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“The human dignity of the Palestinians must be recognized and respected, even though all Israeli soldiers see in them the face of a potential terrorist. I’ve seen the same thing in Ireland: some people in my city said that, since I was a Catholic, I could only think like a ‘terrorist’. The sadness of those days was revived in my heart during my visit to the Holy Land”. So Msgr. Peter Fleetwood describes the emotions and thoughts inspired by a journey to Bethlehem and Jerusalem made by bishops from the Americas and Europe (12-15 January). Msgr. Fleetwood was present at the meeting in his role as representative of the CCEE (Council of the European Episcopal Conferences). He describes the anguish caused at the check points experienced on a daily basis by the Palestinian population and the plight of the Palestinians in their search for “creative solutions that may permit them to find new sources of work and new ways of earning a meagre wage”. But of the many things that left a deep impression on him, Msgr. Fleetwood especially considers “an obscenity” the “anti-terrorist” wall that Israel is constructing, and he concludes by recalling the Pope’s remark: “The Holy Land needs bridges, not walls”. John Coughlan, spokesman of COMECE (Commission of the Episcopates of the European Union) has also spoken of his impressions made on him by the visit, citing the devastating social and economic effects caused by the violence in the period of the second Intifada. “Trapped by the violence he says and prevented even from travelling the six kilometres that separate them from Jerusalem, it’s inevitable that young Palestinians, who have never experienced a normal life, are captured by radical political ideas and religious extremism”. And he quotes the words of Bessem Khoury, a Palestinian businessman: “One of the most difficult challenges we must tackle as parents is to teach our children not to hate”. Violence, observes Coughlan, “destroys family relations, children lose respect for their unemployed parents, often humiliated by the Israeli security forces. Some men give vent to their frustrations within their families, and this causes a growth in domestic violence”. Coughlan concludes by recalling “the inescapable” duty of the European Churches to show solidarity with the “Mother Church of the Holy Land”. The Italian Church has already intervened with aid allocated to the building of schools, hospitals and health services; the Spanish Church commissioned Palestinian artists to produce 300,000 rosaries in olivewood for the pilgrims who flocked to Madrid last year for the Pope’s visit, but, as emphasized by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah, “the most effective expression of solidarity with the Holy Land are pilgrimages”, which are slowly recovering, in spite of the persisting difficulties with Israeli bureaucracy that discourages visitors.
