A large population in Jerusalem has its roots in the Arab-Islamic world. Most Jerusalemite Christians share a socio-cultural world with Muslim Arabs which facilitates dialogue. For many of these Jews, Arabic has been a lingua franca for centuries. The Orientalist, Bernard Lewis, has pointed out that the symbiosis of Jews and Arabs produced something that was not merely a Jewish culture in Arabic. The Jerusalem context makes it ever more essential that a dialogue brings to the fore the joint commitment to justice as a fundamental element in the establishment of peace.
Religion is used as a mobilising ideology by both Jewish and Palestinian nationalism.
Christian witness in Israel is torn by this ideological cleavage. Many Catholic expatriates are sympathetic to Zionism and Jewish political claims. Others, as well as many Catholic Palestinians are involved in the struggle for the rights of the Palestinians. Some have developed versions of a contextualized liberation theology in order to give a Christian theological framework for the struggle of the Palestinian people. These political implications cannot be ignored.