The conflict in the Middle East is a recipe for creating suicide bombers, Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu said on Tuesday.
”I think God is crying that God’s children can do this to one another,” he told the South African Press Association in Cape Town.
”Whatever the provocation, there can never be a justification for targeting civilians. There’s absolutely no reason, and we would say the act is an immoral act, from whichever side. Both sides.
”To shell civilian dwellings is just unacceptable.”
He said South Africans had learned there will never be true security from the barrel of a gun.
It is only when everyone feels their human rights are recognised and acknowledged that there will be a peaceful Middle East.
Tutu said he hoped people were ”upholding” the Middle East situation in their prayers.
”I feel so deeply distressed. Aren’t the leaders of faiths on both sides, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, saying please, please, please, whatever else you do, stop this destruction, mutual destruction?
”Although worse has happened in Lebanon than in Israel. But it is still that they are shelling there as well, and this is how you recruit suicide bombers.”
More than 1 000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed by Israeli raids on Lebanon, and 36 people have been killed by Hezbollah rocket attacks in northern Israel. — Sapa