Media Report 2025.04.27

Look to his stand on Gaza: Pope Francis gave us moral leadership in amoral times
With his outspokenness about Israel’s outrages, the late pope showed up the hypocrisy of the media and politicians
Owen Jones 23 April

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/22/gaza-pope-francis-israel-outrages-hypocrisy

The deaths of major public figures can provoke the most grotesque outpourings of hypocrisy. So it goes for Pope Francis, now lauded by leaders and media outlets that were complicit in the very evils he condemned. “Pope Francis was a pope for the poor, the downtrodden and the forgotten,” said Keir Starmer, a prime minister who stripped the winter fuel payment from many vulnerable pensioners before launching an assault on disability benefits predicted to drive up to 400,000 Britons into poverty. “He promoted … an end to … suffering across the globe,” wrote Joe Biden, enabler of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza.
Indeed, the fate of Gaza seemed to preoccupy the pope’s final years. In his last Easter address, he condemned the “death and destruction” and resulting “dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation” – a powerful sermon that hardly any western media outlets covered. Indeed, you will struggle to find much prominent coverage of any of his courageous statements on Gaza, such as: “This is not war. This is terrorism.” In his final published piece, the pope reiterated his support for a Palestinian state, declaring: “Peace-making requires courage, much more so than warfare.”
Starmer noted Pope Francis’s work with “Christians around the world facing war, famine, persecution and poverty”. He made no reference, however, to how the pope rang Gaza’s only Catholic church every day to offer solidarity and prayers – or how he rightly feared for a Christian community that faces erasure after having lived in Gaza for more than 1,600 years.
Islamophobia has served a pivotal role in Palestinian life being stripped of any worth or meaning. But that dehumanisation also transcends religion, because there was little western outrage over the Israeli attack on Gaza’s Saint Porphyrius church, or the recent strike on the Anglican al-Ahli Arab Baptist hospital, or the slaughter of many Christians, among them the elderly mother and her daughter who were shot dead by an Israeli sniper in the Holy Family church on the eve of Christmas 2023. That was the church the pope rang each day; its school was attacked by the Israeli military last July.
Britain was no idle bystander. The “death and destruction” deplored by the pope includes the bombs that rained down on Gaza from F-35 jets – and Britain supplies their crucial components. In his final book, the pope noted: “According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.” Yet the UK government refuses to describe a single Israeli obscenity as a “war crime” – recall when foreign secretary David Lammy was reprimanded by No 10 for simply stating that Israel had broken international law.
The passing of public figures is invariably politicised in one of two ways. In cases like that of Margaret Thatcher, the death entrenches political divisions, and critics are treated as indecent and disrespectful if they draw attention to dire legacies. If the dead were respected figures who dissented from the status quo during their lifetimes, then they face instead having their views posthumously sanitised. That was the fate of Nelson Mandela, who famously declared: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” Again, those who point to the authentic beliefs of the deceased risk being denounced as seeking to cause division at a time of grief.
In a perverse way, there is something almost refreshing about the honesty of far-right US politician Marjorie Taylor Greene, who tweeted, in seeming reference to the pope: “Today there were major shifts in global leaderships. Evil is being defeated by the hand of God.” An astonishingly offensive thing to say. But how much more disrespectful is it than skirting around the substance of the pope’s beliefs and courageous stands, instead offering generalised platitudes?
Indeed, this was why the pope’s role was so important. The west is in the grip of the most extreme assault on free speech since McCarthyism in the 1950s, with those who speak out against Israel’s genocide being deplatformed, threatened, sacked, expelled from universities, assaulted by police officers, arrested, imprisoned and now even facing deportation from countries including Germany and the US. In this environment, Pope Francis was a remarkable exception to the rule – and you cannot cancel the pope. Instead, political and media elites have sought to airbrush his record in death as in life – another plank of a strategy of eradicating scrutiny and accountability for this crime of historic proportions.
