Pope pleads for peace in Middle East

The Pope today delivered one of his most forceful denunciations yet of violence in the Middle East.

He said Palestinians were subjected to virtual “collective punishment” and that Israelis were gripped by daily fear of attacks on their lives.

“When will one learn that co-existence between the Israeli and Palestinian people cannot result from arms?

“Neither attacks, nor walls of separation, nor retaliation will ever lead to a just solution of the conflict under way,” John Paul said in an appearance to pilgrims in the courtyard of his summer palace in Castel Gandolfo, a hilltown near Rome.

“The Pope suffers along with all those who are weeping in mourning and over destruction,” John Paul said, adding that he is “near, above all, to those very many innocents who pay the price of such violence”.

Sitting in a chair, the Pope, who leaves on Friday on a trip to Poland, looked frail but seemed to summon up his voice as forcefully as he could to make one of his most ringing denunciations yet of the bloodshed, fear and hardships that have become part of daily life for Israelis and Palestinians.

He said he “wants to repeat to everybody, to whatever ethnic group they belong to, that there is no justification for he who kills defenceless civilians in an indiscriminate way”.

He paid tribute to the sufferings of both peoples over the last decades - Palestinians “expelled from their own lands, or forced, in these recent times, to live in a state of permanent siege, the object practically of a collective punishment,” and Israelis, “who live in the daily terror of being the target of anonymous attackers”.

The Pope added, in a reference to Muslims’ gathering at mosques on Friday, that because of “a rigid curfew, on the day of weekly prayer, believers can’t reach their places of worship.”

That amounted to “violation of a fundamental right, that of freedom of worship”, he said.

He ended with an appeal to Israeli and Palestinian politicians to resume “loyal negotiations” and to the international community to work with more determination to “be present in the territory, offering mediation to create the conditions for a fruitful dialogue”.