Washington D.C., May 23, 2011 / 17:07 pm
The U.S. Catholic bishops told President Obama to act quickly if a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to work, warning that the chance for peace could be fleeting.
“If the opportunity for a two-state solution is missed,” they said in a May 20 letter, “there almost inevitably will be renewed violent conflict with more suffering for Israelis and Palestinians, and increased dangers of extremism.”
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the bishops’ international justice and peace chairman Bishop Howard J. Hubbard sent the May 20 letter to the president on behalf of the U.S. Catholic bishops.
Together with a group of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish leaders, they praised the president's “strong affirmation … that peace is possible” between Israel and the Palestinians. In a May 19 speech, President Obama called for negotiations that would establish a Palestinian state on the basis of Israel's 1967 borders, with land swaps that would be “mutually agreed-upon.”