Pope Francis condemns the Israeli Army’s actions in Gaza amid a series of brutal attacks on civilian targets during the week.
The Pope, at his weekly blessing at St Peter’s Square, speaking after reports of Israeli snipers killing two Christian women in Gaza’s only Catholic church, said: “Some would say, ’It is war. It is terrorism.’ Yes, it is war. It is terrorism.” He also said Israeli snipers killed a mother and her daughter on Saturday and shot dead seven others at the Holy Family parish, Gaza’s only Catholic church, according to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
The Israeli army has been responsible for horrific events in Gaza in the past week alone, including airstrikes on unarmed civilians, he told a Sunday crowd. Last night’s Israeli strike on the town of Zawayda in the Gaza Strip on Saturday killed at least 17 Palestinians and wounded dozens more, according to Gaza health officials. On Friday, Israeli forces struck targets across tiny, crowded Gaza and issued new evacuation orders for people to leave areas previously designated as civilian safe zones, saying Hamas had used them to fire mortars and rockets into Israel.
Israel’s actions come as cease-fire talks continue. On Friday night, for example, US President Joe Biden told reporters he was optimistic about the prospects for a cease-fire deal but cautioned that a positive outcome to the talks was far from certain. The Israeli official said his Doha delegation was heading home, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet with Antony Blinken on Monday. During the talks, Israel insisted that peace would only be possible if Hamas was destroyed, while Hamas said it would only accept a permanent ceasefire, not a temporary one.
In the meantime, the Palestinian group Hamas was not directly involved in the talks between the mediators and Israel, the group said it was opposed to the conditions for Israeli troops on the Gaza border with Egypt and the conditions for the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli hostages. Senior Hamas official Izzat Al-Risheq said Israel had not honoured what had been agreed in previous talks.
The war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israel. More than 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s subsequent military campaign, according to Palestinian health authorities.
Israel has been accused of genocide by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which has ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians sought refuge from the war before its May 6 invasion.
In addition, the United Nations has called for a week-long pause in the country’s polio vaccination campaign to stem the spread of the disease among displaced people, after the Palestinian Health Ministry said in the statement it had detected the first confirmed case of polio in the Gaza Strip.
