Pope Francis is urging people to pray for peace and reconciliation and has called for “moderation and dialogue” during an upsurge in violence between Israel and the Palestinians over Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Francis says it is with “trepidation” he is following the “grave tensions and violence” that erupted at the holy site on 14 July. Read more
Benjamin Netanyahu is about to make an historic visit to Australia. Should he come and how should he be received? Having just guided legislation through the Knesset ‘legalising’ the illegal: settler outposts on private Palestinian land; he has seemingly set in motion an unstoppable movement which, taken to its ultimate conclusion, could deprive Palestinians of Read more
Palestine’s Vatican Embassy, launched last month, will benefit both Palestine and the Holy See, the Holy See’s diplomatic representative to Jerusalem says. And although there is no official State of Palestine, Issa Kassissieh, the Palestinian ambassador to the Holy See, said the new embassy is “a significant achievement for the Palestinian people.” The Holy See’s Read more
In the space of just a week, twin failures by Binyamin Netanyahu coalesced into a new menace: the one, a near monstrous failure – the matter of the mufti and Hitler; the other, a small and nearly comic stumble, surveying the Gaza border region through binoculars that still had their lens caps on. At once Read more
Most of what I read online in the New Zealand and Australian papers seems to have an Israeli bias. Well that’s the impression I get here in Palestine, where I work at Bethlehem University. Bethlehem University is home to over 3300 students and 400 employees and over the past two weeks it has been closed for seven Read more
The Vatican has concluded its first treaty that formally recognises the State of Palestine. The treaty is an agreement on Catholic Church activities in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The agreement will be signed by representatives from both entities in the near future. Vatican officials stressed that although the agreement was significant, it did Read more
Fr. Émile Shoufani, an Arab Israeli and tireless promoter of dialogue between Jews, Christians and Muslims, received the 2014 Judeo-Christian Friendship of France (AJCF) award on November 17. Born in 1947 in Nazareth, Shoufani was driven out of his family village the following year by the Israelis who killed his grandfather and uncle. He was Read more
Anglican Archbishop Winston Halapua has asked all parishes in the Diocese of Polynesia to pray for the safe release of 44 Fijian soldiers held captive by a militant rebel group in the Golan Heights. “We join with our leaders and with all people of faith in Fiji to pray for our soldiers who have been Read more
Is there anything left to say about Israel and Gaza? Newspapers this summer have been full of little else. Television viewers see heaps of rubble and plumes of smoke in their sleep. A representative article from a recent issue of The New Yorker described the summer’s events by dedicating one sentence each to the horrors Read more
New Zealand’s Catholic bishops have asked Pope Francis to declare a global prayer vigil for peace in Gaza and the rest of the Holy Land. In a letter, the New Zealand bishops praise the Pope for his efforts to bring about peace. But the bishops pick up on a request from a Gaza priest, Fr Raed, Read more