This was an unusual pope who denounced unbridled capitalism and a “new colonialism”. Yet he was riddled with contradictions, offering more acceptance for LGBTQ+ people than his predecessors while denouncing what he called “gender ideology” as the “ugliest danger” of our time. Popes, after all, are not democratically accountable: those of us who are non-believers hold that their selection is arbitrary rather than God’s will. Like any powerful figure without a democratic mandate, whether a pope is sympathetic to justice or otherwise is a matter of chance. And a benevolent pope does not negate the need for critiques of the Catholic church for, to take two examples, its treatment of child abuse and its opposition to contraception during the HIV/Aids pandemic in Africa.
But what matters is this. If you believe a monumental crime is happening in front of our eyes, then you should expect anyone with power and influence to take a stand. Let history record that this pope took a stand against one of the great horrors of our time.
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Francis, like Trump, the great Disrupter
(title online: Way of the church after the Great Disrupter)
(The Australian, 26/4/2025)

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/way-of-the-church-after-the-great-disrupter/news-story/b3225a92c2cfac99c879075878066fd7

So where does the holy Catholic and Apostolic church, with its 1.4 billion adherents and vast institutional attachments, go from here now that Pope Francis has died?
His legacy will be hotly debated, though for a time respectable Catholics, certainly those handful of men who may succeed him, will wear Franciscan “clothes”.
Though undoubtedly a genuine man of God with an inspiring love of the marginalised, Francis was the Great Disrupter, in many ways the Catholic Church’s version of Donald Trump. Both men would hate the comparison, and Francis was certainly an infinitely more decent human being than Trump.
But both represent a distinctive style of leadership that emerges from the new soil of the digital age, the dynamics of celebrity and the collapsing authority of institutions. Like Trump, Francis was a populist.
Every pope is shaped by where they grew up. Their personality affects their papacy. Francis inherited the populism that afflicted Argentina for decades. Trump became a populist through reality TV. Both were impatient with the institutions they were elected to head, both dismissive of established process, both elected because of a sense that things weren’t working, needed shaking up.
Francis, like Trump, became a master of social media. Both used social media to communicate directly to followers, without mediating institutions. This led to undisciplined, sometimes incoherent, messages. Trump wanted to “drain the swamp” of government, Francis railed against the Vatican curia. Both loved spontaneous encounters and unrehearsed verbal riffs. Neither seemed to realise just how weighty the words were of their respective offices, President and Pope.
Francis and Trump both had a genius for identifying a moment in public sentiment. They were instinctive, continuous campaigners. Each was much less good at completing projects. Having disrupted things, it wasn’t clear they could establish a new stability. Both personalised the institutional.
We can’t take this comparison too far. Morally and ethically they were polar opposites. Francis as a young man took a vow of poverty and lived it authentically and ethically all his life. Francis lived for others, and for the love of God.
Francis’s constant advocacy for the poor and marginalised was genuinely inspiring. Each pope, each man, is a compendium of diverse, sometimes contradictory, elements. In his genuine love of the poor, dispossessed, unfashionable and wretched, Francis provided inspiration and leadership.
In other areas, the record is mixed, the legacy troubling.
Ed Condon, founder of Catholic website The Pillar, argues that Francis leaves the church more divided than when he took office. Condon believes Francis brought back for relitigation a vast number of theological and moral teaching issues that had been thoroughly settled under his predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
Francis frequently moved to change Catholic moral teaching but generally baulked at the last minute. Is the Catholic Church to remain faithful in its moral teachings to the actual words of Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament or, as author Ross Douthat asks, has Western modernity discovered a higher and better morality? If that’s true, Douthat ruefully observes, that says something strange about Jesus and God. How come they weren’t aware of this higher morality 2000 years ago?
Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, formerly of Philadelphia, wrote of Francis’s papacy in First Things, the premier Catholic journal in the English-speaking world. He acknowledged Francis’s personal generosity and dedication to service. Chaput doesn’t mention this but the heroic way Francis left hospital and, with his last ounce of strength, returned to work to give his last Easter message was in its way magnificent.
But having acknowledged the strengths of Francis, Chaput argued it was important to evaluate frankly the Francis pontificate to work out where church leadership should go now. He offered a short, devastating critique of the Francis papacy: “His personality tended toward the temperamental and autocratic. He resisted even loyal criticism. He had a pattern of ambiguity and loose words that sowed confusion and conflict.
