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Pope Leo XIV courageously returned to the suffering of Palestinians in the West Bank this week, even as MAGA figures in the United States and Israeli voices attack him for doing it. He keeps speaking a basic moral truth: people have the right to live in peace without others ravaging their homes and communities.
“I renew my appeal for an end to the ongoing violence against the Palestinian civilian population in the West Bank,” he said during his Angelus on Sunday, “and I urgently call on the international community to work toward advancing the two-state solution, for a just and lasting peace.”
He was speaking a week into the siege of Qusra, a village south of Nablus where Israeli settlers had blocked three Palestinian homes with piles of stone and pitched a tent between them, having cut the water and electricity to those houses back in July.
Fifteen people are trapped there, including two children. Notably, one of the families is Palestinian American. This is much closer to home than many Americans want to admit. I hope an American pope can raise the alarm in ways others cannot.
Loui Ridi, who runs a chain of gas stations in Toledo, Ohio, flew in and reached the house on Monday, where he climbed the stairs and raised an American flag over the roof.
Soldiers had cleared the settler encampment by then, though Ridi counted at least three men still near enough to come back if the army pulls out. “If I need to walk outside of my house, I’m not able,” he told the Associated Press. “I have to get a permission and coordination.”
The MAGA pushback arrived within hours.
