In a front-page op-ed in the Vatican newspaper, a prominent Holy Land Franciscan decried Israeli treatment of Palestinian civilians.
Writing in the December 20 edition of L’Osservatore Romano, Father Ibrahim Faltas, OFM, said that “around Gaza and the State of Palestine in the West Bank, physical and visible walls have been built that prevent access to the ‘unauthorized’: humanitarian aid and relatives, volunteers, journalists, and international observers.”
He added:
What or who prevents us from helping desperate human beings who live in an inhumane way? … Who recognizes as enemies men and women exhausted by the pain of not being able to help those to whom they gave life, children and the elderly, easy targets of violence, human beings without strength and sick? What interest prohibits feeding, healing, and warming with what is available in abundance just a few steps away? Why not give the possibility of life to those who cannot live without the medicines that await them just beyond a crossing or a checkpoint?
Until earlier this year, Father Faltas was the second-ranking official of the Custody of the Holy Land, the Franciscan province there; he is now director of Terra Santa Schools.