“In the face of deep cultural fractures on matters of sexual behaviour and identity, he condemned gender ideology but seemed to downplay a compelling Christian theology of the body (which had been associated with John Paul II).
“He was impatient with canon law and proper procedure. His signature project, synodality (this means lengthy consultation through the calling of formal synods or large meetings lasting days or weeks), was heavy on process and deficient in clarity.
“Despite inspiring outreach to society’s margins, his papacy lacked a confident, dynamic evangelical zeal. The intellectual excellence to sustain a salvific (and not merely ethical) Christian witness in a sceptical modern world was likewise absent.”
Very few church leaders, or any Catholics, will speak as sharply as these words of Chaput. But they represent the thinking of vast numbers of engaged Catholics and underpin a desire for the next pope to keep the best of Francis, the outreach to the margins, but to return to clarity in teaching, good order in the Vatican itself, the unfinished business of Vatican reform and a greater emphasis on God rather than politics.
The exact opposite view to Chaput’s was evident in The New York Times. There, writers rightly lavished praise on Francis’s outreach to the poor and the many positive words Francis spoke about LGBTQI people. But they, too, expressed a disappointment, but an opposite disappointment from Chaput’s.
Francis often seemed to offer hints of profound changes in teaching – the acceptance of gay unions, the ordination of women priests, new permissive rules on divorce, married priests, inserting some of the political engagement on environment, open borders and economic redistribution, directly into dogma.
But he didn’t deliver on any of them. Consequently, conservatives were chronically anxious but eventually relieved, progressives chronically hopeful but eventually disappointed.
In his 13 years in office, Francis, despite many hints, failed to change any Catholic teaching or doctrine at all. Philip Shenton, writing in The New York Times, asked plaintively, what happened to the Francis revolution?
While acknowledging the positives, Shenton argued that “his papacy will be remembered as a disappointment” and that Francis was “far more cautious and conservative” than his supporters had hoped.
Some NYT writers were optimistic, nonetheless. Francis has appointed nearly 80 per cent of the 135 cardinals under the age of 80 who will elect a new pope. One NYT writer speculated the Francis revolution could be completed by his successor.
I think that’s unlikely.
Every contemporary Christian church embodies contradictions and internal conflict along several lines. First, is Christianity literally true or just a wonderful metaphor; in other words, did Jesus rise in his body from the dead or is that metaphorical narrative poetry?
Second, how much accommodation should be made with contemporary Western liberal norms? Ready divorce? Approved abortion? Euthanasia? Same-sex marriage? Church rules of any kind?
Third, what political engagement is dictated for the church by its Christian beliefs?
Francis was a complete traditionalist in terms of literal belief. No one in contemporary life talked more often of angels and devils and other supernatural realities. In terms of accommodation with modern liberalism Francis utterly rejected abortion and described it in terms that would get any Australian politician drummed out of public life (“white-gloved assassins” and so on).
His defenders say he approached other difficult issues with a pastor’s heart. He never real¬ly planned to overthrow doctrine, they argue, but looked for compassion within existing doctrine. That means he never intended a revolution. Everyone agrees on compassion, but it’s a fair question to ask whether hinting that doctrine might change when there’s no chance at all of doctrine changing is really compassionate at all.
Such muddle demoralises those living heroically according to church teaching, creates expectations bound to be bitterly disappointed when doctrine doesn’t change and mightily confuses everybody about what the church actually believes.
On politics, Francis was almost entirely a man of the left, in economics, environmentalism, geo-strategic issues and much else. Mostly, when he wrote about such subjects, he acknowledged that he had no particular authority on them. Catholics are not bound to follow a pope’s political opinions. Cardinal Peter Erdo of Hungary, for example, declined to set up church refuges for illegal migrants because he thought this would encourage people-smuggling.
Because Francis was so strongly of the left, media outlets such as The New York Times loved him and ignored everything he said about God. However, Francis did a strange deal with China in which Beijing’s communist government effectively chooses Catholic bishops. To sustain the deal he never criticised the Beijing government.
