The Rt Rev Dr Robert Gillies, Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney, as Senior Bishop in the Scottish Episcopal Church, has issued the following statement concerning the current conflict in Israel/Palestine:
“All people concerned for the welfare of their neighbour must condemn the current and rising wave of violence in Gaza, and now spreading to other areas of the West Bank. Far too many Palestinian civilians who have no part in this conflict have been killed and sorely injured through the Israeli action. Likewise the constant threat from the missile firing by Hamas militants into Israel, and their deployment of missiles into hoped-for safe locations, is deepening a political crisis to truly alarming proportions.
“The scale of deaths and injuries, homelessness and the lack of safe shelter for the inhabitants of Gaza is never acceptable, under any circumstances, as a consequence of action between these two warring factions.
“In the end the only successful outcome to the Israel / Palestinian conflict must be a secure negotiated peace plan. The lesson that Britain learned as a consequence of thirty years or so of the troubles in Northern Ireland is that peace comes slowly and not without many difficulties along the way. What is currently happening in Gaza right now is that both sides of the conflict are making any likelihood of a peaceful and acceptable concord a remote possibility in this century.”
