Archbishop of Westminster in England and Wales Cardinal Vincent Nichols has issued a statement condemning Israel’s plans to take over Gaza City.
The statement came after Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan on Aug. 8 to take control of Gaza City and expand military operations.
Israel’s five-step plan includes disarming Hamas, releasing all remaining living and deceased hostages, demilitarizing the Gaza Strip, establishing temporary Israeli control over the enclave, and eventually replacing Hamas with a friendly Arab civil administration.
“Today, and in these days, I weep for the people of Gaza as they face not just a continuation of their immense suffering but an escalation in their hardship and desperation,” Nichols said in the Aug. 8 statement.
“To increase the destruction of Gaza City and then the rest of its territory, in order to defeat a terrorist organization and movement, is a development that is rightly being condemned around the world,” he added.
“There must be a better way,” said Nichols, the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, calling for an alternative strategy “that does not heap yet further suffering and misery on so many people who are not combatants but defenseless in face of the perpetrators of violence in their midst.”
“Already too much innocent blood has been shed; too many lives destroyed; too much hunger and starvation,” he continued. “This war must be ended not increased.”
Nichols expressed solidarity with the faithful in Gaza as well as the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, whose “consistent appeals for peace,” aid delivery, and support of Holy Family Parish in Gaza City, he said, should “evoke from us all our practical help and our prayers.”
Read more: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/265895/westminster-archbishop-issues-statement-condemning-israels-plan-to-take-over-gaza-city
By Madalaine Elhabbal | catholicnewsagency
