Pope Francis on Sunday condemned the growing “spiral of death” in the Middle East, calling on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to engage in “the sincere search for peace”.
“The spiral of death growing day by day is extinguishing the rare glimmers of trust that exist between the two peoples,” the Pope lamented after the Sunday Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square in Rome.
He cited Thursday’s Israeli airstrike on a Palestinian camp in the West Bank, which killed ten people, and Friday’s attack on a Palestinian man who killed seven people near a synagogue in Jerusalem.
“Since the beginning of the year, dozens of Palestinians have been killed in shootings with the Israeli army”, he recalled, before calling on “the two governments and the international community to find other solutions without delay, including dialogue and the sincere search for peace”.
Blinking and touring
The head of the American diplomacy Antony Blinken also arrived in Cairo on Sunday, the first leg of his whirlwind tour of the Middle East in the midst of an outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence, with the slim hope of using the influence of the United States. in an attempt to ease tensions.
Before traveling to Jerusalem and Ramallah on Monday and Tuesday, Antony Blinken is due to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi and his Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri.