Clemenza to Israel and the Vatican: "Get a room you two!"
I have seen this on Catholic websites. Seems Israel had a hidden agenda. ah politics is a messy thing. It seems very foolish for the israelis to get the Vatican and the Pope offside after all the hard work that the Catholic church has done in recent years to change the antisemitic attitudes of some of their faithful. This kind of behaviour only gives fuel to the anti-semites. It seems to many that it is all one way, the church has made all the apologies and changes and the Jews are strident and demanding and not compromising one inch themselves.
"But perhaps, Israel’s hastily prepared screed was just an opportunity to use the Pope’s statement as a smokescreen. AsiaNews reports that Israel’s out-of-proportion complaint was meant to justify their decision to break off talks with the Vatican planned for Monday.
These negotiations, explicitly mandated by Israel’s 1993 Fundamental Agreement with the Holy See - the international treaty that is the “magna charta” of all relations between the Jewish State and the Catholic Church - have the purpose of achieving a new treaty to confirm the Church’s centuries’ old tax exemptions and property rights, which have been eroded by the State since its establishment. The negotiations began officially on 11 March 1999. However, in recent years Israel has been reluctant even to meet the Holy See to negotiate, and on 28 August 2003, the Israeli delegation abandoned the negotiations altogether, and only came back to the table a year later in response to pressure from the Church and the Government of the United States. After agreeing to very few meetings in 2005, Israel agreed to meet on 19 July, only to cancel the meeting at the last moment, and have it transferred to 25 July. Apparently Israeli officials feared the consequences of cancelling this meeting too at the very last moment, so they contrived to find fault with the papal Angelus address to cover up their non-compliance with their treaty obligation to negotiate with the Holy See.
The crux of the negotiations is a desire by the Church to set up a legally binding covenant regarding the work of the Church in Holy Land, including standards for the rights of religious workers, property rights, and the legal rights for the Church as a whole. I think part of the problem here is that Israel sees the Catholic Church as being too sympathetic to Palestinians, who make up a large part of the Church’s flock in the Holy Land. "