Similarly, to remain a possible mediator, he never clearly took Ukraine’s side in its defensive war against Russia. Vladimir Putin warmly praised Francis on his death. That’s an odious recommendation.
On the other hand, perhaps reflecting his Argentinian background, Francis constantly criticised the US. This ethically implausible selectivity badly compromised his moral credibility.
Two other big problems. Francis did not remotely complete reform of Vatican governance. Cardinal George Pell was the critical engine of this reform but was brought down by false accusations of child abuse levelled against him when the job was about half done.
Francis also made a number of frankly weird appointments to senior positions, which a new pope will have to fix. No scandal ever touched Francis personally and no accusation of consequence has ever been made against him. But some of his friends were guilty of serious abuse. Networks around them remain powerful.
Any new pope, however, will surely try to maintain Francis’s populist style, genius for media gestures and genuine concern for the poor and for those marginalised socially for any reason. Even a pope intending to be radically different from Francis will in public emphasise his continuity with Francis.
There are five possible outcomes of the conclave that will elect Francis’s successor. Conclaves are inherently unpredictable. The unspeakably silly, though visually lavish, film Conclave (the beauty is the only bit of the Vatican Hollywood consistently gets right) was mostly a cartoon conflict of two-dimensional heroes and villains.
One African conservative cardinal is ruled out when it’s exposed he fathered a child with a nun. The other conservative cardinal candidate calls for a holy war against Islam. No excess is too silly for this agitprop film.
The saintly liberals, who say the chief enemy is certainty, as though certainty in Jesus and his resurrection is a sin for Catholics, fool around until a surprise Third World candidate wins.
It emerges the new pope is intersex and declined to have a hysterectomy. The comparison with the infinitely more subtle and realistic The Shoes of the Fisherman, filmed in 1968 from a fine novel by Australian Morris West, shows the steep decline in the quality of our popular culture.
West depicted the emergence of a pope from the eastern bloc, in his novel a Ukrainian. This foretold the election of John Paul II, the Polish pope, in 1978. Both films rightly depict the unpredictability of conclaves.
Francis appointed two types of cardinal. From the West he appointed exclusively liberals, no conservatives. But he appointed many cardinals from the global south – Africa, Tonga, East Timor, even Mongolia, which has fewer Catholics than could fit inside St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney.
These men are mostly conservative theologically. They possibly won’t vote liberal at all. They don’t know each other very well. Francis didn’t like disagreement. At one meeting in 2014 a number of cardinals disagreed with his direction, so he didn’t hold a major meeting of cardinals again. So this conclave is intensely unpredictable.
The cardinals will choose the man they think best for the job. It would be a wonderful sign of universality if the right man came from Africa or Asia.
Five outcomes are possible: an ultra-liberal who tries to complete Francis’s revolution; a Francis Mark II who continues the ambiguity and muddle but also the progressive politics and gestures; a middle-of-the-road compromise who offends as few church people as possible; a moderate conservative to bring clarity and order while honouring Francis’s outreach; and a conservative cum reactionary firebrand, who might try a revolution from the right.
Neither extreme outcome is likely. A revolutionary on the left would lose the conservative Africans, where the church is on fire. An arch reactionary would lose the ultra-liberal Germans, who were on the point of formal schism even under Francis. No pope wants to be the man who blew up the church.
The most liberal parts of Catholicism are European. Perhaps one of the Italians could emerge as a revolutionary liberal. There are numerous candidates for moderate liberal. One is Filipino Cardinal Luis Tagle. He was a Francis favourite but didn’t do particularly well running a Vatican department. Nonetheless, he’s a contender, though at 67 he could be pope for 25 years and cardinals are these days cautious about long reigns.
A centrist who would just keep the show running would be the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, 70. He’s the ultimate insider, the ultimate bureaucratic master. However, he’s associated with the unpopular deal with Beijing, with shocking property speculations in London, and was an obstacle to Pell’s reforms. Nonetheless, he would be orderly and predictable.
Another centrist might be Cardinal Peter Turkson, 76, from Ghana. He’s the most liberal of the potential Africans but more conservative than Francis. He’d have the African frisson and it would be hard for even the Germans to defy a black pope. He is media savvy and charismatic.
