Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabbah
Former President of Pax Christi International
Ed. Note: This article appeared in America. Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabbah served as the archbishop and Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem from 1987 to 2008, the first native Palestinian to hold the office for centuries. He is a co-author of the Kairos Palestine Document and a member of the Kairos Palestine board. He is the former President of Pax Christi International.
We have already seen six months of war in Gaza. Now, it seems that Israel is beginning its last phase of conquest, after ordering a million and a half people to take refuge in Rafah, a border town with Egypt. Soon, there may be almost no one left in the rest of Gaza.
There have been several wars in Gaza, but this time there are thousands of human victims, and ruins like never before, and peace does not seem to be near. More than suffering, more than the loss of men and women, children and babies, humanity is lost.
Why this new war? The immediate cause is the horrific Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023. But another direct cause is the permanent siege imposed upon all Gazan territory in 2007, when the Hamas political party became the governing authority of the enclave. Since then, the entire territory—2.5 million people over an area of 141 square miles—has been under total military siege imposed by Israel and Egypt. And since Oct. 7, Israel’s military operations have limited even the most necessary humanitarian aid for Gaza, to the point that it now stands on the cusp of famine.
The real cause is the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, begun in 1948, which no peace agreement has been able to end and which the international community seems to have neglected.
Under Israeli military occupation, Gaza—and all of Palestine—has suffered thousands of deaths, thousands more taken as political prisoners, demolished houses, military checkpoints on all roads that disrupt freedom of movement and daily life, and a paralyzed, dependent Palestinian economy. In short, we are in a permanent state of war. This is the root cause of all wars in Gaza, including the one following Oct. 7. And despite the useless, inhuman violence of the present war, more will come if a just and lasting peace is not reached between the two peoples.
The war must stop without further delay because it is no longer a war. It is a massacre. But what comes after the war?…