AMERICAN airstrikes on Iran have left the region “dangerously volatile”, the Bishop in Cyprus and the Gulf, the Rt Revd Sean Semple, said on Sunday.
The US bombing of nuclear facilities in Iran overnight on Saturday further increased tensions in the Middle East, with Israel and Iran continuing to trade missile fire on Tuesday, even after a ceasefire was announced.
On Sunday, after the US strikes on Iran, Bishop Semple released a pastoral letter in which he acknowledged that it was “difficult to predict what may happen next”.
“For anyone living in the countries of our diocese there will be a deep anxiety today and in the days ahead about possible retaliation and prospect of a wider conflagration,” Bishop Semple wrote.
His diocese includes churches across the Gulf states, including Qatar. On Monday, Qatari airspace was closed in anticipation of attempted Iranian strikes on a US military base in the country.
The missiles were intercepted, and the attack was regarded by commentators as a symbolic retaliation, calculated not to escalate direct conflict between Iran and Israel and the US
Bishop Semple, who was consecrated last May, exhorted Christians in the region to pray for and support one another. “We are in this together, and must do all we can to support, encourage, and strengthen our Anglican family at this time,” he wrote.
Last week, the Archbishop in Jerusalem, Dr Hosam Naoum, of whose province the diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf is a part, implored Anglicans of the province, and the wider Communion, to “vigilantly guard against yielding to fear and despair.
“For this, we must again rely profoundly upon the graces of the Holy Spirit to both strengthen and empower us,” he wrote (News, 20 June).
On Wednesday, the Dean of St George’s College, Jerusalem, the Very Revd Canon Richard Sewell, called for renewed focus on the situation in Gaza, where there have been reports of killings at aid distribution points.
At least 46 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire at aid distribution points in southern and central Gaza on Tuesday, according to the UN, bringing the total reported deaths at aid points to over 450 since late May.
The rise in killings has occurred since the Israeli- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operating, under heavy criticism from the UN. BBC News reported a spokesman for the UN Human Rights Office, Thameen al-Kheetan, as having said on Tuesday: “Israel’s militarised humanitarian assistance mechanism is in contradiction with international standards on aid distribution.”
Canon Sewell’s #FastforGaza initiative — in which he and others around the world are abstaining from food on Wednesdays — is an attempt to “keep the focus on horrendous situation which goes on day after day of developing malnutrition and starvation in Gaza”, he said:
“We should not tolerate a planned policy of hunger, and governments must be pressured not to normalise this.”
On Thursday, it was reported that Israel had closed crossings into northern Gaza, cutting off aid routes. On the same day, an Israeli drone attack killed at least 18 people at a market. BBC News reported witnesses who said that the attack came while local police were confronting market vendors accused of selling food at inflated prices.
Also on Thursday, the Palestinian authorities reported that three Palestinian had been shot dead in the West Bank after an attack by Israeli settlers.