The incoming Biden administration will need to rebuild trust with the Christian community in Israel after years in which Palestinians have felt shunted aside by the US mideast policy, according to the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa.
“We will wait and see how the new administration in the United States is,” Pizzaballa said to reporters in an online news conference on Tuesday, adding that “it will be hard to rebuild trust, because the Palestinians felt betrayed by the previous administration.”
Pizzaballa, who was named Patriarch by Pope Francis in October, is the spiritual leader of roughly 290,000 Latin rite Catholics in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan and Cyprus.
Christians are “a very small presence in a very large territory”, the prelate explained in his speech, while noting that they make their presence known in charitable works and as a mediator between Muslims and Jews in the region.
President Donald Trump has made numerous shows of support to Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and replaced the goal of a “two-state solution” – a long-held diplomatic doctrine that envisioned an independent Palestinian nation – with a proposed “vision for peace” that some considered unfairly weighted against the Palestinian demands.
Trump’s decision to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem became a symbol of his administration’s disregard for Palestinian hopes.
“I think the new administration in the United States is completely different from the previous one in terms of narrative and language,” Pizzaballa said, referring to a speech Monday by President-elect Joe Biden in which he invited the US “to turn the page” and quoted a prayer attributed to St Francis of Assisi.
Read the article by Claire Giangrave (Vatican City) in Sight Magazine.