U.S. Bishops Protest Israel Barrier

U.S. bishops are objecting to Israel’s decision to build a separation barrier along a route that will nearly surround a convent and its primary school and confiscate most of their land on the outskirts of a Palestinian West Bank community. Bishop Richard E. Pates of Des Moines, Iowa, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, protested the Israeli plan to build the barrier near Beit Jalla in a letter dated May 6 to Secretary of State John Kerry. “In solidarity with our brother bishops in the Holy Land, we oppose rerouting the separation wall in the Cremisan Valley,” the letter said, referring to arguments that Holy Land bishops made to the Israeli government in a letter opposing the barrier. The barrier’s route would also cut off 58 Christian families from agricultural and recreational land they own, hurting their livelihood, Bishop Pates said. Bishop Pates urged Kerry to address the concerns raised by Jerusalem’s Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal, who reminded “Israeli decision-makers that the expropriation of lands does not serve the cause of peace.”