The priest charged with looking after Christianity’s most holy sites
in both Palestine and Israel says reaching a peace settlement in the
region “will take a long time.”
The comments of Franciscan Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa follow a
tense week in which the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on a
tour of the U.S., clashed with President Obama over the road to the
peace for Israel and Palestine.
“The situation here in the Holy Land after the speech of Obama and
the speech of Netanyahu hasn’t changed dramatically. We are still
waiting for ‘facts on the ground’ as we say,” Father Pizzaballa told
Vatican Radio.
“We are happy that after years of no positions, no declarations and
no negotiations something now is moving again. But we think that the
difference between the two parties is still too big and it will take a
long time – not a short time, for sure – in order to reach a possible
agreement.”
In his speech last week on U.S. policy in the Middle East, President
Obama called on the two sides to agree to negotiations that would begin
with the borders that existed before the Six Day War in 1967, along with
land swaps.
But the plan was flatly rejected by visiting Israeli Prime
Minister Netanyahu during a heated meeting at the White House.
This coming September, Palestinian leaders plan to ask the United
Nations to recognize their statehood.
That move will be sure to put the
spotlight on the tensions between Israel and Palestine and is a prospect
that the Obama administration is seeking to avoid.