«Nazareth is still deserted. The pilgrims, because of the war, are not there. The cost of living has increased because conflicts cost and to pay is always the poor people. It is a certainly difficult period ».
Father Rafico Nahra For three years he has been auxiliary bishop of Latin patriarchate of Jerusalem and lives to Nazareth, The Arab capital of Israel – 70 percent of the inhabitants are Muslim Arabs and 30 percent Christians – where the Basilica of the Annunciation is located. I meet him in Milan, at the headquarters of Pime (Pontifical Institute Foreign Missions), where he was invited to bring his testimony to the Holy Land for the beginning of Lent.
Father Nahra was born in Egypt in 1959 from a Lebanese family, he emigrated twenty years old to Paris, where he worked as an engineer before entering the seminary. He continued his theological studies in Rome and on 27 June 1992 he was ordained priest in the French capital. A study stay in Jerusalem led him to bind with the Holy Land where he moved and held several positions, taking care of the relationship with the Jewish community in particular. Speak Italian, Arabic, French and Jewish.
Excellence, how are you experiencing the Jubilee in Nazareth?
«The biblical idea of the Holy Year is that God gives you the opportunity to open a new page. It is like this in the Old Testament. Families who have lost land is given a new chance to recover it even if they don’t have enough money. Slaves are freed. What Jesus has done in all his life is to give new possibilities. The sense of the Jubilee is this: to speak to the people of this new page possible, on a family, personal, political level. We would like to live a new pages also in the country but unfortunately for the moment it is not clear how the future will be “.
Which new page should open for the Middle East?
«We must reconstruct the relationships between Israelis and Palestinians but also between Jews and Arabs within Israel. On October 7th with the attack of Hamas and the war in Gaza they destroyed all trusts for each other. Without confidence you cannot live together. Today, unfortunately neither the Jews nor the Arabs believe it a lot but there is no other possibility. We must work on this hoping for the help of God who touches hearts ». After months of conflict, in Gaza there is a fragile truce while the attacks part of the Israeli army and settlers in the West Bank were intensified where over 40 thousand people were forced to escape from homes and refugee camps to save themselves. «If the root problem is not solved in a few months or years we will be again as before. We have to get to a solution in which Israel has the security and the Palestinians a form of self -determination, of dignity, because they truly feel affected in their dignity, what is happening is very humiliating for them. You have to get to find this solution but I don’t know how, today it seems to me further away than ever. The truce, although important, is not peace. If another conflict breaks out, it will be much more terrible than the last. This is my fear ».
She deals with the relationship between Jews and Christians. Vandalism to Christians multiply in the West Bank.
«The thing that worries me is that everyone has become more extremist, even in the Jewish world. The current government of Israel is a far -right government and this is the direction, the current war has meant that even the most moderate ones say today: “We were wrong, we thought of poor living in peace but we have made us deal that the Palestinians hate us and that’s it”. Israel is going more and more right and in Palestine there is a great anger. After the destruction of Gaza, in the West Bank, the settlers have now become more aggressive due to violent resistance acts they have undergone in the past. The Palestinians, for their part, resist violent acts in an increasingly intricate spiral. Violence calls violence and, unfortunately, the Israel government does not seem to react to place an embankment but unfortunately lets it. There is an extremism that has infected many, if not everyone. After the shock of October 7, some, on one side and the other, now speak of peaceful coexistence but there are very few ».
How do you judge the current negotiations?
«The Arab world certainly wants to end the war. Israel will surely make some proposals, I don’t know which ones, to get to a stable solution. One thing is certain: if Israel makes peace with the whole Arab world, but it does not do so with the Palestinians, it will not have peace and the Middle East will always be a powder keg ready to explode. Many Israeli leaders say that they will make peace with the Gulf countries, starting with Saudi Arabia, and that everything will be fine. This is not the case. Unfortunately, on 7 October he demonstrated it. “
Is Trump’s intervention helping this process?
«His proposal seems unrealizable to me. What is the point, how he claims, to reconstruct Gaza and make the strip a beautiful and attractive territory also from a tourist point of view if the same hatred and violence of before that will break out the war again? Creativity is positive but it must also be realistic. I think Trump is right in saying that new solutions are needed but his proposal does not seem feasible to me ».
