Today the Pope will spend the whole day in Bethlehem — in the occupied West Bank.
His visit will start with an early morning visit to Rachel’s Tomb, which is right next to Aida (Palestinian) refugee camp, but now totally surrounded by 9-meter-high concrete slabs of The Wall, guarded by Israeli Border Police and soldiers, with massive sliding metal gates on the Jerusalem and on the Bethlehem sides.
Then, the Pope will be greeted in the Bethlehem Presidential Palace by President Mahmoud Abbas and various other Palestinian Authority figures. He will visit the Church of the Nativity. And, in the afternoon, he will be received in Aida refugee camp.
Wednesday – ALL PALESTINIAN DAY
GPO schedule
08:00-19:00 Visit to Bethlehem
PA schedule
Bethlehem Wednesday, May13th,2009
08:30 Arrival to Rachel’s Tomb.
09:00 Welcome Ceremony at the Presidential Palace.
10:00 To the Manger Square/ Holy mass.
16:10 Visit to the Caritas Baby Hospital.
16:45 Visit to the Aida Refugee Camp.
17:45 Return to the Presidential Palace.
18:00 Courtesy visit to the Palestinian President.
18:40 Farewell ceremony.
This photo shows Pope Benedict XVI in Popemobile in convoy of vehicles accompanying him to Aida refugee camp, where the large key symbolizes the keys to the houses that Palestinians lost when they became refugees in 1948, during the conflict that surrounded the creation of the State of Israel.
The Aida camp committee wanted to host the Pope in a special amphitheatre it had built of stone (at a cost of some $90,000) right alongside The Wall, but the Israeli military ordered a change in those plans. The ceremonial visit was moved to the small schoolyard of an UNRWA boys school directly across the street from the amphitheatre. However, it was used to position a boy scout band who stood on the stone seats while playing music to herald the Pope’s arrival and departure. Camp residents expressed concerns that Israeli forces would come and destroy the amphitheatre after the Pope’s visit.
During his visit to Aida, the Pope was given a special gift of an embroidered scarf, which he immediately put around his neck. The colors complemented his white clerical robes and large gold crucifix. The scarf was white, and embroidered with a pair of red eight-point Bethlehem stars, and then a pair of golden Vatican-logo keys (the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven) on one side, with a symbolic Palestinian house key — like the one on the arch over Aida camp — on the other. The woman who embroidered the scarf, Maha Saca of Bethlehem’s Palestinian Heritage Center, said she believed it was “very important for him to have with him the key of the return”.
In the photo below, the Pope, wearing his new scarf, greeting Daoud al-Azraq, the father of the longest-held or oldest (or both, the figure of twenty years was mentioned, but it wasn’t clear) Palestinian prisoner in Israel. to the right of the Pope (and mostly obscured by Daoud al-Azraq) is Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Next to Abbas is Palestinian Preime Minister Salam Fayyad. Next to Fayyad is UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd.
A close-up
Another gift that the Pope was given at Aida camp was a map of Palestine carved out of a stone the camp residents had brought down from Tiberius, “where Jesus told Saint Peter that ‘You are my rock and upon you I will build our Church’, explained Issa al-Qaraaqa, a Fateh-affiliated member of the currently dormant Palestine Legislative Council elected to represent Bethlehem. And, another gift were some actual house keys belonging to the lost homes of some of the refugee camp residents, to which they hoped to return.
AP reported that “The pontiff brought several gifts to Bethlehem, including a ventilator for a baby hospital and a mosaic representation of the birth of Jesus. He received a handwritten Gospel of Luke”. This report can be read in full here.
While at Aida refugee camp, the Pope also presented UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen Abu Zayd with a check for 70,000 Euros to reconstruct several schoolrooms in the camp.
In addition, the Pope was presented with letters written by one young (Muslim) girl from the Palestinian refugee camp, both of whose parents have been jailed by Israel for the past eight years, and from two (Christian) sisters from the Bethlehem suburb Beit Sahour (where shepherds first spotted the unusually bright Christmas star at the time of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem just over two thousands years ago, whose father is detained by Israel. This was apparently arranged by the Vatican with Palestinian prompting, to balance the Pope’s meeting a few days ago in Jerusalem with the parents of IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was seized at the Gaza border in June 2006 and is apparently still being held somewhere in Gaza.
