JourneyOnline
The World Council of Churches’ executive committee has urged Israelis and Palestinians not to waste any more time and to take substantial steps towards ending their conflict and making peace.
"Peace must come soon or it may not come to either people for a long time," the World Council of Churches said in a statement on 22 May following its 16 to 19 May meeting near Geneva.
It urged the international community not to isolate the Palestinian government, which is now dominated by the militant Islamist movement Hamas. Instead, the international community should "support, two-way and equitable negotiations as the path to mutual recognition between Israel and Palestine and to the resolution of other contentious and substantive obstacles to peace as noted in the succession of United Nations Security Council and General Assembly resolutions", the statement said.
The statement also called on Israel to negotiate a final peace agreement with the Palestinians rather than attempt to unilaterally set its final borders by dismantling dozens of isolated Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that if the Palestinian government led by Hamas refuses to revoke its call for Israel’s destruction and fails to renew peace negotiations, then Israel will unilaterally set its borders by 2010, including by incorporating several West Bank Jewish settlement blocs into Israel.
"The time is ripe to do what is right with the responsible powers and authorities providing little prospect of a viable future for both Israelis and Palestinians," the statement said.
Read the full text of WCC statement at www.oikoumene.org/index.php?id=2259
(c) Ecumenical News International
Photo : World News
