A Letter to His Holiness Pope Francis I
His Holiness Pope Francis I
C/o His Eminence Bishop Joseph Lazarotto, Apostolic Delegate in
Jerusalem
We members of the Palestinian people, Christians and Muslims,
welcome your generous visit to the Holy Land. We wish you a
blessed pilgrimage. We bless for you this auspicious step which
we hope that the result of which will be the deliverance of our
people from the Israeli occupation, which has been oppressing
our people since 1967.
His Holiness Pope Francis I
We are living under the Israeli occupation in a big prison. We
are deprived of our human rights which all religious laws of
heaven have guaranteed. So we are prohibited from building on
our land and from moving freely to our workplaces. Our children
face many difficulties and obstacles which are created by the
occupation in the face of the educational process or when they
travel abroad to continue their specialized university
education. Also our livelihood is targeted as well as the
sources of our subsistence. The occupation authorities closed
all social and civil society institutions in Jerusalem as well
as several charitable institutions in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories. The Israeli authorities carry out nightly storming
campaigns every day against peaceful civilian inhabitants in
their homes, and they impose curfews and open fire on any moving
thing. Hundreds of innocent victims died, and are still dying,
as a result of this suppressive policy.
Since 1967, the Israeli occupation has been working on Judaizing
the city and effacing its historical and Arab, Christian and
Islamic landmarks. This is done through daily harassments of its
Palestinian inhabitants, Christians and Muslims, confiscating
our land and building tens of settlements on it, building roads
and conducting excavations which expose holy places to the
danger of collapse specially those places in the Noble Sanctuary
(Al-Haram Al-Shareef) area and under Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The biggest danger faced by the holy city is emptying it from
its Arab inhabitants as a result of daily harassments and
preventing them from improving the conditions of their living.
What gives us pain as Palestinians is the danger of emptying the
city of its Christian inhabitants, whose emigration is
increasing day by day due to the Israeli practices. So their
number today in the Holy City does not exceed eight thousand
Christian Palestinians, and this is one third of the number of
the Jerusalemite Christians in 1945. Thus we address your
holiness to work and demand of the international institutions
and the international community to put an end to the Judaization
of Jerusalem, to preserve its genuine character, to respect the
rights of its Palestinian inhabitants and to grant them the
freedom of living with dignity.
His Holiness Pope Francis I
Many inhabitants of the Occupied Palestinian Territories are
Palestinian refugees who were expelled from their homes by the
Israeli forces in 1948 and in 1967. There is a resolution in the
General Assembly
bearing the number 194, which stipulates their right of return
or compensation. This resolution is waiting for a supporting
position from your Holiness for this legitimate resolution,
which Israel disregards and ignores.
The occupation authorities also seize and control our
Palestinian water and take 80% of it. They sell it for us at a
price which is four times the price they offer to the settlers
who live on our occupied land, invest in it and prevent us from
building and natural expansion. These settlements have become
terrorist enclaves whose inhabitants cut down our trees,
especially olive trees. They cut down hundreds of old trees
every day to the extent that the number of uprooted olive trees
alone has exceeded one million trees so far. This is in order to
deprive their owners of obtaining a livelihood and to force them
to depart. They also burn the fields of the farmers and deprive
them of collecting their crops which are considered the main
source of their livelihood. This is in addition to pursuing
shepherds, stealing their cattle and preventing them from
grazing their cattle in their occupied Palestinian land since
1967, and other suppressive and brutal practices in terrorist
and bestial ways.
His Holiness Pope Francis I
The question of the basic freedom of access to religious places,
such as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the blessed Al-Aqsa
Mosque, is guaranteed by all free nations except in our holy
country. So we the Christians are prevented from reaching our
Mother Church in Jerusalem. The Muslims as well are not allowed
to pray in Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the occupation authorities limit
the age of those who enter to pray from 40 or 50 years old. This
requires a firm stance on this issue.
Israel also detains thousands of Palestinian prisoners inside
jails and cells which are not good for human use. It pronounces
sentences against them which had not been known in the history
of courts before. Hundreds of detainees are sentenced for tens
of life imprisonment and for hundreds of years. This is in
addition to holding hundreds of corpses and not giving them to
their families. The number of the prisoners since 1967 is more
than one million and fifty thousand. Three-hundred and sixty
(360) children were detained in 2013 alone and they are still
lurking in the darkness of the prisons where there are naked
inspection, humiliation and severe torture which has caused the
death of 204 prisoners until now.
Your Holiness the Pope
This Holy Land had witnessed the birth of Christ, Prince of
Peace for the world. It also witnessed the Prophet Muhammad’s
Israa’ (nocturnal journey from Mecca to Noble Jerusalem) and
Mi’raaj (ascension to the seven heavens). The Palestinian people
lived, and are still living, with the blessing of having
established the most wonderful relations on earth since the
Islamic Arabs came to this land, in the spirit of the Covenant
of ‘Umar, which was signed in 638 A.D. by the Caliph of the
Muslims ‘Umar Bin Al-Khattab and Saint Sophronius, the Patriarch
of Jerusalem at that time.
We expect that through your blessed visit, you will work, as we
already known about you, for siding with the principles of
justice and human rights which are represented by:
·
Working to put an end to the Israeli occupation, which
is the last occupation in the world for the sake of our
deliverance from this terrible historical injustice and
establishing the Palestinian state with Jerusalem being
its eternal capital. We do hope that the Vatican
representative in the United Nations or in any
international circles will play a more effective role on
this issue.
·
Guaranteeing freedom of worship and the arrival of
Christians and Muslims to these holy places without
restrictions.
·
Setting free the prisoners and political detainees,
changing the conditions of their detention and
transferring them from jails inside Israel to the
occupied territories and applying the Geneva Conventions
concerning war prisoners to them.
·
Working to guarantee the right of return for the
refugees and to compensate them according to the
international resolutions, especially Resolution 194.
·
Stopping the aggressions against Christian and Islamic
places of worship and incessant attempts to Judaize them
and stopping the digging up of cemeteries, confiscating
them and turning them into public facilities or hotels.
The undersigned: the ‘ulama’ (Muslim religious leaders),
clergymen, politicians, legal personalities, social and civil
institutions and unions are sure that your Holiness will
continue to stand by justice and human rights which your church
believes in. We ask Almighty God that, besides praying for
justice and peace, your Catholic church and the one church,
together with all the faithful, will demand the heads of states
and representatives of the peoples to put pressure on the heads
of their governments and states to work seriously to end the
Israeli occupation and achieve justice so that our Holy Land
will enjoy peace and living with dignity. We hope that this will
be a part of your message and your daily work programs. In our
view, you remain a symbol for achieving security and peace,
which are based on justice and fairness, especially for the
wronged people like the Palestinians, who sincerely welcome your
Holiness and who are honored by your presence. We hope that this
visit will be a cause for rolling the unjust rock of the
occupation from the Golgothas of this Holy Land so that right
rises from among the tombs.
Jerusalem
May 12, 2014