett and Rufus Jones of AFSC meet at Quaker House in New York to work on a petition by world Christian leaders for a “Truce of God” in Jerusalem.

May 13, 1948: As the British Mandate for Palestine ends, the United Nations appoints Philadelphia lawyer Harold Evans, clerk of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and an AFSC board member, as UN municipal commissioner, or “mayor,” of Jerusalem.

July 1948: A first truce ends and fighting resumes. The Arab towns of Ramleh and Lydda fall to the Jewish Haganah, which expels the civilian population on the order of David Ben Gurion. Many displaced Palestinians seek shelter in the Friends Schools.

July 21, 1948: Friends Boys School Headmaster Willard Jones joins foreign Christian leaders in Jerusalem in petitioning world churches for relief aid for displaced Palestinians. Jones will head the ecumenical relief organization created in response to the petition from 1953 to 1962.

November 1948: Following the assassination of UN Mediator Count Folk Bernadotte in Jerusalem and the failure of efforts to persuade Israel to repatriate some 500,000 displaced Palestinians, the UN asks AFSC to administer international aid to Palestinians in southern Palestine.

1950’s to present: Quaker colleges and schools in the United States offer Palestinian students from the West Bank and Gaza, especially from Ramallah Friends Schools, a rich variety of opportunities to study in the U.S.

April-September 1955: Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser, who came to know AFSC relief workers when surrounded by Israeli forces in southern Palestine in 1949, contacts Quakers to attempt to mediate a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel.

1968-1970: In the wake of the June 1967 Six Day War AFSC and four other Quaker bodies form a working party to explore the possibilities of ending the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The result is “Search for Peace in the Middle East.”

1974: After a year of consultations with scores of Israelis and Palestinians, AFSC opens the Quaker Service Information and Legal Aid Office in Palestinian East Jerusalem.

1978: President Jimmy Carter asks former Earlham College President and “Search for Peace in the Middle East” editor Landrum Bolling to be a back-channel envoy to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

1982: AFSC issues “A Compassionate Peace: A Future for the Middle East.” The Quaker working party report addresses the Palestinian problem and multiple dimensions of regional and Great Power conflict in the Middle East.

2002 to present: Quaker Peace and Social Witness of London sends observers to Palestine to witness the situation of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

2003-2013: Moved by a talk at annual sessions on conditions in the occupied West Bank by Ramallah Friends Meeting Clerk Jean Zaru, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting provides support that eventually leads to the creation of the Friends International Center in Ramallah.

2004: AFSC publishes “When the Rain Returns: Toward Justice and Reconciliation in Palestine and Israel.”

1970’s to Present: Quaker involvement with the Middle East continues with many programs in Palestine, Israel, and elsewhere in the Middle East, and with peace education work at home.