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Ahead of the day of prayer and fasting for peace called by Pope Francis, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, shares his reflections with Vatican News on these 12 months of war, suffering, and fear in the Middle East, which began on that tragic day of October 7, 2023.
I don’t know if the conflict delays the conclusion, butit has certainly taken different turns. It is no longer concentrated on Gaza; it’s becoming a regional conflict, which everyone claims they want to avoid, but no one seems able to stop. I find it hard to believe that there could be a further expansion of the conflict into a full-out regional war in the Middle East, though the risk is there. Rather, I see another danger: the total lack of an exit strategy.
True, Israeli society had convinced itself that the conflict with the Palestinians had been absorbed, assimilated. But here we come back to the role of politics, or rather, the absence of politics. Politics was unable to read reality and propose adequate solutions to a situation simmering beneath the surface, which instead exploded in the most violent, radical, and hateful way possible, catching everyone unprepared.
The Palestinians are paying the price for many things. They are the scapegoat for many stories, for a macro-Middle Eastern politics that has always used them and never loved them — including by the Arab countries. And the Western countries, which have always supported them in words but never fully in action. And then, of course, they’re suffering from weak, divided leadership, often not up to the task. In the end, they’ve always been left alone.
Yes, I managed to enter Gaza. And I hope to return. A shepherd's duty is to be present, to be there with his flock. I wanted not only to be close to them but also to understand how to help them, to be useful. When I entered Gaza — and it was not easy at all — I found a terrible situation, a destroyed city, where the absence of demolished buildings made it impossible to even identify the streets, making orientation difficult. Total desolation.
Q: I imagine it must be especially hard for someone who, like a friar, has always lived in community… Q: You are also the shepherd of Christians in Jordan. And you have been there several times in recent months. How was October 7 experienced there?
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