Pope urged to use visit to pressure Israel into false peace plan

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By Stan Goodenough
May 01, 2009

Hopes are soaring among Israel's enemies that Pope Benedict XVI will use his imminent visit to Israel to further pressure the Netanyahu government to surrender historical Jewish lands.

The leader of the world's two billion Roman Catholics is scheduled to visit Israel and the "occupied territories" from May 8 to 15.

Local Muslim, Catholic, Protestant and Jewish leaders Thursday met in the capital, according to The Jerusalem Post, to lay out their expectations of the pontiff.

Head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and "the Holy Land," Bishop Munib Younan, wants the pope to support a two-state solution and reject "occupation and settlements."

While Israel's security "is important to us," Younan insisted, "it depends on a just treatment of the Palestinian people."

This "just treatment" is universally held to be the surrender of Israel's biblical heartland for the creation of a Palestinian state.

Israel's 3000-year-old capital, "Jerusalem, should be a city shared by all religions and serve as a model of peaceful religious coexistence," Younan continued.

The founder of Wasatia a new organization claiming to "promote peace," said that "extremists have taken power on both [the Israeli and Palestinian] sides."

Mohammed Dejani said that "religion should lead politics, not the other way around.

"The pope should take the initiative in this endeavor," he said.

Sponsors of this interfaith event were named by the Post as the US State Department; Mercy Corps, a nondenominational Portland, Oregon-based aid organization; and the Interreligious Coordination Council in Israel, a coalition of 70 Christian, Muslim and Jewish groups.

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