Church groups demand Lebanon-Israel cease-fire to deal with crisis 

by Michele Green and Luigi Sandri 
Ecumenical News International 

JERUSALEM/VATICAN CITY – Church relief agencies are pleading for an urgent cease-fire so emergency assistance can be provided to hundreds of thousands of civilians uprooted and threatened by Israeli bombarding of Lebanon and Hezbollah attacks on Israel. 
 
     “The humanitarian crisis in Lebanon is reaching catastrophic levels,” said the Geneva-based Action by Churches Together International saying the Middle East Council of Churches had set up an emergency council to deal with the calamity and destruction in Lebanon. 
 
     “The indiscriminate targeting of the civilian population and infrastructure, disregarding all lines, is preventing relief workers reaching the affected villages and towns,” the Beirut-based church council reported. “The attacks have destroyed villages and towns in south Lebanon as well as the southern suburbs of Beirut.  Most of the communication networks are disrupted delaying the efforts to save the wounded and remove the dead from under the collapsed buildings.” 
 
     In Vatican City, the Roman Catholic relief agency Caritas said it had called for a cease-fire and for the parties to enter fresh negotiations. “Caritas is also calling for humanitarian organizations to be given access to the area to bring relief to the civilian population.” 
 
     More than 300 people have been killed in Lebanon and around 40 in Israel since Israel launched a massive military assault on its neighbor it said is aimed at destroying Hezbollah after the capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12. Most of the casualties are civilians.  
 
     The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on July 20: “There may be 500 000 conflict-affected people.” It quoted UNICEF as saying that 30 percent of those killed in Lebanon are children. 
 
     Caritas Lebanon said: “The Israeli Army is making the situation even worse for Lebanese civilians by targeting warehouses and factories ... In fact, food storage houses in particular have become the target of Israeli reprisals.” 
 
     From Lebanon, Hezbollah launched rockets into Nazareth, the Galilee town where Jesus grew up, killing two Arab children as they played in their yard on July 19. It was the first time that rockets fired by Hezbollah hit Nazareth, although hundreds of rockets have hit other Israeli cities and towns around the Sea of Galilee including Tiberias, the Roman-built spa town that overlooks sites where Jesus is said to have performed miracles. 

     One of the rockets in Nazareth landed close to the Church of the Annunciation, where according to tradition the angel Gabriel informed the Virgin Mary she was to bear Jesus.  

     Residents of the mostly Arab town of Nazareth said they were not warned to seek shelter as the air raid sirens did not go off and they had not received proper instructions about how to act in the face of rocket strikes.