Elisha Vision – Commentary

Pope Francis exchanges gifts with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during an audience at the Vatican Saturday, May 16, 2015.(Alberto Pizzoli/Pool Photo via AP)

I spoke of my preference for mercy over justice recently, but even justice has been redefined; and truth is now unknowable. Pope Francis says Palestine is a state and the Vatican has concluded a treaty with “the state of Palestine”. However, read my lips: “There is no state called Palestine anywhere on this planet.” The Pope is using the enormous force of the Vatican to declare a state that does not exist.

Vatican Signs Historic First Accord with ‘Palestine’ After recognizing PA as a ‘state,’ Pope Francis’s supposedly apolitical Vatican signs treaty with ‘Palestine’ before it does so with Israel. The accord, a treaty covering the life and activity of the Church in Judea and Samaria, was the first since the Vatican made the controversial step of recognition in February 2013. It also recognizes the PA as having authority in eastern Jerusalem, the undivided capital of the Jewish state. 

There are a number of things wrong about this decision. Here are three:

1. It violates the Oslo accords. Signing international treaties unilaterally is a breach of the 1993 Oslo Accords which created the PA. Consider that Israel legally became a state in 1948, but the Vatican only began diplomatic relations in 1993. This was 45 years after statehood! Yet they give diplomatic recognition to “Palestine” before statehood! In contrast to its rush to sign accords with the PA, the Vatican has had diplomatic relations with Israel since 1993 but has yet to conclude an accord on the Church’s rights in the Jewish state which has been under discussion since 1999. Truth is lost. 
2. It is unilateral, leaving Israel completely out of the discussion. “Israel cannot accept the unilateral determinations in the agreement which do not take into account Israel’s essential interests and the special historic status of the Jewish people in Jerusalem,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon

By endorsing the “1967 borders” the Vatican joins the unjust attempt to rewrite history by ignoring Israel’s victory in the Six Day War. When the world talks about the ’67 borders they mean before the war. How convenient. Of course, there were never any legal borders at all in ’67, only the 1949 armistice lines. Truth is lost.

3. It ignores Palestinian persecution of Christians. The agreement appears to ignore the fact that Christians have been systematically persecuted under the PA, which has caused the Christian population in Bethlehem to nearly disappear from 60% in 1990 to 15% last year. 

According to Justus Reid Weiner of Hebrew University, in July 2012, a court in Jericho sentenced a Christian to a month of imprisonment for eating in public during Ramadan. “Five other people were also arrested for the same conduct. The chairman of the PA Supreme Court for Sharia Law stated: ‘We have to monitor the streets, and severely punish anyone who eats in public during Ramadan. This is the responsibility of the security forces…I call upon other non-Muslims to be considerate of Muslims’ feelings.”

This is in sharp contrast to Western societies, where the majority is usually called upon to be considerate of the minority.

“The Palestinian Land Law prescribes the death penalty for selling land to Jews. Various Christians have testified that it is also enforced if land is sold to Christians. Several Christian owners have been extorted to give up their land to Muslims. In practice, the legal system in the Palestinian territories provides them no recourse,” said Weiner. Israel National News  Truth is lost.

So what must we conclude from the Pope’s decision? (But for time and space, I could add recent US Supreme Court decisions.) We must conclude that truth is lost. Isaiah saw the problem over 2,500 years ago.

Les Lawrence, Voice of Christian Zionists         (READ MORE)