Your suffering breaks my heart: Charles’s peace cry in Bethlehem
PRINCE Charles spoke of Palestinian ‘freedom and justice’ yesterday – as the US prepared a peace plan thought to favour Israel.
Donald Trump’s Middle
East initiative is intended to finally resolve the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.
However, it is believed to grant
Israel more territory, as well as other concessions.
On his first visit to the Palestinian Occupied Territories, Charles addressed a reception in Bethlehem celebrating the ties between the region and Britain, saying: ‘I have endeavoured to build bridges between different religions so that we might learn from each other and be stronger together as a result. It breaks my heart, therefore, that we should continue to see so much suffering and division. No one arriving in Bethlehem today could miss the signs of continued hardship and the situation you face.
‘And I can only join you, and all communities, in your prayers for a just and lasting peace.
‘We must pursue this cause with faith and determination, striving to heal the wounds which have caused such pain. It is my dearest wish that the future will bring freedom, justice and equality to all Palestinians, enabling you to thrive and prosper.’
He began his historic visit to the West Bank with a symbolic gesture of unity by walking through Bethlehem with Muslim and Christian leaders from the Mosque of Omar to the Church of the Nativity, said to be built on the site of Jesus’s birth.
The governor of Bethlehem, Kamel Hmeid, told Charles how Christians and Muslims lived as neighbours successfully for centuries after Jerusalem was conquered by Caliph Omar in 637AD. Charles said the message of religious co-existence was a ‘wonderful example’.
The prince was on the second day of a 48-hour tour in the Middle East. The trip is significant because the Queen has never made an official visit to Israel or Palestinian territories. In Jerusalem on Thursday, Charles warned ‘hatred and intolerance still lurk in the human heart’ as he helped mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the AuschwitzBirkenau Nazi death camp.