The year 2009 began with a profound economic crisis, which always weighs most heavily on the poorest of the poor, and with the bombing of Gaza by Israel. We are witnesses of the situation in which people live in the occupied territories of Palestine. Their inhabitants live like prisoners in their own land.
We are deeply pained that the Holy Land, which saw the birth of Jesus and of the Church, continues to be bathed in blood. The state of Israel, turning a deaf ear to the United Nations and to the international community, persists in the occupation of the Palestinian people, building many settlements of Jewish settlers and a huge wall to isolate and keep the Palestinian people incommunicado. This has led to the emergence of fundamentalist and violent resistance groups, like Hamas, which has fired rockets against Israeli towns, sowing panic among their inhabitants. Nevertheless, the response of the Israeli government we consider to be totally disproportionate, indiscriminate, and guilty of war crimes.
The Israeli missiles have destroyed multitudes of houses, schools and hospitals. The majority of the dead are civilians, including a third of which are children. It’s painful and repugnant to witness how the Israeli missiles destroyed schools in a United Nations refugee camp causing 50 deaths, most of them children. Up to this point [January 8], more than 700 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip. A Spanish nun who works in a parish in Gaza described the situation to us as an hell: “There is no water, no electricity, little food or medicine; the hospitals don’t have room to treat the 3,000 wounded; the cold of this time of year is terrible… and worst of all, there is no end to the terror of the Israeli bombings… it’s hell.”
Israel has a right to exist and to secure peace for its citizens, but not at the price of killing innocent people nor of repressing the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
We lament the fact that there is no world authority with the competence and the capacity to stop the war.
Those of us who are members of International Christian Service in Solidarity with the Peoples of Latin America (SICSAL) ratify once again our option for a non-violent solution to conflicts.
As followers of Jesus Christ we are in favor of a peace based on justice and respect for human rights.
We reject violent methods, be they institutionalized violence or the violence of resistance.
What is occurring in Gaza is truly a disgrace for humanity, as are the wars that occur in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Congo.
We are committed to a world where the globalization of justice, solidarity, and peace replace the globalization of power, wealth and war.
Finally, we are united in solidarity with the Christian communities of Palestine and with their Patriarch, the Archbishop of Jerusalem, with the priests and religious men and women who accompany these communities, the ones who plead with us not to abandon them.
We issue a call to raise up our prayers for peace in the Holy Land and throughout the world, and we commit ourselves to be peacemakers wherever we find ourselves.
We unite ourselves to the cry of Archbishop Romero: “In the name of God, I ask you, I beg you, I order you, stop the repression!”
Guatemala – Quito – Bogota, January 8, 2009
Mons. Alvaro Ramazzini,
Bishop of San Marcos, Guatemala
President of SICSAL
Sr. Raquel Saravia,
Guatemala
President of SICSAL
Nidia Arrobo Rodas
Fundacion Pueblo Indio, Ecuador
Executive Secretary of SICSAL
Abilio Pena Buendía
Comision Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz, Colombia
Executive Secretary of SICSAL
