Israeli ambassador says country 'craves peace' as tensions rise in the Middle East

(OSV News) -- On the first anniversary of the attack that sparked an escalating conflict in the Holy Land, Israel's ambassador to the Holy See said his country still hopes for peace.

"No country craves for peace more than Israel," Ambassador Yaron Sideman told OSV News Oct. 4. "However, one cannot make peace with a country or a group that calls for your destruction and elimination. One cannot have peace with those who do not recognize your basic, fundamental right to exist as a people and as a state."

Sideman said he was certain that "when conditions are right," the Israeli government "will be willing to make further sacrifices for peace, the noblest of goals."

On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas militants carried out a devastating attack that killed 1,200 people, capturing over 250 hostages. Although over 100 have been released since then, it is unknown how many hostages remaining are alive, especially after Israel declared war on Hamas and expanded to targeting Hezbollah,a close ally of Hamas, in neighboring Lebanon.

The Israeli ambassador said that the hostages who remain have been held for the past year "in subhuman conditions in hot, damp, unventilated tunnels with little or not enough oxygen, zero connection to the outside world and no access to basic medical treatment that many of them are in dire need of."

"All of them, living and dead, should be returned, immediately and unconditionally, to their families. The international community and all who care about human dignity and the rule of law should insist upon that and take every action needed to make that happen," he said.

Sideman presented his credentials as Israel's new ambassador to the Vatican Sept. 16, where he met with Pope Francis and the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

The new ambassador to the Vatican said that he "felt extremely welcomed" and was "taken in by the friendship, the affinity, and openness in which I was received" by the pope and Cardinal Parolin.

"I sensed a true desire to work together at enhancing the bilateral relations in areas such as climate change, in order to jointly meet global challenges," he said. "I also thanked His Holiness for his ongoing efforts and appeals to free the 101 hostages still remaining in Gaza. Nothing can be more important," he told OSV News.

Sideman recalled being with his family on the day of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack when they were awakened by the sounds of sirens and directions to head the nearest bomb shelter as Israel's Iron Dome intercepted missiles fired by Hamas.

"The full magnitude of that horrific day became clear only days later, but already in those initial moments it was obvious to me that we were facing an attack the likes of which we never experienced before," Sideman told OSV News.

Nevertheless, "the initial feelings of shock and anxiety" he said, were followed by a sense of unity and a "resolve and determination to meet the challenge, eliminate the threat, bring back our hostages, return the displaced to their homes, and engage in a process of healing our collective and personal wounds and emerge from this stronger and safer."

While many in the international community stood behind Israel's right to defend itself, its war in Gaza against Hamas, followed by its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, have raised questions about its methods.

According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, as of Sept. 23, over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed. A Sept. 30 report by Oxfam International reported that more than 6,000 women and 11,000 children were killed in Israeli military strikes, noting that "more women and children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the past year than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades."

Israel has denied targeting civilians and accused Hamas of using its people as human shields.

Nevertheless, world and religious leaders have expressed concern over the number of civilian casualties in the conflict, including Pope Francis, who told journalists on his return flight from Belgium Sept. 29 that he calls a parish in Gaza every day and that "they tell me about the things that are happening, including the cruelties that are occurring there."

Responding to a question regarding the Sept. 27 killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, as well as the high civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon, the pope said that defense "must always be proportionate to the attack."

"When there is something disproportionate, a domineering tendency that goes beyond morality is evident. A country that, with its forces, does these things -- I'm talking about any country -- that does these things in such a 'superlative' way, these are immoral actions," he said.

When asked by OSV News for his reaction to the pope's words, Sideman argued that according to "international humanitarian law, the term proportionality relates to the proportion between the scope of a military action against a target and the threat posed by that target."

"One need not be an expert in order to measure the threat posed by the likes of Hassan Nasrallah," Sideman said.

"Under his leadership, Hezbollah not only fired thousands of rockets on Israeli towns and villages on a daily basis in the past year, but he was directly responsible for countless terror attacks all over the world in the past four decades, that resulted in hundreds of deaths from many countries and nationalities," he said.

Nasrallah's death, he added, served as "a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians."

For peace to be possible, Sideman told OSV News that "those who hinder it and seek Israel's destruction must be deprived of the capability to carry out that desire."

Thousands of Israelis stood in silence at 6:29 a.m. Oct. 7 to mark the first anniversary of the "the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust," The Times of Israel reported, amid rockets from Gaza targeting the border region and Tel Aviv in the "heaviest attack in months."