I make an appeal to the two governments and the international community, and I beg them to find alternate routes that involve dialogue and a sincere search for peace right away, without wasting any time.

Good luck with that, your holiness. I wish God on your side for that one.

And so by uttering the magic words, the pope had once again brought peace to the hearts. A time of peace is upon us.

I'm JK. Don't get me wrong. Religious leaders speaking against war and hatred is very important and welcome imo

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When one sides official government chants are death to Israel it’s really hard to envision any real peace talk.

Oh yes, the leader of an outside religion wants to tell two different religions what to do.

Surely his words have weight there!

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As my Grandad said

"They've been at it for over 2000 years, and probably another 2000 to come"

Your grandad needs to learn history then.

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Well he's been dead for years so I doubt it!

touche

Talk to who? even if you offered prosperity, quality of life and peace to the Palestinians, they wouldn't take it as long as Israel is still a thing..

Pope should stay in church if he doesn't understand the situation.

I just went to Israel a few months ago. I sat down with a lieutenant colonel from the army (retired and now a tour guide) and asked him open ended questions about the situation without responding (just a lot of 'oh wow, our news doesn't say that' and the like).

He said a bunch of interesting things all related to wanting peace, but the two that stuck the most to me were:

1. the Palestinians come to the table with demands that will never be met, like asking every single Jew in Jerusalem to leave their homes. Some have been there for so long now that they would never leave their homes.

2. whoever actually is able to make a deal with the Palestinians will likely be assassinated or have a number of attempts on their life. So it will only happen if Israel has a very strong leader in place to make those tough decisions.

100% this! People who have never been to the region will never understand the complexity of the situation. And it absolutely kills me that our educational system is allowing BDS to be an actual thing. Those who support BDS can’t grasp the concept that Hamas’s (the ruling party) convent literally states that "our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious" and calls for the eventual creation of an Islamic state in Palestine, in place of Israel and the Palestinian Territories,[3] and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel.[4][5] It emphasizes the importance of jihad, stating in article 13, "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.”

And sadly they aren’t even the most extreme group in the Palestinian Territories

I mean as an American I was unaware of the nuance. Like how they won't stamp your passport.

Why? Because when we went to Jordan the border crossing agents "won't accept a defaced passport with a stamp from a made-up control like Israel."

Literally what they told us at the border. My wife and I love getting stamps in our passports and they refused.

Wasn’t rabin assassinated for formulating a peace plan that was accepted by the PLO

Several thousand years late on that call.

Yes, that was his example of why he believed that. I'm historically that would be expected.

Also kind of hard for even genuine dialogue between the governments to resolve things when the Palestinian governments don't really have any legitimacy, Abbas is 18 years into a 4 year term as president and refuses to hold elections, and Hamas rules Gaza as a weird quasi-government in exile despite winning the most recent Palestinian elections.

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