by Dario Salvi

Speaking to AsiaNews the Latin Patriarch reviews the dramatic events of the last period, the war, the killing of the two Christian women. A "preventable" death, impossible to mistake them for Hamas militiamen. Conflict causes pain that divides, everyone "locked in their own." Jerusalem and Bethlehem's silence, failure to visit Gaza. Starting over with people, "to rebuild."

Milan (AsiaNews) - "Pain and bewilderment" for the two Christian victims, mother and daughter, killed by a sniper inside the compound of the parish of the Holy Family in Gaza. And the awareness that "a new leadership" is needed to return to talking about peace, dialogue, coexistence between the parties because with the current one it does not seem possible to "build with clear prospects" Card. Pierbattista Pizzaballa.

The Patriarch of Jerusalem of the Latins,  was appointed to the college of cardinals by Pope Francis on 30 September, seven days before the Hamas attack on 7 October which shocked the region.

Now once again the Holy Land that had been relegated to the margins and forgotten by the international community for too long, with simmering indifference inflaming opposing extremisms, violence and the denial of the other is once again in flames. A climate of hatred and oppression that has fueled a new and even bloodier conflict in Gaza.

The attack on Christians

Three days after the killing of Nahida Khalil Pauls Anton "Umm Emad" and his daughter Samar Kamal Anton, hit by bullets from Israeli snipers while they were crossing a road in the area in front of the parish church, the Christian community is still shaken.

A "feeling of pain and bewilderment for what happened" prevails, says the cardinal, also because the soldier opened fire "despite all the coordination" and in spite of "all the information that was already there" on the people welcomed into the parish.

On the fact that the church, the house of Mother Teresa's nuns and the other buildings in the area were certainly not a military target and that, inside, there were no weapons, fighters or other material that could justify an attack. And which struck defenseless and innocent civilians.

“There are no reasonable wars - continues the cardinal - but what happened was avoidable from my point of view, because the place was known and it was known who was inside”. The two women who were killed in cold blood, he adds, were "very visible, it was perceived that they were two elderly people" and certainly had nothing that could have made them mistake "for a young Hamas fighter". It was necessary, he states, "to be more careful" if we can talk about an error or a tragic fatality.

However, the two victims are part of a broader picture of pain, violence and innocent victims which affects the entire population of the Strip, Christians and Muslims, in particular civilians with thousands of deaths among women and children. “I don't want to create a tragedy just for the Christian victims” he underlines, but the gaze must be broadened “on the two million people locked inside”

Gaza, which has long been an open-air prison, and which since the war launched by Israel in response to the terrorist attack of Hamas "already has over 20 thousand deaths". “Here - he states - our dead are part of those 20 thousand or more victims” who have bloodied the Strip in just over two months, with the open question of the hostages still in the hands of the militiamen and of a fragile international diplomacy working on a new truce. In this regard, the patriarch himself, in response to a question from a journalist, had offered to exchange with the prisoners.

“There were contacts [to initiate an exchange with prisoners], but it was known very well” that they would not be followed up. “I had spoken in the method – he adds – and it was not a cliché”. In recent weeks the Latin primate met "the relatives of the victims and hostages", but not only them because "it is necessary to meet all the realities that are among us. At this moment - he observes - it seems that of the two parties [Israeli and Palestinian], each wants to have a monopoly on pain, but this is not the case" because this tragedy concerns everyone.

Isolated and divided in pain

Since 2020, the tenth Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, the Franciscan cardinal was born in the province of Bergamo in 1965 and has been working in the Holy Land since 1999, a reality that he knows intimately. In May 2004 the election as Custos was confirmed on two other occasions.

On 24 June 2016 he was appointed apostolic administrator upon reaching the age limit of Patriarch Twal, leading a jurisdiction that embraces Latin rite Catholics in Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Cyprus and a territory divided into 71 parishes and six vicariates.

“Unfortunately, what we feel today - he underlines - is not a pain that unites us, that brings solidarity but everyone remains closed in their own. It is not open to the other." “Talking about dialogue - continues the cardinal - now makes no sense, because it doesn't exist. The only area for direct dialogue and discussion today is on the release of the hostages, but there is nothing else. I am aware of other contacts in progress, to understand what to do" in a subsequent phase, but even in this case "it seems to me that they do not have very clear ideas".

“Instead,” he warns, “what is needed is precisely this: a strategy, a perspective, visions for the future” even if at the moment “the dialogue between the two parties doesn't make much sense”.

Here the role of a long-absent international community comes into play which, according to card. Pizzaballa, "must help give guidelines" by involving the party that has so far been excluded from the table. “What I see,” he explains, “is that everyone talks about the future of the Palestinians, but no one talks to the Palestinians. To talk about the future you need to talk to them too, not just about them. Instead, at this moment they are not given a voice."

New leaders for peace

Palestinians without a voice, Israeli leaders who today only know the language of all-out war, to eradicate the threat of Hamas. But there is no trace of humanity, the civilian victims and the suffering of millions of people seem to be relegated to the margins of the history that is being written in these weeks of "crazy" conflict as Fr. Ibrahim Faltas defined it. This is why it seems necessary, however unlikely, for a change in leadership to be able to return to dialogue, to build instead of tearing down and killing.

“Now - says the Latin patriarch - a new leadership is needed” because with the current one “I don't think it is possible to build clear prospects” of dialogue, discussion, negotiations as hard and painful as they are necessary, to ease the tension and restore a perspective of coexistence .

In the past this was the period in which the patriarch visited the Catholic community of Gaza, celebrating first communions and confirmations, visiting the sick and holding mass on the third Sunday of Advent. “Not being there this year – he underlines – is a great pain. Furthermore, the period coincided with the killing of the two women. These people who gave their lives remind us of the pain of the community and the need for solidarity" in the face of a "tragic" situation.

The missed visit to the Strip is also linked to the silence in Jerusalem, in Bethlehem, in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher or in the Nativity which, in these times, were packed with pilgrims and a place of prayer and peace.

“The silence and deserted Jerusalem in a time that is usually fruitful for pilgrimages - states the cardinal - is a spiritual, human burden, because an empty city is a dead city. However, there is also an economic element, for all those who work especially in this sector of religious tourism".

“Hope, which is not optimism, is the daughter of faith and sister of charity, therefore - he continues - we must see the many people who are still capable of charity, of tenderness today. And with faith, be able to go further, have a gaze capable of overcoming the pain of the present and that can also see the end of this night because this too, like all nights, will end."

The patriarch ends his reflection by taking up the metaphor of the "condominium" dear to him, to describe the Holy Land: "In this time it has been destroyed, but the condominiums [Christian, Jewish and Muslim] are all still there. We must start again with people, little by little, with patience and determination to rebuild what has been destroyed. And even in Jewish and Christian dialogue we must move forward, we must move forward - he concludes - despite everything that is happening".

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