The United Nations is seeking a dramatic boost in humanitarian aid for Gaza, saying the hundreds of relief trucks cleared to enter the devastated enclave under a ceasefire were nowhere near the thousands needed to ease a humanitarian disaster.

Tom Fletcher, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and its top emergency relief coordinator, told Reuters in an interview that thousands of humanitarian vehicles must enter weekly to avert further catastrophe.

“We have 190,000 metric tons of provisions on the borders waiting to go in and we’re determined to deliver. That’s essential life-saving food and nutrition,” Fletcher said.

Israel’s two-year air and ground war against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas drove almost all Gaza’s 2.2 million people from their homes, and famine is present in the north, global monitors say.

“GOOD BASE,” BUT NOT ENOUGH

Israeli officials said 600 trucks have been approved to enter the blockaded territory under the current US-brokered truce deal. Fletcher called that a “good base” but said it was not enough to meet the scale of need.

Fletcher called for over 50 international NGOs, including Oxfam and the Norwegian Refugee Council, to be allowed to bring in aid, saying the issue has been raised with Israel, the United States and other regional partners.

“We cannot deliver the scale necessary without their presence and their engagement. So we want to see them back in. We are advocating on their behalf,” he said.

Fletcher said the looting of aid trucks – a frequent scourge while fighting continued – had dropped sharply in recent days as deliveries increased.

“If you’re only getting in 60 trucks a day, desperate, hungry people will attack those trucks. The way to stop the looting is to deliver aid at massive scale and get the private sector and commercial markets operating again.”

Fletcher welcomed the Western-backed Palestinian Authority’s offer to play a role in reopening the Rafah border crossing with Egypt to aid deliveries, expected on Thursday after a delay imposed by Israel over what it called Hamas’ slowness to return bodies of dead hostages under the ceasefire deal.

He said medical evacuations through the crossing would be a priority, citing recent talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

He said that for the fresh aid efforts to succeed the ceasefire agreement must be sustained. “We need peace. That way we can massively scale up our operations. We need the world to stay behind this peace plan.”

Twenty remaining living hostages were freed on Monday in exchange for thousands of Palestinians jailed in Israel.

i24 News – Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in Russia on Wednesday for an official visit, his first since taking office in December 2024, according to a Reuters report.

The visit marks a significant moment in Syrian-Russian relations following the ouster of former president Bashar al-Assad.

Saudi broadcaster Al-Hadath reported that al-Sharaa is expected to urge Russian President Vladimir Putin to hand over Assad, a longtime Moscow ally who fled to Russia after last year’s coup, along with other members of the former regime accused of “crimes against Syrians.”

According to Syria’s official news agency, SANA, “the two leaders will discuss regional and international developments, and ways to strengthen cooperation between Syria and Russia.”

A Syrian government source told Reuters that discussions are also likely to include the future of Russia’s military presence in Syria specifically the naval base in Tartous and the air base in Khmeimim, both located in the country’s northwest.

In recent weeks, speculation has surrounded Assad’s fate. The New York Post reported that he was poisoned in Russia about a month ago and briefly hospitalized in critical condition before being released. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed Assad was poisoned at his heavily guarded villa near Moscow, where he has resided since his flight from Damascus.

The visit coincides with preparations for Syria’s first parliamentary elections since Assad’s removal, signaling a potential new phase in the country’s post-war political landscape.

As the ceasefire took hold this weekend, Pope Leo XIV called it “a spark of hope in the Holy Land.”

To understand the new pope’s approach to Israel, after he came into his role at a time of unusually strained relations between the Vatican and Israel, a bit of history helps.

The Catholic narrative when it comes to the Jewish state is one of initial opposition, followed by resigned acceptance, and eventually, formal and diplomatic acceptance. At the same time, since the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, the Church has embodied a growing love and respect of the Jewish people. In the case of Pope Saint John Paul II, it even gently edged toward a mild Catholic Zionism.

Now, after the late Pope Francis sometimes dropped the ball when it came to the Middle East — and was, rightly in some instances, accused of showing partiality to the Palestinians against Israel, or unwittingly reiterating anti-Jewish tropes — Pope Leo is bringing a balanced diplomatic and theological approach to the issues. He listens carefully, is less impulsive, and more strategic.

‘We cannot recognize the Jewish people’

Initially, the church was strongly opposed to Zionism. In 1904, Pope Pius X told Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, that he could not support Zionism for two reasons.

First, as Herzl recorded in his diary, Pius said “The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people.” Religious Judaism had no “further validity,” in Pius’ eyes, as it “was superseded by the teachings of Christ.”

