Vatican delegate tells UN that 'two-state solution' to Israel-Palestine conflict is in danger
April 18, 2016
Addressing an April 18 UN session on the Middle East, the Vatican’s representative expressed fear that “the two-state solution between Israel and Palestine is in danger of failing.
Archbishop Bernardito Auza said that the danger is acute “as peace talks stall and inflammatory rhetoric, acts of terror, and unilateral actions scupper efforts to restore a process of meaningful dialogue and compromise.” He reminded the assembly that the Holy See views the two-state solution as “the best possibility of a peaceful settlement.”
Archbishop Auza urged world leaders to give special attention to the situation in Lebanon, where refugees now constitute one-fourth of the resident population, and a presidential election has been thwarted for two years at a time when that country and the entire region are endangered by “regional instability and the growth of vicious non-state actors.”
The archbishop insisted that military action alone will not be adequate to defeat the threat of terrorism. The root causes must also be addressed, he said, and religious leaders must take an important role in denouncing the exploitation of faith in the service of violence.
The archbishop closed with a plea for the international community “to hear the cries of the beleaguered communities of Christians and other ethnic and religious minority groups in the Middle East, who are discriminated against, persecuted, slaughtered, set afire or drowned because they do not share the ideological or religious views of their persecutors.”
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