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Pope Benedict XVI criticized Israel's construction of a security barrier through the West Bank and urged a loosening of restrictions on the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, a day of speeches and symbolic appearances that amounted to a running critique of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.
From a morning address alongside Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to a late-afternoon visit to a refugee camp, the pontiff used a full day in the occupied West Bank to highlight some of the main issues on the Palestinian agenda.
Standing near a towering concrete wall at the edge of the West Bank, Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday called the Israeli-built barrier a stark reminder of the deadlocked Middle East conflict but declared that walls could be taken down.
"First, though, it is necessary to remove the walls that we build around our hearts, the barriers that we set up against our neighbors," he said during a stop at a Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem. He urged Israelis and Palestinians to overcome mutual mistrust and "break free from the cycle of aggression."
On a West Bank plateau overlooking the desert road to Jericho, crews are building cottages and paving streets for a new neighborhood in Maale Adumim, Israel’s biggest settlement.
A town of 35,000 with a suburban-style shopping mall, Maale Adumim is one of about two dozen settlements Israel is expanding in the face of demands from U.S. and European leaders to halt construction. The push has helped increase the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank, where Palestinians hope to create a state, by 40 percent in the last seven years to almost 300,000.
Pope Benedict XVI held his hands out wide to greet a crowd of applauding Palestinian refugees in the afternoon sun. Behind him stood the most striking symbol of Israel's occupation: a paint-spattered military watchtower rising above the tall, concrete wall that presses on Bethlehem.
Tens of thousands of Christians, among them many Arabs, attended the service in the north Israeli town of Nazareth, where Jesus is said to have grown up.
Benedict later met Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, a day after vocally backing the idea a Palestinian homeland.
Mr Netanyahu does not support the idea of an independent Palestinian state.
The German-born Pope's visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories has sparked criticism from Jewish groups who say he did not condemn Nazi crimes strongly enough.
The previously unannounced trip is the Israeli leader's second this week. He went to Egypt on Monday, his first time on foreign soil since taking office.
Mr Netanyahu is due in Washington for what are being seen as crucial talks with President Barack Obama on 18 May.
The Jordanian ruler pressed the Israeli premier to endorse a Palestinian state which so far he has decline to do.
A two-state solution based on independent
is a goal strongly backed by the US and by Jordan and Egypt, Israel's only allies among Arab states.
President Obama will seek to revive the moribund Middle East peace process in his first official meeting with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, offering a new regional initiative that aims to bridge increasing differences between the new governments in Washington and Jerusalem.
The new approach takes the 2002 Arab peace initiative another step forward by making clear that normal ties between Israel and the wider Arab world need not await the end of negotiations on the Palestinian issue.
As tension builds between the new Obama administration in Washington and the new Netanyahu government in Jerusalem, two of President Obama’s closest Jewish allies may find themselves increasingly in the middle.
Lee Rosenberg, who campaigned on behalf of Obama, was confirmed as president-elect of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee at its recent national conference. And Alan Solow, an early Obama supporter, was recently elected chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
As the summit between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approaches, most of the discussion has focused on whether or not the newly elected Israeli leader will finally say that he backs a two-state solution. This is the wrong approach. Israelis should not determine the status of the Palestinian entity, nor should Palestinians have a say in what Israelis call their own state.
It has become almost a habit: When some politicians in the region give interviews to the Western media they say things thinking that they would not be reported elsewhere, as if the Western media in question were on another planet, and that they would not be quoted by the news agencies and the information media of the region. Then, when the interviewees feel that what they have said is different from what they say to their own public - usually a fiery, ardent discourse - they resort to clarifications, corrections and denials.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing Israeli prime minister, is going to Washington on Monday for talks with President Barack Obama. But he may be in for a surprise. His host is not like any other seen in the White House in the last 50 years. In fact there hasn't been a US president like him since Dwight Eisenhower ordered Israel and its two European allies - Britain and France - to pull out of the Suez Canal, which they had invaded in 1956 after Egypt's popular president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the important waterway.
Pope Benedict XVI upset the schedule on his first day in Israel by leaving an interfaith meeting in Jerusalem early on Monday night after a leading Muslim cleric called on him to condemn the “slaughter” of women and children in the recent assault on Gaza.
The pontiff walked out, a spokesman noted, because Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi’s speech was a “direct negation” of dialogue and damaged the Pope’s efforts at “promoting peace”.
During his high profile visit to the Holy Land, Pope Benedict XVI preached reconciliation between Christians/Muslims and Jews. But he failed to bridge the gulf between the Vatican and Jews because he did not speak of past issues dividing Catholics and Jews. These include long-standing persecution of Jews by the church, culminating in the murder of six million by the Nazis during World War II, and the refusal of Pope Pius XII to intervene in the Nazi extermination of the Jews.
A number of leftist Jewish groups and former diplomats have urged United States President Barack Obama to push for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming visit to Washington.
Four former U.S. ambassadors and officials of a left-leaning Jewish organization sent a letter to Obama on Wednesday asserting that there was a broad consensus within the American Jewish community and among policymakers in support of an active U.S. role in assisting the sides to reach such a solution.
Palestinian interest in the intentions of the new Israeli government tends to focus on one small area in the West Bank, Ma'aleh Adumim and its environs, particularly the area known as E1 linking the settlement to East Jerusalem.
Earlier this month Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad participated in mass Friday prayers against land expropriation in the area, and the Palestinian media was full of reports of Israeli settlement plans in Ma'aleh Adumim and E1.
Some 58% of Israel's Jewish public backs the "two states for two peoples" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a Smith Institute poll commissioned by Ynet revealed.
The results are based on a representative sample of 500 respondents from the adult Israeli population.
According to the poll, which was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's scheduled trip to Washington, 37% of Israeli Jews are opposed to the two-state solution, while five percent of those surveyed had no opinion on the matter.
The swearing-in ceremony for the new Palestinian government headed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad scheduled to take place on Tuesday has been postponed by several days due to widespread objection within Fatah regarding its makeup.
Fatah is demanding control over the appointment of its members to the cabinet rather than the current arrangement, which grants Fayyad sole power.
I was reading an Etgar Keret book of gently hallucinatory short stories when I got the news. It fit right in.
The Foreign Minister, who was now Avigdor Lieberman - himself nothing if not an Etgar Keret invention - had approved the choice of Michael Oren as Israel's next ambassador to Washington.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/6986
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/6986
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/6986
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] http://www.acpus.org/donate_online
[6] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/13/AR2009051300659.html
[7] http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pope-bethlehem14-2009may14,0,2081225.story
[8] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=abPE7AMWQTWQ&refer=home
[9] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/13/pope-benedict-palestinians-gaza
[10] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8049377.stm
[11] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8049724.stm
[12] http://forward.com/articles/105961/
[13] http://www.forward.com/articles/105954/
[14] http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=101945
[15] http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=16715
[16] http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/region/10313328.html
[17] http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090514/FOREIGN/705139822/1002
[18] http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=16653
[19] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1085293.html
[20] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1085461.html
[21] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3715759,00.html
[22] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3715723,00.html
[23] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1082944.html
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