Politics and the pope

Pope Benedict XVI set out on a spiritual pilgrimage to the Holy Land but quickly encountered an earthly reality: Politics are inescapable in the contested lands that gave birth to Judaism, Islam and Christianity. While the pontiff’s speeches are laced with appeals for unity and hope, his divided audiences hear language that is too tepid for their taste -- or too strong, depending on the camp. He preaches peace in an embattled terrain and compassion to those who are in no mood to compromise.

Israelis and Palestinians deserve “peace in a homeland of their own, within secure and internationally recognized borders,” Benedict said on his arrival. He was simply reiterating Vatican support for a two-state solution that Israel and the Palestinians once embraced. Today, the new government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apparently no longer does, and the Palestinian leadership is divided. Israel’s chief rabbis responded later that Benedict should spread the message that the Jewish people deserve to live in the land of Israel.

A religious interfaith dialogue at Notre Dame Church in Israel on Monday broke down when Palestinian cleric and chief of the Islamic courts Taysir Tamimi seized the microphone to tell Benedict that he must press Israel to halt its aggression against Palestinians in Gaza. “I call on you in the name of the one God to condemn these crimes,” Tamimi said. And, as history is never far from the present in the Holy Land, he reminded the pope that the Muslim sultan Saladin, the 12th century ruler who recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders, upheld religious freedom for Catholics.

The pope hastily left the forum. The chief rabbinate said it would boycott the rest of the event if Tamimi remained. And so it has gone.

Benedict had hoped to repair the Catholic Church’s relations with Muslims and Jews, damaged when he gave a speech linking the prophet Muhammad to violence and lifted the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop. Still, many Israelis felt that his commemoration of Holocaust victims fell short, and Palestinians sought a fuller condemnation of the Israeli occupation of lands captured in 1967. Meanwhile, during a special Mass at Gethsemane Church, beneath the Mount of Olives, Benedict sought to reassure Christians, who have been fleeing their ancient communities in droves, that there is “room for everyone” in the Holy Land.

Things don’t promise to get any easier for the pope today. He is scheduled to visit a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, which is cut off from Jerusalem now by a cement and metal barrier -- a monument to the difficulties of reconciliation in the Holy Land.