And, the Pope was presented with letters from some of the several dozen Palestinians who were deported from Bethlehem in 2002 — some to Gaza, others to various places in Europe — to defuse a stand-off after some Palestinian gunmen had sought refugee in the Church of the Nativity during a futile attempt at resistance to a massive IDF incursion aimed at stopping gunfire from the Bethlehem suburb of Beit Jala to the neighboring settlement of Gilo. An Egyptian-born Franciscan priest, Father Ibrahim Faltas, who reluctantly became the negotiator of the arrangement that ended the IDF seige of the Church of the Nativity, is now head of the Roman Catholic parish in Jerusalem, and he was present during the Pope’s visit to Bethlehem on Wednesday.
The Pope had started his day with Palestinians in Bethlehem by making an appeal, at the Presidential Palace welcoming ceremony, to “the many young people throughout the Palestinian Territories today: do not allow the loss of life and the destruction that you have witnessed to arouse bitterness or resentment in your hearts”. The Pope then added: “Have the courage to resist any temptation you may feel to resort to acts of violence or terrorism”.
It was the Pope’s only direct mention of terrorism so far during his present trip.
By contrast, during his time in public with Israeli officials and Israeli audiences, the Pope has not, for example, spoken out against the government policy of targetted killings of Palestinians, nor against some of the harsh military strategies adopted during the IDF’s recent Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.
Nor, for that matter, has the Pope so far mentioned, during his current trip, the indiscriminate firing of rockets, mortars and missiles from Gaza onto nearby Israeli territory.
At the end of the day, the Pope returned to the Presidential Palace in Bethlehem, for a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and with representatives of Palestinian Christians from the West Bank and a delegation of some 93 Christians who were finally granted Israeli permits to leave Gaza to meet the Pope. Participants later reported that Dr. Eissa Tarazi (Head of the Council of Arab Orthodox Christians in Gaza) made a vivid presentation of Gaza’s suffering over the past two years, including the recent military operation in Gaza, and the debilitating effects of an Israeli-imposed blockade that includes severe economic sanctions. But, those present say, the Pope did not react. He just listened.
At that meeting, which was the last scheduled event in a long day for the Pope and everyone else in Bethlehem, the Pope was presented with a carved olive-wood model of a Christmas nativity scene, complete with the Holy Family, the animals in the manger, the Beit Sahour shepherds, the three Kings — updated by The Wall and the 9-meter-high concrete cylindrical IDF military control watchtowers.
In one of the more symbolically-significant parts of the Pope’s visit, he entered and left through a huge sliding metal gate that is part of the concrete structure of The Wall at the entrance to Bethlehem. This made it possible for the Pope to avoid going through the inspections at the main checkpoint. But, for Palestinian officials in Bethlehem, such openings in The Wall are extremely rare. “Only the Pope has opened The Wall”, one said, while watching the Pope’s unusual transit on a live video transmission in a media unit in the Bethelehm Presidential Palace. But, he added, “unfortunately it is only for a few minutes, and then The Wall is quickly closed again”.
The Israeli media has concentrated on the Pope’s remarks against The Wall.
In the Aida refugee camp, the Pope said that “Towering over us, as we gather here this afternoon, is a stark reminder of the stalemate that relations between Israelis and Palestinians seem to have reached – the wall. In a world where more and more borders are being opened up – to trade, to travel, to movement of peoples, to cultural exchanges – it is tragic to see walls still being erected.”
Later, the Pope stated that walls do not last forever, and can also be torn down. But first, he said, “it is necessary to remove the walls that we build around our hearts”.
Palestinian President Abbas said earlier, in his speech welcoming the Pope in the morning, that “In this Holy Land, the occupation still continues building separation walls, instead of building the bridge that can link us. They are using the force of occupation to force Muslims and Christians to emigrate.”
The Pope has referred only very indirectly to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made a number of calls during the day for an end to the Israeli occupation.
The occupation was also cited by frazzled officials in the Palestinian President’s media office, as tempers flared, in explanation for some of the organizational and logistical problems, and security excesses, that hindered journalists’ promised access to various appearances of the Pope during the day.
