Archbishop Elias Chacour of the Melkite Catholic Church offers a powerful counterargument to those who maintain that the battles in the Middle East are based on intractable religious differences. A Palestinian Arab who lives in Galilee, he was evicted from his native village by Israeli soldiers in 1948.

As an adult, Chacour became a priest and later founded an interfaith school and university open to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Last year, he was named archbishop of the Galilee by the Vatican and the Synod of the Greek Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch, a group that joined the Roman Catholic Church. He now oversees Israel's largest Christian group, a flock of about 76,000.

On a visit to Duke University this week, Chacour, 67, said he takes a long view of history and sees coexistence as the rule rather than the exception for Jews, Christians and Muslims. Chacour explained his views in an interview.

Q. At age 8, you and the residents of your village were evicted from your home as part of Israel's War of Independence. Why aren't you bitter?

A. I was raised not to hate. I was raised to face evil with good, rather than to adopt the corruption that others used against you in order to gain back your rights. We can be persecuted, oppressed, ill-treated, but we will never return evil for evil. If we do that, we have no right to blame anybody else.

Q. So how do you see the war on terrorism?

A. This absurd war against the abstract idea of terrorism is creating terror everywhere in the world. We end up no more respecting people than suspecting everyone. Look at what happened in Israel this summer. ... We destroyed most of south Lebanon. Anyone with any kind of sympathy to Israel we destroyed. We destroyed the ongoing myth that our army is invincible. We destroyed the psychological security of every Israeli individual.

Q. How could Israel have done it differently?

A. Maybe Israel should change its tactics. I told the [Israeli] defense minister recently, I hope you stop considering yourself the 51st state of the United States, and think of yourself as the 21st nation in the Middle East, which means to ... look for positive integration with other Arab countries. We should start thinking of how to live together with the Arabs and not look down on them with superiority and say, 'We're civilized, they're primitive. We're wealthy, they're poor.' Maybe it's good to remember the history of Judaism and Islam.

Q. Do you mean the Golden Age of Islam, when conditions under Muslim rule were extremely favorable for the Jews and Christians of Spain?

A. Not only that. In Morocco, the Muslim king saved 250,000 Jews by refusing to deliver them to the Gestapo during World War II. Lebanon recognized the right of the Jews to a homeland in 1942, six years before the creation of the state of Israel. We are focused on the present-day conflict. We don't want to consider the long history of sharing and coexistence. Look at the history of Jews in Damascus, Alexandria and Lebanon. We don't need to learn how to live together. We need to remember how we lived together.

Q. You are often quoted as saying the conflict between the Jews and the Arabs is not a religious conflict.

A. It has never been a religious conflict. We are blinded by the ongoing conflict around the territory of Palestine. The Jews wanted it to be Israel. The Palestinians wanted it to be Palestine. No one has the courage to say 'I am also right.' In order to prove only you are right, you brandish the weapon of the Bible. In order for them to prove only they are right, they brandish the weapon of the Quran. And then you have a selective reading of the holy books. But this conflict over 60 years should not be labeled a history of Judaism and Islam. It's not.

Q. So how do you deal with the reality of a growing anti-Jewish perspective in the Arab world?

A. We have to change the equation in Israel as well as in the Arab states. That equation says, 'Whether we want it or not, we are condemned to live together.' This has to change. We are not condemned. We should think how great and glorious and privileged we are to live together in different but complementary ways.