“The Pope enters Gaza”, the appeal of the Palestinian ambassador to Italy

“Political action is now needed from Italy”

In Rome since September, “three months that feel like seven years” due to her intense work at Italian institutions and in various cities to promote support for her people, the ambassador recognized that “Italy has done a lot both in the humanitarian field and in terms of diplomatic efforts, for a better future for the Palestinians”. Now, he underlined, “the political aspect that the Palestinians care about” is important. Because “instead of treating the symptoms, the disease must be treated, the cause at the root of the evils that the Palestinians are suffering. This cause is enforce international lawthe values ​​and principles that the international community promotes and which should be respected without exception”.

“Italy, as a friendly country of Israel, must push it to open its borders to allow aid to enter“, but “there are many tools that Italy already approves and must implement”, underlines the ambassador. These are the “sanctions, not only the sanctions against the illegal terrorist settler individual who hit a Palestinian citizen, but against a system where Israeli ministers supply weapons to terrorist settlers“. Therefore, we need “the political will to implement tools that already exist”, declared Abuamara. In addition to measures against armed settlers, the ambassador cited “the sanctions against products coming from the colonies” which are “illegal, a theft of Palestinian land.”

The appeal to Leo XIV

Pope Leo At the same time “it would demonstrate that Netanyahu’s statement, according to which there is a religious war underway, is just propaganda”. Because “Christian communities are an integral part of the Palestinian social fabric”.

A possible visit by the Pontiff to Gaza would also be important because “for the first time Israel would allow someone to enter the Strip, it would open the doors of hell of devastation where neither journalists nor human rights associations are allowed to enter”, states the ambassador. “It would give the Palestinian population great hope, it would show them that the world has not forgotten them”, continues Abuamara, according to whom the Pope’s visit to Gaza would ‘expose’ Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister “hides behind religious war propaganda and behind Jewish communities around the world to actually do land acquisition work that has nothing to do with religion,” he adds.

The accusation against Israel: “It doesn’t want peace but to finish the job”

As for the peace plan, “I don’t think Israel wants the second phase” of the agreement, says the Palestinian ambassador, “Israel has never stopped killingrather he wants to ‘finish the job’, go ahead with the genocide. He is just waiting for an excuse, for something to happen in the West Bank, to carry out an acceleration. Israel doesn’t care about peace, it doesn’t want a two-state solution, it doesn’t want a Palestinian state close to itself,” he says.

Instead, it is up to the “international community to ask Israel to open its borders to allow aid to enter, to push for Israel to leave Gaza and to protect the Palestinians’ right to self-determination”.

And dubs are Trump

As for the role of US President Donald Trump and his decision to prevent entry into the United States to those in possession of a document issued by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), Abuamara asks: “How is it possible that a man who includes Palestine in his peace plan, and who presents himself as a person of peace, then does not want to value the Palestinians, so much so that he wants to keep them out of his country”?

”It is an ‘unfortunate’ decision that cannot be understood and I hope it will be cancelled”, added the ambassador, maintaining that ”this only confirms the fact that the decisions taken by Trump so far are only in the interests of Israel and the United States and they don’t take the Palestinians into consideration”.

The EU double standard

As for the European Union, Mona Abuamara highlights the double standard applied by Europe regarding the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. “If we react differently when faced with injustice” and “if international law does not apply to everyone”, then “justice appears partial” and “interests and questions of power” prevail while “Palestinian lives seem to be worth less than those of others against whom different measures are adopted”, says the Palestinian ambassador speaking of the financial aid approved by the European Council for Ukrainewith a loan of 90 billion until 2027, and on the possibility of a similar model to help the Palestinians. In this context, the ambassador recalls: “We are very grateful to the efforts made by Italy for the funds allocated for the reconstruction of Gaza, but to proceed it is necessary for Israel to withdraw” from the Palestinian enclave.

Furthermore, Abuamara points out, “Israel must pay for the violations of international law committed and for reconstruction” of the Gaza Strip, because “if it is always the rest of the world who pays and it is always Israel who destroys without paying the consequences, Israel will always be led to carry on with its own atrocities and destruction. So It’s time for Israel to pay for what it does“.

“Defending the Palestinians is not anti-Semitism”

As for the accusations of anti-Semitism against pro-PAL groups, the ambassador notes that “there is a clear and dangerous equation between the struggle for the liberation of the Palestinian people and anti-Semitismwhich cannot be accepted, is a slippery and dangerous terrain for everyone”, states Mona Abuamara. She, who worked on the issue of anti-Semitism when she was ambassador to Canada also with an Association of Independent Jewish Voices, explained that “it seems that to defend the well-being of some you can trample on the well-being of others”, that is, “defending the well-being of the Palestinians seems to mean being anti-Semitic, damaging the well-being of the Jewish people”. Furthermore, Abuamara noted, ”it takes away the real need which is to protect from racial or religious hatred, which is a value that is trampled upon by Israel’s need to protect themselves and their policies”.

In this way, she adds, “we want to make the current situation of occupation and apartheid persist by criminalizing the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people”. The ambassador’s hope is that “the issue will be studied better because these definitions are dangerous, they discourage people from carrying out certain initiatives, from writing articles, doing research, also because, even if there are no legal actions, there is still the threat” which leads to “preventive censorship”.