The moderate conservative from central casting is Cardinal Erdo, 72. He was said to be Pell’s choice. Pell was a huge critic of the way Francis ran the papacy. Pell had a regard for Francis personally but thought the muddle and disorder he brought to leadership too high a price to pay.
Erdo almost never disagreed with Francis publicly, but in all church bodies he argued for clarity of doctrine, faithfulness to divine revelation, combined with warm pastoral care. He’s a sophisticated, smooth conservative who could probably keep all but the most extreme liberals on board.
For years I tried unsuccessfully to get an interview with him. His reluctance to do any media while Francis was pope probably enhanced his chances.
The most conservative possibility of all would be Cardinal Robert Sarah from Guinea. At 79, he just squeaks into eligibility. He’s dynamic, profound and deeply, deeply conservative.
Catholics once thought the Holy Spirit chose the pope. Not so, Benedict taught. It’s just the cardinals, but they sure could do with the Spirit’s help.
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Hamas says open to 5-year Gaza truce, one-time hostages releasehttps://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/hamas-says-open-to-5year-gaza-truce-onetime-hostages-release/news-story/ad7234d590c3b20de544866aa2d2c135

Hamas is open to an agreement to end the war in Gaza that would see all hostages released and secure a five-year truce, an official said Saturday as the group’s negotiators held talks with mediators.
A Hamas delegation was in Cairo discussing with Egyptian mediators ways out of the 18-month war, while, on the ground, rescuers said an Israeli strike on a family home in Gaza City killed at least 10 people.
Nearly eight weeks into an Israeli aid blockade, the United Nations says food and medical supplies are running out.
The Hamas official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the Palestinian militant group “is ready for an exchange of prisoners in a single batch and a truce for five years”.
The latest bid to seal a ceasefire follows an Israeli proposal which Hamas had rejected earlier this month as “partial”, calling instead for a “comprehensive” agreement to halt the war ignited by the group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
The rejected Israeli offer, according to a senior Hamas official, included a 45-day ceasefire in exchange for the return of 10 living hostages.
Hamas has consistently demanded that a truce deal must lead to the war’s end, a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a surge in humanitarian aid.
An Israeli pullout and a “permanent end to the war” would also have occurred — as outlined by then-US president Joe Biden — under a second phase of a ceasefire that had begun on January 19 but collapsed two months later.
Hamas had sought talks on the second phase but Israel wanted the first phase extended.
Israel demands the return of all hostages seized in the 2023 attack, and Hamas’s disarmament, which the group has rejected as a “red line”.
“This time we will insist on guarantees regarding the end of the war,” Mahmud Mardawi, a senior Hamas official said in a statement.
“The occupation can return to war after any partial deal, but it cannot do so with a comprehensive deal and international guarantees.
“We will demand that these guarantees be included in any agreement,” Mardawi added.
– ‘The house collapsed’ –
Israel pounded Gaza again on Saturday, with rescuers reporting the deaths of 19 people.
In Gaza City, in the territory’s north, the civil defence rescue agency said a strike on the Khour family home killed 10 people and left an estimated 20 more trapped in the debris.
Umm Walid al-Khour, who survived the attack, said “everyone was sleeping with their children” when the strike hit.
“The house collapsed on top of us,” she said. “Those who survived cried for help but nobody came… Most of the deceased were children.”
Elsewhere across Gaza, nine more people were killed, rescuers said.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the latest strikes but it said that “1,800 terror targets” had been hit across Gaza since the military campaign resumed on March 18.
The military added that “hundreds of terrorists” were also killed.
Qatar, the United States and Egypt brokered the truce which began on January 19 and enabled a surge in aid, alongside exchanges of hostages and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
With Israel and Hamas disagreeing over the ceasefire’s next phase, Israel cut all aid to Gaza before resuming bombardment, followed by a ground offensive.
– ‘Slowly dying’ –
Since then, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, at least 2,111 Palestinians have been killed, taking the overall war death toll in Gaza to 51,495 people, mostly civilians.
The Hamas attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, also mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel says the military campaign aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives.
