Three Palestinian Christian activists – human rights lawyer Sahar Francis, social and political campaigner Rifat Kassis, and the Rev. Munther Isaac, pastor of Bethlehem’s Lutheran church – visited the Vatican on Wednesday.
Over the course of a long interview with Vatican News, they discussed the deteriorating situation in the West Bank, President Donald Trump’s proposal for the mass displacement of Gazans, and the importance of Pope Francis’ repeated calls for peace in the region.
“Darkest moment” in the history of the West Bank
Isaac, who is pastor of the Lutheran parishes in Bethlehem and Beit Sahour, said that the West Bank is currently passing through one of its “darkest moments”.
Israeli settlements and roadblocks, he explained, are quickly making the area “uninhabitable”, cutting built-up areas off from each other and from surrounding villages – in effect, turning the West Bank into “a series of open-air prisons”.
Around Bethlehem alone, the Rev. Isaac said, there are some 80 roadblocks, which often take six or seven hours at a time to cross.
On top of this, he stressed, there is economic devastation. Bethlehem used to rely heavily on religious tourism, which has now all but stopped, and as a result churches spend most of their time helping families without an income to survive.
The Rev. Isaac calculates that at least 100 of Bethlehem’s Christian families – already “a small community struggling to survive” – have deserted the city since the beginning of the war.
Perhaps the biggest threat, however, the pastor said, comes from the growing number of forced displacements. About 45,000 Palestinians so far have been displaced by Israeli military raids on refugee camps in the West Bank, and, Isaac said, his fear is that this devastation will spread.
“We see what’s happening in Gaza”, he said, “and we ask: Will this be our fate too?”.
The conditions of Palestinian prisoners
Last Saturday, Israel and Hamas performed their sixth prisoner swap, prolonging the fragile ceasefire in Gaza.
While the Israeli hostages currently being released were seized in 2023 during Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, many of the Palestinians they are being exchanged for have been in prison for much longer.
Sahar Francis, who is General Director of the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, explained that over the last few decades “hundreds of thousands” of Palestinians, including children, have been arbitrarily detained. In Israeli prisons, they can face “intimidation and humiliation, sexual harassment, beatings, and starvation”, and other human rights abuses.
Scabies, Francis said, is rampant amongst Palestinian detainees. She said that the illness – a type of contagious skin disease caused by parasitic mites – has killed at least 60 prisoners held in Israeli jails over the past 15 months.
Moreover, while Israel is currently releasing large numbers of Palestinian prisoners for each Israeli hostage freed, they are also carrying out new mass arrests – including, Francis noted, re-arresting prisoners released in previous exchanges.
For Francis, this means that the Israeli justice system is “not about implementing justice”, but is rather “a tool for the oppression and control of Palestinian society”.
Mass displacement and international law
The three activists are on a week-long tour of Italy organised by Kairos Palestine, a group which emerged from the 2009 Kairos Document written by a group of Christian leaders.
Rifat Kassis, the General Secretary of Kairos Palestine, explained that the document was an attempt, “grounded in faith and our commitment to non-violence resistance”, to speak about the everyday difficulties faced by Palestinians.
However, Kassis stressed, the situation has worsened unimaginably since October 7, both in Gaza and the West Bank. For this reason, he said, Kairos is currently working on a new document to complement the 2009 declaration.
And, he noted, the situation threatens to deteriorate even further, particularly if President Trump’s plan for the mass displacement of Gazans should come in effect. In this regard, Kassis mentioned with approval a recent statement from the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem, which condemns the plans as “an injustice that strikes at the very heart of human dignity”.
Given the sheer chaos that this forced displacement of Gaza’s 2 million inhabitants would entail, Kassis said, the proposal amounts not only to ethnic cleansing but also to a “call for a continuous war, not just in Palestine, but also in the entire region”.
Finally, Kassis stressed the central importance of respect for international law, including the arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.
The ICC was established in Rome, Kassis pointed out, and this is surely a reason for both Italy and the Holy See to be “doubly concerned” about the enforcement of its rulings.
Pope Francis and Palestine
During their visit to the Vatican, the three activists had originally been scheduled to meet with Pope Francis – but, due to his current health issues, the encounter had to be postponed.
All three stressed that they were praying for the Pope’s “healing and recovery”.
“Pope Francis is so much loved in Palestine,” the Rev. Isaac said, “by all people”.
Isaac mentioned not only the Pope’s nightly phone conversations with Gaza’s Catholic parish, but also his visit to the West Bank in 2014. The Palestinian pastor said that the moment the Pope stopped his car near the wall separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem, and said a brief prayer, had become an “enduring” memory for Palestinians.
“In that moment, he touched the depth of our hearts”, Isaac said. “So often we ask ourselves – does the rest of the world care? Do they see us as equals? But in that moment, we felt humanised.”
By Joseph Tulloch | VaticanNews
Source Link: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/news/2025-02/munther-isaac-west-bank-rifat-kassis-safar-francis-palestine.html
