New York (ENI) — A group of U.S. church leaders has asked that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice directly address the crisis over the Gaza Strip in her planned visit to the Middle East this week.
The leaders of Anglican, Orthodox, Protestant, and Unitarian Universalist churches and Roman Catholic religious humanitarian groups on February 29 sent a letter to Rice. They urged her to ‘to take urgent action to address the still unresolved Gaza crisis’. This crisis, the leaders, said ‘is hindering progress on the peace process and also create conditions that pose a particular threat to the small Christian community in Gaza.”
Only hours before Rice was due to arrive in the Middle East, Israeli ground troops pulled out of northern Gaza on 3 March following an attack on Palestinians accused of launching rocket attacks into Israel, which evoked international condemnation for excessive use of force in attacks that have resulted in the deaths of more than 100 people.
The Israeli attacks caused the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, who has been at odds with the Hamas movement ruling Gaza, to cut contacts with Israel, which is seen as making more difficult Rice’s expected push at reviving peace talks.
‘If action is not taken soon, the possibility of a larger military confrontation looms,’ the church leaders said, adding that their response was prompted by humanitarian concerns over civilians, both Palestinian and Israeli, ‘caught in the conflict’.
‘The blockade of Gaza and the frequent occurrence of rocket attacks against southern Israel cannot be tolerated,’ the church officials said. ‘The blockade results in power outages, water and food shortages and a lack of adequate access to medical supplies that create a humanitarian crisis felt by all Gazans, while rocket attacks on Israel have targeted civilians indiscriminately and made normal life impossible in the areas affected.’
The leaders said they welcomed Rice’s 22 February announcement that the U.S. would increase its support of humanitarian aid to Gaza but they also urged a cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian attackers and an end to a blockade imposed by Israel at the Gaza’s borders with Israel.
The church leaders declared their ‘particular distress’ about the February 15 bombing in Gaza of a Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) library by a group of gunmen. The attack, said the religious leaders, ‘is symptomatic of the deteriorating social conditions and instability that threaten the safety of all the residents of Gaza,” and in particular threatens Gaza’s small Christian community.
Among the signers of the letter were Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Michael Kinnamon, general secretary of the U.S. National Council of Churches; Clifton Kirkpatrick, the stated clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.); Metropolitan Philip (Saliba), primate of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America; Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the U.S. Episcopal (Anglican) Church; and John H. Thomas, general minister and president of the United Church of Christ.
