” “Believing in Jesus dead and resurrected means hoping and believing that this land, subjected to death by prisoner and chained rulers and public opinions, may also resurrect". This was said by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, on Easter Sunday in Jerusalem. "A land he explained where daily life has become in the last few years a permanent cross, where the living environment is affected by bloodshed, hatred, prisoners, killed people, demolished houses, occupation and endless insecurity. The events of the last few weeks in Gaza, the attack on the yeshiva in Jerusalem, the young people killed in Bethlehem and more are but sterile repetitions of the events of all the past years. Don’t let’s stop repeating: security will not come from the insecurity caused elsewhere. We must try new ways". According to Sabbah, we must "look high up, contemplate the Christ dead and resurrected to give hope back to this land". Hence an appeal to Israel: "elected people, your calling is the same as Jesus’, giving life back to the world but in the meantime to yourself. Military men, war planners, intellectuals in Israel, you have to rethink of your calling and the calling of this land, of the election, the perennial alliance, to turn it into God’s alliance with all mankind and turn it into a source of new life, here and everywhere else".
