7 October 2024 (originally published on World Council of Churches website)
World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay has called on all WCC member churches and partners, and all people of faith and good will, to pray and act for peace in the Holy Land.
On this day in 2023, Hamas launched a brutal attack on southern Israel that became the catalyst for a year of escalating and widening conflict in the region.
During this attack, numerous atrocities were committed in utter violation of the most fundamental principles of international law and morality, with some 1,200 people being killed – including many young people attending a music festival, as well as children, women and elderly people in several civilian communities in the region – and 251 hostages being taken, of whom 97 are still being held one year later. While understanding the long history of occupation and oppression that preceded these events, the WCC has condemned the attack on innocent Israeli civilians.
The enormity of Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza is shockingly unacceptable. It has exponentially compounded the violations and suffering inflicted on innocent civilians, with more than 41,700 people killed – including over 16,000 children – a further nearly 100,000 people wounded, and over 10,000 missing and presumed dead underneath the rubble, according to health authorities in the enclave. Around 1.9 million people – 90% of the population of Gaza – have been forcibly displaced from their homes, many multiple times, and almost half a million people are facing catastrophic food insecurity, while Gaza’s critical infrastructure, medical and education services, housing, economy, farmland, and fishing fleets have largely been laid to waste. Israel’s war in Gaza has made the territory unliveable, and has given rise to claims of genocide which have been judged by the International Court of Justice as plausible.
Moreover, during this period violent attacks and other violations by illegal settlers and Israeli security forces against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem have risen sharply. Extremist elements in Israeli society have, among other things, escalated their threats against and attacks on Christian communities, clergy, churches and institutions, in most cases without criminal sanction.
Israel’s war in Gaza and its violations of the sovereignty of neighbouring States have also massively amplified tensions in the wider region, resulting in increased military confrontation on multiple fronts, intensified exchanges of fire with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and for the first time directly with Iran. As a result, the toll of death, destruction and displacement is rising for yet more communities in the region. In Lebanon, the death toll from two weeks of Israeli attacks on Beirut, Bekaa and southern Lebanon is estimated to have already surpassed 2,000, and more than one million people have had to flee their homes. Israel’s ground incursion into southern Lebanon, and the missile attacks and other hostilities between Iran and Israel, now threaten an even wider conflict, setting the whole Middle East region ablaze, and compounding the existing threats to global peace and stability.
One year after the attacks of 7 October 2023, Israel and its adversaries seem locked in a deadly spiral of violence, accelerating by the day, which risks throwing the whole region into intractable conflict with profound humanitarian and security consequences for all its peoples. In this context, the already grave threats to the future presence of the indigenous Christian communities of the Holy Land are reaching an existential tipping point.
If the modern history of the Middle East teaches one clear lesson, it is that there is no path to sustainable peace through repeated cycles of armed conflict and continuing occupation and oppression, but only to increasing antagonism, hatred and extremism on all sides. The only solution is to break the cycle of violence, to refrain from more killing and destruction, and to engage in dialogue and negotiations for a peace founded on justice and equal rights for all. Israel, Iran and all conflict parties must commit immediately to a ceasefire on all fronts. Hamas must release all the remaining hostages immediately and unconditionally. Israel must release Palestinian political prisoners and move swiftly to ending its occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people in the territories occupied since 1967, and guarantee equal human rights for all people in its territory, regardless of race, religion or origin. And all members of the international community must end their complicity in sustaining conflict, occupation and oppression in the region.
The alternative is a real and present threat to the lives and future of all people in the region, and to justice, reconciliation and unity in our fragmented and fragile world.
Today, the World Council of Churches calls on all its member churches and partners, and all people of faith and good will, to pray and act for peace in the Holy Land, extending solidarity to all people affected and threatened by the escalating violence in the region, and urging all those responsible for providing and using the weapons of war to turn away from violence and towards peace. Today our prayer is that the desire for peace and justice will overcome the continued obsession with war and violence.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Matthew 5:9
Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay
General Secretary
World Council of Churches