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Tel Aviv (Reports): Pope Benedict XVI appealed
for a peaceful solution of the West Asian crisis through
the creation of a Palestinian homeland alongside the
Jewish state.
The Pope was on his first ever tour of West Asia and
Israel. Although he sought to label his trip as a
"spiritual pilgrimage," his support for a two State
solution to the decades old
 Palestinian problem has
raised eyebrows in the rightwing Israeli government.
"I pray daily for peace born of justice to return to the
Holy Land and the entire region, bringing security and
renewed hope for all," he said on Monday.
Benedict emphasised that justice
and security were inseparable concepts according to
"God's design for the world".
"Jerusalem ... is a city which affords Jews, Christians
and Muslims both the duty and the privilege to bear
witness together to the peaceful coexistence long
desired by worshippers of the one God," he said.
Afterwards, he moved on to Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust
memorial. There Benedict said that the suffering of
Holocaust victims should never be forgotten, denied or
belittled.
"[Their names] are indelibly etched in the hearts of
their loved ones, their surviving fellow prisoners and
all those determined never to allow such an atrocity to
disgrace mankind again," he said.
His comments followed a controversial move to welcome
back into the Roman Catholic church a bishop who denied
the extent of the Holocaust.
The Pope has also been criticised over the Vatican's
move to beatify Pope Pius XII - pope during the time of
the Holocaust whom many Jews blame for not speaking out
against the Nazis during the second world war. Many
Holocaust survivors are also sceptical of the Germanborn
pope's brief time in the Hitler Youth Movement.
Hamas, the Palestinian group that effectively controls
the Gaza Strip, described the visit as "misplaced"
because "it ignores the suffering of 12,000 Palestinian
detainees in the occupation jails, subjected to all
kinds of oppression, injustice, deprivation, and
torture".
Palestinians, both Christians and Muslims, have
expressed their concern about the Pope spending his
first day in West Jerusalem. They also took offence at
the Pope shaking the hand of foreign minister Lieberman,
Peres and Netanyahu all right-wing politicians who back
the recent Israeli war in Gaza that killed 1,400
Palestinians.
The Pope had a scheduled visit to Palestinian refugees
living close to where Jesus is said to have been born, a
site in the occupied West Bank all but surrounded by
Israel's separation wall.
The Vatican said the visit to the Aida refugee camp near
Bethlehem was made as an act of solidarity with the
refugees' suffering, but it must have been unpopular
with some in Israel.
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