Are you worried about the wave of anti -Semitism that is in Europe and the United States?
“Much. But I think that as you cannot and should not identify Hamas, which is a terrorist organization, with the Palestinian people, the same applies to the Jews. The fact that in the Middle East there is a conflict between Israelis and Palestinians does not mean that the Jews in the world must be attached. It is a wonderful people who must be respected. The anti -Semitism exploded in universities and squares and the anger that accompanies it is based on a bad knowledge of what happens and is often an attitude of good disinformed feelings. But good feelings have never solved any problems, so you have to really understand what is happening, knowing people, help to build and not help to destroy that there is already too much destruction in the Middle East ».
She was born in Egypt from the Lebanese family, then lived in France, was ordained a priest in Paris and then at some point he fell in love with the Holy Land where he moved definitively. How did this link come about?
«I went to Jerusalem for the first time in 1993 but with great skepticism. I wanted to visit the Holy Land but I didn’t want to see the inhabitants so much (smiles, editor’s note). Because I did not know them and ignorance not only does not favor good relationships but does not predispose even to the encounter. When I returned to Paris I immediately started dealing with interreligious dialogue and deepening Judaism. In 2004 I started studying at the Jewish university of Jerusalem where I achieved a master in Jewish thought and then, in 2016, a doctorate in Judeo-Araba literature. Living in the Holy Land prompted me to ask me for why I hate so much. I understand that there is a political problem, but hatred is not good, it does not allow to solve anything in life, hatred destroys and that’s it. This question prompted me to deal with dialogue, to deepen the Jewish religion and culture. When there is mutual knowledge you can live together and try to get along. The problem in the Holy Land is that Palestinians and Israelis is that they do not know each other at all. For the former, the only reality they know of Israel is the checkpoint where they are mistreated and therefore see the Israelis as monsters. Many Israelis know only Hamas’ attacks. But there are wonderful Palestinians who have nothing to do with terrorism ».
After so many years in the Middle East what do you like and what does it hard to accept instead?
«The wealth and difficulty of this region is that they are the place of birth of the three main monotheistic religions. This is the beauty but at the same time also the difficult because religions are a flammable matter, if I can say so, I can always be used instrumental as a sword to justify violence. It is a loved land, hated, disputed for this too. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict there are then historical stratifications that weigh and make everything very complicated ».
What is the most important lesson he learned in the Holy Land?
«Whether morale is not black or black but a very complex reality, a gray scale. When I lived in Jerusalem I often hosted some French seminarians and encouraged them to come but not to teach him the Hebrew but to discover, touch this aspect that the morale is not black or black, that there is no right and that’s enough and who is wrong. For some people this is very clear, for me no. There is a suffering from everyone who must be accompanied not judged. “
Last November Pope Francis, in a book, asked to investigate if what happened to Gaza had “the characteristics of a genocide”. What do you think about it?
«I am not an expert in international law but I think it is not a suitable word because the genocide is the extermination project of a people. It is true that in Israel there is a part of the population who would like to see the Palestinians disappear, it is true that many Israeli politicians have used very violent expressions, stating that they want to “clear” the strip in a sort of deportation but between these things, albeit very serious, and a genocide, that is, the state that organizes an extermination program at the table there is a significant difference. Nor should we forget that the war in Gaza was born from the Hamas attack on 7 October which caused a carnage ».
How is Nazareth without pilgrims?
«Sad and empty like Jerusalem, Bethlehem and other holy places. For Christians, tourism is a source of sustenance and the arrival of pilgrims is moral help, because when you see people arriving generates a feeling of trust. It is true that Christians feel alone, a little isolated but we, also as a church, do not want them to enter a minority mentality. This is a risk. I hope the pilgrims will return soon ».
How are Pope Francis’ disease?
«We pray for his health, because the Lord fortifies him and gives him strength because he has a very heavy and complex mission. The believers of other religions also prayed and pray for him because he understood his efforts for dialogue and peace ».
