(May 08, 2013) A U.S. bishop is upset with Israel's decision to build a separation
barrier along a route that will nearly surround a convent and its primary school and
confiscate most of their land on the outskirts of a Palestinian West Bank community.
Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines, Iowa, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops' Committee on International Justice and Peace, protested the Israeli plan
to build the barrier near Beit Jalla in a May 6 letter to Secretary of State John
Kerry. In solidarity with our brother bishops in the Holy Land, we oppose rerouting
the separation wall in the Cremisan Valley," the letter said, referencing arguments
that Holy Land bishops made to the Israeli government in a letter opposing the barrier.
The barrier's route will separate a Salesian monastery from a Salesian convent
and surround both on three sides while separating both from land they own. It would
also cut off 58 Christian families from agricultural and recreational land they own,
hurting their livelihood, Bishop Pates said. Bishop Pates urged Kerry to address
the concerns raised by Jerusalem's Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal, who reminded "Israeli
decision-makers that the expropriation of lands does not serve the cause of peace."
CNS