Leaders customarily exchange gifts when they meet formally. So it would have been odd had Pope Francis and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas not offered one another such gifts when they met in the Vatican last week.
However, many were surprised by reports of the words the pope used to hand over his gift – a bronze medallion depicting the Angel of Peace. “[He] destroys the evil spirit of war,” Pope Francis is reported to have said, adding, “You’re an angel of peace.”
Abbas was in Rome for the canonisation of the first ever Palestinian Arabs to be declared saints by the Catholic Church. He arrived just two days after the Vatican announced a bilateral accord with the “State of Palestine”.
The agreement, which was two years in the making, governed activities of the Catholic Church in the West Bank and Gaza.
Sadly, neither the United Nations decision in 2012 to recognise Palestine as a “non-member observer state”, nor the Vatican’s support of that decision, have done much to advance a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
That conflict is aggravated by the tense divisions amongst the Palestinians themselves – between Hamas-controlled Gaza and Fatah-controlled West Bank. Arrests, torture, and mutual accusations of collaboration with Israel are almost routine.
Hamas and Fatah are united only in their determination to defeat Israel. Each uses the charge that Israel is denying independence to the Palestinians as the principle weapon whereby they are actually denying the independence of Israel.
It would be ludicrous to describe President Abbas, a Holocaust-denier who thinks the Jews murdered during World War II were killed by Zionist Nazi-collaborators, an “angel of peace”.
Just as well then that the Pope’s words are likely to have been mis-reported. Now the Pope is thought to have told Abbas, “You could be an angel of peace“. If accurate, this puts the exchange in a slightly different light.
But it’s too bad that Vatican support for Palestinian independence has not issued in a sterner injunction to Abbas to lead his people to a peaceful co-existence with Israel. Urging Abbas to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, regardless of its borders, would be a start.
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Abbas no angel
Leaders customarily exchange gifts when they meet formally. So it would have been odd had Pope Francis and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas not offered one another such gifts when they met in the Vatican last week.
However, many were surprised by reports of the words the pope used to hand over his gift – a bronze medallion depicting the Angel of Peace. “[He] destroys the evil spirit of war,” Pope Francis is reported to have said, adding, “You’re an angel of peace.”
Abbas was in Rome for the canonisation of the first ever Palestinian Arabs to be declared saints by the Catholic Church. He arrived just two days after the Vatican announced a bilateral accord with the “State of Palestine”.
The agreement, which was two years in the making, governed activities of the Catholic Church in the West Bank and Gaza.
Sadly, neither the United Nations decision in 2012 to recognise Palestine as a “non-member observer state”, nor the Vatican’s support of that decision, have done much to advance a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
That conflict is aggravated by the tense divisions amongst the Palestinians themselves – between Hamas-controlled Gaza and Fatah-controlled West Bank. Arrests, torture, and mutual accusations of collaboration with Israel are almost routine.
Hamas and Fatah are united only in their determination to defeat Israel. Each uses the charge that Israel is denying independence to the Palestinians as the principle weapon whereby they are actually denying the independence of Israel.
It would be ludicrous to describe President Abbas, a Holocaust-denier who thinks the Jews murdered during World War II were killed by Zionist Nazi-collaborators, an “angel of peace”.
Just as well then that the Pope’s words are likely to have been mis-reported. Now the Pope is thought to have told Abbas, “You could be an angel of peace“. If accurate, this puts the exchange in a slightly different light.
But it’s too bad that Vatican support for Palestinian independence has not issued in a sterner injunction to Abbas to lead his people to a peaceful co-existence with Israel. Urging Abbas to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, regardless of its borders, would be a start.
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