Johnathan Paoli
THE South African Council of Churches (SACC) has called upon the international community to intensify its stance and actions against the conflict taking place in the Gaza region.
A delegation of religious leaders returned to the country on Thursday after spending a little over a week in Palestine.
This follows a group of SA’s Christian leaders participation in a global delegation that spent Christmas in Bethlehem in solidarity with Palestinian Christians from the conflict-ridden region.
Struggle veteran and cleric Reverend Frank Chikane led the delegation to the Palestinian town, south of Jerusalem in the West Bank, and included a meeting with released Palestinian prisoners and families of Israeli hostages.
The delegation included the SACC GS Malusi Mpumlwana, Council of African Independent Churches Archbishop GS Thami Ngcana as well as delegates from the Anglican and Dutch Reformed churches.
The trip was organised by Kairos Southern Africa in collaboration with Kairos Palestine, traveling via Amman, Jordan and arrived on Wednesday 20 December.
In a press conference at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport, Chikane expressed his shock at conditions in the area, and said that his travel was consistently interrupted due to the requirement of different licence plates in different areas of the city.
Chikane said that he had witnessed clear signs of human rights abuse, following the violent strip search of one of the members of the delegation.
SG Mpumlwana called on the vital importance of peace in the area and said that the conflict included a substantial number of Christian Palestinians and not only Muslims.
“It was our purpose to call on the various communities of the world to act on the pain of collective punishment which means the characterisation of ethnic cleansing and genocide,” Mpumlwana said.
The Hamas-run Gaza Strip’s health ministry said on Wednesday that the death toll from the war with Israel had surged above 21 000, about two thirds of them women and children, with a further 1.9 million Palestinians having been displaced.
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