The Politics Behind Francis Canonizing Two Long Deceased Palestinian Nuns

Pope Francis can­on­ized two Palestinian Nuns to the cha­grin of Zionist Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Marie Alphonsine Ghattas – to be known as St Marie Alphonsine – was born in Jerusalem and ded­i­cat­ed her life to women’s edu­ca­tion and left behind a net­work of con­vents, schools and reli­gious cen­tres, known as the Rosary Sisters. She died, aged 80, in British Mandate Palestine in 1927. Mariam Bauardy Haddad, was born in the vil­lage of Ibillin in what is now Israel’s Galilee region in 1846 and died in Bethlehem in1878. She estab­lished a Carmelite con­vent in Bethlehem which still exists today.

The Vatican con­firmed it had con­clud­ed a treaty which effec­tive­ly recog­nis­es Palestinian state­hood, prompt­ing crit­i­cism from Israel, which says such recog­ni­tion pre­empts essen­tial peace negotiations.
Only there are no peace nego­ti­a­tions. On the eve of the March 17^th Israeli Elections, Netanyahu out-right­ly stat­ed there would be no Palestinian state on his watch.
Former President Jimmy Carter a tire­less cam­paign­er for peace, dur­ing and since leav­ing office has long dis­missed the war­mon­ger­ing Netanyahu as a viable part­ner for peace.
As far as Netanyahu is con­cerned the Palestinian peo­ple should hang in lim­bo for­ev­er with­out a homeland.
Both women have been can­on­ized in hon­or of mir­a­cles said to have been attrib­uted to prayers made to them after their deaths. Some prac­tices of the Christian church con­tin­ue to defy log­ic, com­mon sense, or the­o­log­i­cal precedence.
Informed peo­ple today know the dead has no pow­er to answer prayers or do any­thing else for that mat­ter. Benjamin Netanyahu knows this, so does Pope Francis. So lets dis­pense with the fairy-tales and deal with the politics.

Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinians must know that hav­ing this Pope on their side means poten­tial­ly hav­ing rough­ly 1.1 bil­lion Catholics sym­pa­thet­ic to their cause with anoth­er 14 mil­lion con­verts annually.
Going to the Vatican as a path to State-hood , sym­bol­ic or not, is a shrewd tac­ti­cal move by Abbas and the Palestinians . This move caus­es Netanyahu a great deal of con­ster­na­tion and heart-burn.
In response to the Vatican’s Treaty rec­og­niz­ing Palestinian Statehood, Benjamin Netanyahu said Jerusalem has his­tor­i­cal­ly only been the cap­i­tal of the Jewish peo­ple, and so it will remain, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Sunday at the gov­ern­men­t’s offi­cial Jerusalem Day Ceremony at Ammunition Hill.
Jerusalem is also cen­tral to the Palestinians accord­ing to the ADL. For the Palestinians, Jerusalem, or al-Quds, will be the cap­i­tal of the future Palestinian state, bas­ing their claim on reli­gion, his­to­ry and their demo­graph­ic pres­ence in the city.
Palestinians point to their large, long pres­ence in Jerusalem, which cur­rent­ly con­sti­tutes 30 per­cent of the city’s pop­u­la­tion. Religiously, Palestinians lay claim to Muslim holy sites (in con­flict with Jordanian claims), as well as those holy to Palestinian Christians.

Based on these two dia­met­ri­cal­ly oppos­ing per­spec­tives there will be no meet­ing of the minds between Israelis and Palestinians unless some­one changes their mind.
In the mean­time Israel is rapid­ly build­ing more and more set­tle­ments against the wish­es of even their great­est backer and bene­fac­tor the United States and some European countries.
Of course Netanyahu’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the land-grab is that any space left by Israel will be filled by rad­i­cal Islam, backed by Iran.
Using the term Radical Islam, effec­tive­ly reduces every Palestinian man ‚woman and child to a Terrorist which must be con­tained and terminated.
Ironically, the rea­son the Palestinians are using crude weapons to fight against Israel’s mighty 21^st cen­tu­ry mil­i­tary, is exact­ly because of Israel’s occu­pa­tion and con­tin­ued annex­a­tion of their land since 1947.

