Pope Francis explained the devastating consequences of the Gaza war in a speech at the Vatican on Saturday, expressing deep sadness over the bombing of children in the Gaza Strip the day before.
“This is cruelty. This is not war. I want to say this because it touches the heart,” said the prominent pontiff, who presides over 1.4 billion members of the Catholic Church around the world.
Israel described the pope's words as “disappointing”, saying that the pontiff did not notice that Israel is involved in a multi-front war that has been imposed on it.
The pope also noted that Israeli airstrikes had prevented Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the highest representative of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, from entering Gaza.
“Yesterday, the patriarch was not allowed to enter Gaza, as they promised,” he told members of the Roman Curia, the Vatican's main administration.
On Friday in an interview, Pope Francis described the war in Gaza as involving “criminal acts,” also drawing parallels with the war in Ukraine.
He criticized actions in the two conflicts that go against the rules of normal war, calling them “not war, but criminal actions,” according to the Vatican News portal.
Israel's Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar, accused Francis of directing the accusation of cruelty at the wrong target.
“Cruelty is when terrorists hide behind children while they try to murder the children of Israel; “It's cruelty when terrorists are held and mistreated by terrorists for 442 days,” Saar said.
Since October 2023, Israel has been fighting the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza, where, according to Palestinian figures, more than 45,100 people have been killed so far.
The war was triggered by the massacre of 1,200 people and the kidnapping of around 250 hostages on October 7, 2023 in Israel by Palestinian militants and other groups from the coast.
