'A sovereign Palestinian homeland in the land of your forefathers within internationally recognised borders”. In voicing support for this formulation of the two-state solution, Pope Benedict XVI has thrown his considerable moral authority behind a peace settlement based on the 1967 borders. It is the goal of the Arab Peace Initiative, the realisation of which Israel whittles away with every new settlement in the West Bank, and implicitly at least the Pope has taken a stance not just on the side of Palestinians but for what may be the only workable solution. As such, his speech at the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem offered a substantive backbone underpinning the trappings of symbolism that have been so important to this Middle East visit.
As he meets with the region’s leaders, King Abdullah of Jordan, the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and most recently the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Pope is often invested with the standing of a head of state and his words thus measured, placing the foreign policy of the Vatican on a par with major national players. That is an over-simplification. Pope Benedict’s authority extends beyond Vatican City to the 1.3 billion Catholics of various ethnicities and nationalities. What he is not, however, is his predecessor, the charismatic John Paul II. His is a different face of the Vatican, but this recent trip has reinforced the conviction that Pope Benedict can be an effective leader in his own right.
Returning to the birthplace of Christianity, in many ways the Pope has been walking a path of daggers where a misstep would do more damage than the good that he can achieve. The naysayers did not disappoint as a rather tired controversy over the Pope’s supposed participation in Hitler Youth was rehashed from the furore of the last papal election, and his visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial was criticised on word choice and tone. On the other side, detractors attacked his style and emphasis, even his perceived emotional state, when talking about Gaza and the Palestinians’ plight. Pundits are often presumptuous when they tell a leader of one of the great religions of the world how to behave, and the Pontiff has shown statesmanship by rising above mudslingers who betrayed their own mean and narrow-minded views. To his credit, the Pope has admitted mistakes in the past. His poorly chosen comments about Islam have aroused unnecessary rancour at times, but most fair-minded observers will agree that, as he has so often said, his is an earnest desire for peace and harmony between faiths, despite differences.
The heavy lifting of any regional peace – which would almost certainly start with the 1967 borders to be sustainable – will be done by the political actors: the Palestinian factions if they can overcome their differences, the Israelis if they can move beyond intransigence, and the international community if it can find the courage. What Pope Benedict has brought is a clear moral view on the matter, providing spiritual leadership for the region’s Christians and an advocacy of peaceful reconciliation in the Holy Land. As Israel’s unrelenting occupation has hamstrung its moral standing and the Palestinians’ infighting continues to do disservice to their cause, an opportunity to rise above the fray is welcome. Not least, in his statements against anti-Semitism and the sympathy shown to Palestinians hemmed in by Israel’s wall, Pope Benedict has demonstrated the virtue of compassion. This, as much as any other, is a noble role for Catholicism’s guiding light.
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