Search results

As a year of exceptional and increasing conflict draws to a close, and as we pray for peace for all in 2024, “that prospect seems nowhere more remote than for the suffering and traumatized people of Gaza,” said World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay. 

Ministering to the needs of displaced people, most of them south of Gaza, the Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees of the Middle East Council of Churches has a clear message to the world. 

The World Council of Churches (WCC) supports a UN resolution, passed on 12 December 2023, demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. 

The World Council of Churches (WCC) executive committee, meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, on 8-14 November, released a statement that demands an immediate ceasefire, and the opening of humanitarian corridors in Palestine and Israel. 

The World Council of Churches (WCC) is standing in solidarity with the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which issued a statement on 31 October condemning the Israeli military’s bombardment of the Orthodox Cultural Center in the Tel Al Hawa neighborhood of Gaza.

Church leaders in the Holy Land are raising their voices in unity to call for the cessation of all violent and military activities that bring harm to both Palestinian and Israeli civilians.

A World Council of Churches (WCC) delegation led by WCC acting general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca visited Jerusalem and the West Bank from 14-17 July, meeting with patriarchs and heads of Christian communities as well as local clergy and laity.

On 8 May, the WCC, Middle East Council of Churches, and ACT Alliance released a message expressing deep concern over the latest hostilities in the Gaza Strip, describing the present situation as “morally and ethically untenable.” Last weekend, the region near the Israel-Gaza border saw the most intense escalation of violence since the 2014 war.

After a visit to Israel and Palestine on 21 February through 1 March, a delegation of South African and African-American church leaders, released a Group Pilgrimage Statement on Israel and Palestine.

The fellowship and unity that Jesus’ disciples once experienced praying together during a time of fear in Jerusalem at Pentecost “spelled a new beginning” for the mission of the Church, the general secretary of the WCC has reminded Christians worldwide from the Holy Land.

Every morning a cheerful and articulate man arrives at his office in East Jerusalem with at least a grain of hope. Dr Bernard Sabella has devoted his entire life to the rights of the Palestinian people. In his job as the executive director of Department of Services to Palestinian Refugees, he encounters issues concerning the Palestinian-Israeli relationship daily.

For Hind Khoury the issue of water justice is quite simple. She believes there is no water justice in Palestine because access to clean water for drinking and sanitation exists in Israel but not in the Palestinian territories it occupies.

Addressing a Council for World Mission Theological Colloquium in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, the head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land and president of the Lutheran World Federation affirmed the “need of a spirituality that helps us remain steadfast, that gives us the courage to act not with hatred and revenge, but in the pursuit of peace based on justice”.

The recent air strikes by Israel on the Gaza Strip have crippled the water distribution system. Dinesh Suna, coordinator of the Ecumenical Water Network of the WCC, shares that an already challenging water situation in Gaza has recently worsened because of the violence, threatening the fundamental human right to water and sanitation.

Expressing grave concern over the escalation of military operations in Gaza, the WCC general secretary said, “Hostilities must cease. Israel, Palestine and the surrounding region must be offered the hope of peace: a peace based in justice, a lasting peace that may lead toward reconciliation”.

Attacks by the Israeli military on the civilian population in Gaza, as well as firing of rockets by militants from Gaza to Israel, were strongly condemned by the WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit.

APRODEV, an association of European development agencies related to the World Council of Churches, has urged the European Union to develop a long-term strategy to reconnect Gaza to the West Bank.