A senior Vatican official has said the conditions in Gaza "resemble ever more a big concentration camp." Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino, the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, called for dialogue to end the conflict between Israel and Hamas in an interview with an online Italian newspaper. Martino said "violence does not resolve problems, and history is full of confirmations of this."
"Defenseless populations are always the ones who pay. Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more, it resembles a big concentration camp," Martino, who is the Vatican’s top official in charge of human rights matters, was quoted as saying.
At the root of the conflict, Martino said, was the fact that "no one sees the interests of the other but only its own." The consequences of such egoism, the cardinal said, were "hatred for the other, poverty and injustice. The ones who pay the price are always innocent populations."
Pope Benedict has made several general appeals for an end to the violence in Gaza but has not openly criticized Israel.
