The violence, which began on 7 October 2023 with the Hamas attacks on Israelis, marks a turning point in the 76-year-old conflict in the Holy Land.
Even now, Hamas holds more than 100 Israeli hostages, and the Palestinian victims of the disproportionate Israeli reaction exceed 30,000. Some 70 per cent of them are women and children; 60,000 are injured; there are 40,000 orphans and over 80 per cent of homes in Gaza are destroyed.
“Something inexorably broke on 7 October 2023," says the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, speaking from the Holy City. "Not only the pre-existing precarious political balances, but above all those human relations between ethnic groups, cultures and religions that we had built with difficulty over the years, and which now appear compromised."
It also amounts to an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. The Vicar of the Custos of the Holy Land, Fr Ibrahim Faltas OFM, who has just returned to Jerusalem from Italy, says: “Together with the Italian authorities, we managed to get 150 seriously injured or sick children out of Gaza. It is the most important humanitarian initiative carried out so far. I hope other European countries and Britain follow suit.”
