The Pope has attacked Israel's plans to evacuate Gaza City by force

[Celerity]

https://www.thetimes.com/world/middle-east/israel-hamas-war/article/pope-leo-gaza-idf-chgw7gxs8

https://archive.ph/TvvLU



The Pope has attacked Israel’s plans to evacuate Gaza City by force as Catholic priests and nuns caring for the sick in the war zone refused to leave and the UN secretary-general condemned the “endless catalogue of horrors”. Speaking at the Vatican, Leo criticised the “forced displacement” of Gazan residents after Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said that evacuation was key to rescuing the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas. “I beg for a permanent ceasefire to be reached, the safe entry of humanitarian aid to be facilitated and humanitarian law to be fully respected,” the Pope said, adding that international law banned “collective punishment”.

António Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, also warned of potential war crimes. Israel’s planned offensive is predicated on about half of Gaza’s 2.1 million population moving south from its biggest urban areas. “Gaza is piled with rubble, piled with bodies and piled with examples of what may be serious violations of international law,” Guterres told journalists in New York. “Expanded military operations in Gaza City will have devastating consequences. Hundreds of thousands of civilians — already exhausted and traumatised — would be forced to flee yet again, plunging families into even deeper peril. This must stop.”

Referring to two airstrikes this week on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis this week, which killed civilians including medical personnel and journalists, Guterres said: “These attacks are part of an endless catalogue of horrors.” The Pope cited a statement this week from the Latin and Greek Orthodox patriarchs of Jerusalem, who said that sick and frail Palestinians in two Gaza City churches would not survive being moved. The Catholic cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa and the Orthodox patriarch Theophilos III said: “Among those who have sought shelter within the walls of the compounds, many are weakened and malnourished due to the hardships of the last months. Leaving Gaza City and trying to flee to the south would be nothing less than a death sentence.”



The Holy Family Catholic church and the Saint Porphyrius Orthodox church were in the firing line as the Israeli government carried out its threat to open “the gates of hell” in Gaza City, the two men said. “Like other residents of Gaza City, the refugees living in the facilities will have to decide according to their conscience what they will do,” they added. “The clergy and nuns have decided to remain and continue to care for all those who will be in the compounds.”

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[GreenWave]

1. The latter day Trail of Tears is underway.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. No longer "plans to evacuate Gaza City by force" - they've now declared it a combat zone

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/aug/29/gaza-famine-israel-middle-east-lastest-news-updates?CMP=share_btn_url&page=with%3Ablock-68b171508f086501e3d99cb2#block-68b171508f086501e3d99cb2

So anyone who hadn't got out already is going to be under fire, with no supplies coming in.

[AloeVera]

6. Murderers.

The Most Murdering Moral Army in the world.

[Omnipresent]

3. This is really a no win situation for Israel.

The nation of Israel is giving birth to future terrorist. Why do i say this?
Because terrorist in the middle east don’t give a shit about any fellow muslum lives lost, as long as they meet their objective of killing jews.
Violence will return to Israel, as sure as the sun rises in the east.

[tanyev]

4. And any luxury resorts built in Gaza are bound to be targets, too.

[AloeVera]

8. Very interesting.

Palestinians are being terrorized, slaughtered and starved. At the present time a million weak and starved people, elderly, babies, young children, disabled, wounded are being hounded out under gunfire and bombs from their last homes in Gaza. Soon the last operating hospital in Gaza will lie in ruins, its patients dispersed to the streets or left dying once again.

Yet thoughts turn not to the suffering so cruelly and viciously inflicted on Palestinians, but to Israel's "security" in the future. The very state slaughtering and ethnically cleansing its Arab/Muslim natives and neighbours since 1948. the true terrorists of the Middle East.

Because Israel doesn't give a shit about any fellow human lives lost as long as it meets its objective of creating Greater Israel for its increasingly messianic people.

The violence could have been stopped but Israel chose its path under Likud and its "from the river to the sea" (paraphrasing from the Likud Charter) denial of Palestinian self-determination.

[David__77]

5. Hopefully Israel doesn't respond with more church bombings.

The Pope is right to refer to “collective punishment”.