ISRAEL is “denying the Palestinian people dignity, freedom, and hope”, and international law must not be applied selectively, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said.
He was responding last Friday to an advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice last month, which concluded that Israeli settlements within the West Bank and East Jerusalem violated international law (26 July).
Fears that conflict within the Middle East will escalate have increased because the assassination of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran last week. Iran blames Israel, which has not accepted responsibility.
This attack and a rise in hostilities between Israel and the Lebanon-based, Iran-backed Hezbollah group have led to fears that the war will widen across the Middle East. BBC News has reported that some Western governments are advising their residents to depart Lebanon.
Palestinian authorities reported that dozens of individuals had been killed by Israeli air strikes on two schools in Gaza, including displaced individuals who were sheltering there. A spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said that the colleges were getting used by Hamas operatives.
The death of Mr Haniyeh, who was accountable for the Hamas delegation in ceasefire talks, “doesn’t help” negotiations for a cessation of hostilities, President Biden said last Friday.
In his statement, the Archbishop said that international law have to be applied “without fear or favour in all circumstances. But for too long it has been applied and upheld in a selective manner that threatens our common peace and security. Now is the time to reverse that deeply damaging trend.”
He referred to his visits to the region over the past a long time. “It is evident to me that that the regime imposed by successive Israeli governments within the Occupied Palestinian Territories is one among systemic discrimination.
“Through annexing Palestinian land for illegal settlements, depriving Palestinians access to their very own natural resources, and imposing a system of military rule that denies them safety and justice, the State of Israel has been denying the Palestinian people dignity, freedom, and hope.”
This had an impact particularly on Palestinian Christians, he said, and was “threatening their future and viability”.
In an interview last yr, the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, Dr Hosam Naoum, spoke concerning the challenges facing Christians there, including the difficulties of travelling between the West Bank and East Jerusalem (News, 18 August 2023).
In an article for the Church Times last week, the Dean of St George’s College, Jerusalem, the Very Revd Canon Richard Sewell, wrote that, despite their “deep attachment to and love of the land”, a “significant” variety of Christians were leaving to “seek a greater life elsewhere” (Comment, 2 August).
Archbishop Welby had last week again raised the case of Layan Nasir, a 23-year-old Palestinian Anglican, who has been detained for free of charge since April (News, 1 August).
Her imprisonment was “an egregious state of affairs”, and her transfer from the West Bank to Damon prison, in Israel, was, he said, a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
