I am an Arab, and I am a Roman Catholic priest.

In 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank, I was studying there at the seminary in Beit-Jala. Suddenly, all of us seminarians were cut from our home countries and loved ones. I could no longer contact my parents in Lebanon.

Israel ordered all of us to obtain identification documents, so I went to Bethlehem to begin the process. When it was my turn at the office, an Israeli woman asked where I was from. When I told her I was from Lebanon, she burst into tears. "I am also Lebanese," she said.

She asked me about the Jewish section of Ras-Beirut and some other popular areas in Lebanon. She presented me to her colleagues, saying, "This person is from my home country." I received my identification in a few minutes and a hug.

I was a young adult at that time. I felt the love of an Israeli who was occupying our Palestinian people with military force. She did not want to identify herself with the occupiers at that moment, but with me, a fellow Arab from Lebanon.

Growing up in the occupied territories as a Catholic priest in charge of vocations, I visited almost all Palestinian and Israeli cities and villages, and met many Arab Jews: Iraqis, Moroccans, Yemenis, Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese, Tunisians and Palestinians. They all spoke Arabic, and spoke with affection about the Arab countries from which they came. In fact, for centuries before the creation of Israel, Jews have lived side by side with Arab Muslims and Arab Christians.

Take Morocco. Earlier this month, a dubious story in the Jerusalem Post stated that because of the fighting between Palestinians and Israelis, Jews in Morocco were in danger and planning to move to Israel. The article was quickly denounced by San Ben-Chetrit, head of the World Federation of Moroccan Jewry. He worried that it could damage the harmonious relationship that the 3,000-member Moroccan Jewish community has with its neighbors, and with the Moroccan government. "We, the Jews of Morocco, are seen as a model of coexistence," Ben-Chetrit said.

In Israel, meanwhile, those who maintain power are Jews who came from Europe and the United States  to stop paying European Jews to kill Palestinians; to stop sending weapons and money to avenge world Jewry for the crimes committed against them by Europe; and to stop spreading misinformation about the Arabs, who have come yet again to the table to present at the Arab summit a plan for peace with Israel.

Empowered, Arab and Palestinian Jews, Christians and Muslims together will be able to create a secular, democratic country, a place where all might live in peace with equal rights and responsibilities.

Leave us alone, and we will astonish the world.

LABIB KOBTI grew up in Lebanon and studied to be a priest in Jerusalem. He is an advocate for non-violence and the pastor of St John of God in San Francisco. In 1994, he created www.al-bushra.org, a website dedicated to peace and justice in the Middle East.