VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican said Thursday peace between Israelis and Palestinians would never be possible until the Jewish state withdrew from the occupied territories and a Palestinian state was born.
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican said Thursday peace between Israelis and Palestinians would never be possible until the Jewish state withdrew from the occupied territories and a Palestinian state was born.
The Vatican made its position clear at the end of a day-long meeting presided by Pope John Paul II and attended by Catholic religious leaders from the Middle East.
In his address at the start of the meeting Thursday morning the pope condemned violence by both Israelis and Palestinians, saying people were being crushed by “two different extremisms” that were disfiguring the face of the Holy Land.
A statement from the Vatican spokesman Thursday night said peace between the two peoples “can be realized only if rights and equality about fundamental questions are respected.”
It listed these fundamental points as “security for Israel, the birth of a state for the Palestinian people, the evacuation from occupied territories, an internationally guaranteed special statute for the most sacred parts of Jerusalem and a fair solution for Palestinian refugees.”
The future of Jerusalem, which Israel had declared its “united and eternal” capital, is one of the most thorny topics in the Middle East peace process.
Israel has thus far resisted calls by the Vatican for a special statute to protect Jerusalem as the city sacred to Christians, Muslims and Jews. Palestinians see East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967, as the capital of a future state.
PEACE HOPES DASHED
In his address Thursday morning, the pope expressed sadness that the hopes for peace declared during the jubilee year 2000 did not materialize.
“Unfortunately, we meet at a moment that I do not hesitate to define as dramatic, both for the people who live in those dear regions as well as for our brothers in the faith,” he said.
“They, in fact, seem to be being crushed by two different extremisms, which, independent of the reasons that fuel them, are disfiguring the face of the Holy Land,” he added.
The meeting, called by the pope last month, was held after Israel severed ties with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and struck Palestinian targets in response to the killing by Palestinian militants of 10 Israelis Wednesday.
“How we would have liked to see our Jewish and Muslim brothers walk side by side with us in a united pact of love that would give back to the Holy Land its true face of being a crossroads of peace and a land of peace,” he said.
The pope said people in the Holy Land “have for a long time been sorely tried by acts of violence and by discrimination.”
At least 765 Palestinians and 233 Israelis have been killed since a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation erupted in September 2000 after a deadlock in peace negotiations.
The pope called the meeting because he was worried that the life of Christians in the Holy Land had become insufferable since the start of the Palestinian uprising.
Christians, most of them Palestinians, make up only about three percent of the population of Israel and the Palestinian territories and the number is falling because of the hardships.
In an interview with a Catholic television station, the Vatican’s foreign minister, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, said Christians in the Holy Land were living in a “hell.”
The concluding statement also repeated the Vatican’s discontent with Israel for authorizing the construction of a mosque very close to the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, the boyhood home of Jesus.
