Pope Francis continues to be far more willing to challenge the status quo than his predecessors. This time on the Occupied West Bank as he sopke in about ending the long festering conflict at the barrier between Israelis living in fear of violent attacks and Palestinians living under a virtually permanent Apartheid occupation regime.
Pope Francis offers prayers at Israeli separation wall in Bethlehem
Stop rouses controversy as pontiff invites Peres and Abbas to Rome in unprecedented papal intervention in peace process
By Peter Beaumont
It is an image that will define Pope Francis's first official visit to the Holy Land. Head bowed in prayer, the leader of the Catholic church pressed his palm against the graffiti-covered concrete of Israel's imposing "separation wall", a Palestinian girl holding a flag by his side. It was, as his aides conceded later, a silent statement against a symbol of division and conflict.
The powerful gesture was made minutes after an appeal to both sides to end a conflict that the pope said was "increasingly unacceptable". The unscheduled, conspicuous stop halfway through his three-day visit to the Holy Land – made en route to an open-air mass in Manger Square, Bethlehem – confirmed Francis's reputation for determined independence.
So too did his invitation to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and Israeli president, Shimon Peres, to join him in Rome to meet and pray together for peace – an unprecedented papal intervention in the stalled peace process.
The pope's scheduled route took him alongside the wall, near Rachel's Tomb outside Bethlehem. His decision to step out of his white, open-sided popemobile and approach it – just days after the Vatican insisted his visit would not be controversial – was a surprise, not least for members of his own entourage.
Surrounded by Palestinian children, Francis's progress towards the concrete barrier was followed carefully by photographers and television cameras, as well as Israeli soldiers revealed in silhouette at the window of a nearby watchtower. "I know all about this," he is reported to have told one Palestinian official.
Since the vast majority of West Bank Palestinians have lived their entire lives under Israeli rule, can we still go on calling it a temporary occupation?