Rabbi Menachem Froman

Rav Froman is often called a maverick Jewish religious peacemaker.

He is one of the founders of the Gush Emunim religious Zionist movement and a pioneer in dialogue with radical and moderate religious Muslims. Many media people regard him as a right-wing Orthodox Jew and and as a Rabbi to an illegal settlement on the West Bank.

But his views don't really fit that description. They embody openness, reconciliation and understanding of a kind which has made him a friend of many Palestinians, up to and including Abu Mazen, Yasser Arafat and the late Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin.

His main work is to find solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on understanding between the Islamic and Jewish faiths. He is rabbi to Tekoa, a small settlement on the West Bank, south of Bethlehem, which takes a unique cosmopolitan and reconciliatory approach.

"My premise is that for Jews to live in all of Eretz Yisrael, they have to create a network of life with the Arabs", says Rav Froman. "In the Holy Land, you can't make peace without attending to the issue of holiness".

"Isn't it only fitting that Jerusalem be the seat of the United Nations' cultural bodies, human rights organizations, scholarly forums? Isn't it only proper that Jerusalem be the place where members of all faiths convene to renounce their breeding of prejudice, hostility, and war?"