On Friday, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said the hot meal kitchens it was supplying with food in Gaza “are expected to fully run out of food in the coming days”.
On Saturday, AFP footage showed queues of people waiting for food in front of a community kitchen.
“It is tragic. There is no food in the free kitchen, there is no food in the markets… There is no flour or bread,” said north Gaza resident Wael Odeh.
A senior UN official, Jonathan Whittall, said Gazans were “slowly dying”.
“They are being suffocated… this is not only about humanitarian needs but also about dignity. There is an assault on people’s dignity,” Whittall, head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs in the Palestinian territories, told journalists.
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Palestinian president names Hussein al-Sheikh vice-president of PLO and his likely successor
Mahmoud Abbas appoints veteran aide to newly created role, making him frontrunner to replace ageing leader
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/26/palestinian-president-names-hussein-al-sheikh-vice-president-of-plo-and-his-likely-successor
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday named a veteran aide and confidant as his new vice-president. It’s a major step by the ageing leader to designate a successor.
The appointment of Hussein al-Sheikh as vice-president of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) does not guarantee he will be the next Palestinian president. But it makes him the frontrunner among longtime politicians in the dominant Fatah party who hope to succeed the 89-year-old Abbas.
The move is unlikely to boost the image among many Palestinians of Fatah as a closed and corrupt movement out of touch with the general public.
Abbas hopes to play a major role in postwar Gaza. He has been under pressure from western and Arab allies to rehabilitate the Palestinian Authority, which has limited autonomy in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. He has announced a series of reforms in recent months, and last week his Fatah movement approved the new position of PLO vice-president.
The PLO is the internationally recognised representative of the Palestinian people and oversees the western-backed Palestinian Authority. Abbas has led both entities for two decades.
Under last week’s decision, the new vice-president, coming from the PLO’s 16-member executive committee, would succeed Abbas in a caretaker capacity if the president dies or becomes incapacitated.
That would make him the frontrunner to replace Abbas on a permanent basis, though it is not a guarantee. The PLO’s executive committee would need to approve that appointment, and the body is filled with veteran politicians who see themselves as worthy contenders.
The Palestinian Authority, meanwhile, would have a separate caretaker leader, Rawhi Fattouh, the speaker of the Palestinians’ non-functioning parliament. But within 90 days, it would have to hold elections. If that is not possible, the new PLO president would probably take over the position.
Al-Sheikh, 64, is a veteran politician who has held a series of top positions over decades, most recently as the secretary general of the PLO’s executive committee for the past three years. He spent 11 years in Israeli prisons in his youth and is a veteran of the Palestinian security forces – experiences that could give him credibility with Palestinian security figures and the broader public.
Now he finds himself in a strong position to shore up his power.
He is Abbas’s closest aide and, most critically, maintains good working relations with Israel and the Palestinians’ Arab allies, including wealthy Gulf countries. As Abbas’s point man with Israel, al-Sheikh is responsible for arranging coveted travel permits for Palestinians, including VIP leaders, giving him an important lever of power over his rivals.
However, polls show al-Sheikh, like most of Fatah’s leadership, to be deeply unpopular with the general public. This week’s decision behind closed doors by the PLO’s ageing leadership is likely to reinforce its image as being stodgy and out of touch.
The most popular Palestinian, Marwan Barghouti, is serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli prison, and Israel has ruled out releasing him as part of any swap for Israeli hostages held in Gaza by the Hamas militant group.
As Israel’s war with Hamas drags on, with talk by the US president, Donald Trump, and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of uprooting Palestinians in Gaza to relocate them elsewhere, al-Sheikh will be under mounting pressure to unite the Palestinian leadership.
The PLO is a rival to Hamas, which won the last national elections in 2006 and is not in the PLO. Hamas seized control of Gaza from Abbas’s forces in 2007, and reconciliation attempts have repeatedly failed.
In a 2022 interview with the Associated Press, al-Sheikh defended his unpopular coordination with Israel, saying there was no choice under the difficult circumstances of the occupation.
“I am not a representative for Israel in the Palestinian territories,” he said at the time. “We undertake the coordination because this is the prelude to a political solution for ending the occupation.”
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