The European Union which most­ly con­sists of right-wing Governments with the excep­tion of France and a few oth­ers post­poned a vote to rec­og­nize Palestine as a state late last year. Pressure from their oppo­si­tions forced their hand after Sweden vot­ed to rec­og­nize Palestine as a state. Lawmakers failed to reach a con­sen­sus on the exact word­ing of the motion, sources in Israel and Europe said.
Though buoyed by the post­pone­ment Netanyahu blast­ed the Swedes stat­ing quote.  “This is what is going to pro­duce peace? To ask Israel to put the sub­urbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in the hands of Islamic mil­i­tants? This is irre­spon­si­ble. It’s not con­ducive to peace,”.

Israel’s ambas­sador to the UN, Ron Prosor, launched a bit­ter attack against Europe for sup­port­ing uni­lat­er­al Palestinian state­hood. “Israel is tired of hol­low promis­es from European lead­ers,” he told del­e­gates the UN General Assembly dur­ing a dis­cus­sion on the Palestinian ques­tion. “The Jewish peo­ple have a long mem­o­ry. We will nev­er ever for­get that you failed us in the 1940s. You failed us in 1973. And you are fail­ing us again today.”

Every European par­lia­ment vot­ing to rec­og­nize a Palestinian state “is giv­ing the Palestinians exact­ly what they want — state­hood with­out peace,” he said. “By hand­ing them a state on a sil­ver plat­ter, you are reward­ing uni­lat­er­al actions and tak­ing away any incen­tive for the Palestinians to nego­ti­ate or com­pro­mise or renounce vio­lence. You are send­ing the mes­sage that the Palestinian Authority can sit in a gov­ern­ment with ter­ror­ists and incite vio­lence against Israel with­out pay­ing any price.”

In an usu­al­ly harsh tirade, Prosor lam­bast­ed Sweden for hav­ing rec­og­nized a Palestinian state. “The Swedish gov­ern­ment may host the Nobel Prize cer­e­mo­ny, but there is noth­ing noble about their cyn­i­cal polit­i­cal cam­paign to appease the Arabs in order to get a seat on the Security Council,” he said. Stockholm has shown “no sense, no sen­si­tiv­i­ty and no sen­si­bil­i­ty. Just non­sense,” he said.

Notwithstanding on Wednesday December 17^th 2014 the vote came on the same day as a meet­ing of sig­na­to­ries to the Geneva con­ven­tions warned that Israel must respect inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an law in the occu­pied Palestinian ter­ri­to­ries. The rare inter­na­tion­al meet­ing in Switzerland of the high con­tract­ing par­ties to the Geneva con­ven­tions was boy­cotted by Israel, the US, Canada and Australia. In a fur­ther upset for Israel, the EU’s sec­ond-high­est court ordered the removal of Hamas from a ter­ror­ist black­list, cit­ing legal prob­lems with the list­ing, though it added that the Islamist group’s assets would remain frozen for three months pend­ing an almost cer­tain appeal.

Once again the United States allowed it’s loy­al­ties to the Zionist State to trump whats right. For decades Israel strength­ened by the United States and oth­er west­ern nations, have cir­cum­vent­ed International laws which oth­er nations are required to abide by.
It is time that Israel end it’s occu­pa­tion and quit pre­tend­ing that the tram­pled Palestinian peo­ple are a real threat to it’s sov­er­eign­ty and survival.
Israel, based on the strength of it’s mon­ey and pow­er­ful friends is assured sur­vival. It is disin­gen­u­ous to per­pet­u­ate the myth that Israel’s great con­cern is Palestinian refusal to rec­og­nize it’s right to exist.
Hopefully this Vatican char­ter though not a panacea, will be one more step to full recog­ni­tion for the right of the Palestinian peo­ple to emerge from under the boots of Israel’s apartheid dominance.