In response to Herzl’s attempt to make an argument for Zionism that was not based on religion, Pius was even more adamant: any religionless group was far worse than a group that, like the Jews, practiced a religion he would not acknowledge.

Yet Pius was, paradoxically, full of compassion for Jews suffering persecution. The core of his approach to Israel could be attributed to a theological attitude known as supersessionism, which is not a doctrine of the Catholic Church, but runs deep in its bloodstream.

Supersessionism teaches that God used the Jews as a vehicle to prepare for Jesus, and that when Jesus came, the Jewish people killed him, cursing themselves. As punishment, the Jews were expelled from their historic land, and their religion was invalidated. (Nevertheless, St. Augustine suggested the Jewish people retained a divine role, through offering testimony to the truth of Christ by their scripture, known under the Church as the Old Testament.)

The radical changes of Nostra Aetate

So far, not so good.

For many subsequent decades, the Vatican had no incentive to support Israel. In 1947, the Vatican never endorsed United Nations Resolution 181, which put forward a plan for separate Jewish and Palestinian states in the Holy Land. The Church preferred the structure that had been in place during Ottoman rule over Palestine, which ended in 1918. In that period, the “millet system” ensured religious freedoms, with 19th-century decrees securing Christian denominational sites and rights.

Under the Ottomans, the status quo arrangements regarding holy sites in Jerusalem were also favorable to Catholicism.

But the Ottomans weren’t coming back. And the state of Israel was, eventually, founded and internationally recognized. So, given the Vatican’s respect for international law, it came to a gradual pragmatic acceptance of the State of Israel.

Matters changed in 1965 with the publication of Nostra Aetate at the Second Vatican Council, convened by Angelo Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII. In the light of the Holocaust and widespread Catholic complicity with anti-Jewishness in that time, Roncalli — who saved thousands of fleeing Jews while papal nuncio in Turkey during the war — had become a resolute opponent of antisemitism.

Roncalli asked the council to publish a document that rejected the deicide charge, which declared that all Jews in Jesus’ time, and subsequently, were guilty of deicide — the killing of God. This move, he hoped, would defang Christian antisemitism.

The document’s fourth paragraph was its great achievement. It rejected the deicide charge, without denying the scriptural accounts. And it recovered St. Paul’s teaching that God’s promises to his people are irrevocable, articulated in Romans 11:29. That meant the Jewish covenant was valid, in contrast to supersessionism.

Finally, it unequivocally condemned antisemitism, without defining that hatred in detail.

Full diplomatic recognition

While many Catholics still today know nothing about Nostra Aetate, Pope John Paul II, 15 years after the document’s publication, moved into high gear in pushing the implications of its teachings into the Catholic mainstream. He was a fierce critic of antisemitism during the second world war in Poland, and witnessed from his underground seminary the ravages of the Holocaust.

Under his pontificate, he established full diplomatic recognition of Israel through a 1993 Fundamental Agreement, which obliquely acknowledged the religious dimensions of this new reality.

He established good relations with the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. He begged God’s forgiveness for the Church’s persecution of the Jewish people.

Informally, in non-authoritative speeches, he showed an awareness that the return of Jews to their biblical land had religious dimensions.

The Church and the Palestinians

This is half the story of the history behind Pope Leo’s decision-making today.

The other half concerns Catholic support for the Palestinians, and Catholic concerns about Arab Christians, of whom there are an estimated 10-15 million in the Middle East.

The Vatican has long supported Palestinian refugees through its charitable agencies. While Pope John Paul II established stronger ties between the Vatican and Israel, he also, in 1999, spoke of “Palestinian’s natural right to a homeland,” and concluded a Fundamental Agreement with the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 2000.

After the U.N. accepted Palestine as a non-member observer state in 2012, the Vatican recognized the state of Palestine in 2015. Internally, none of this was seen as incompatible with the Vatican’s close relations with the Jewish people and the state of Israel.

But the Israeli government thought otherwise, as the Vatican had recognized a state that, in Israel’s eyes, did not exist.

Pope Leo’s immediate predecessor, Francis, did some damage to the Vatican-Israel relationship, including through his citation of a biblical text often deployed against the Jews to speak of evil on the first anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, and his implied criticisms of Israel’s incursion into Gaza in its early days as terrorism. (I think Francis’ more controversial choices regarding Israel were related to his temperament, rather than indicative of a change of course regarding the basic orientation of the Catholic Church.)

Pope Leo’s first moves

On the day of his election, Leo wrote to Rabbi Noam Marans, director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee. “Trusting in the assistance of the Almighty,” he wrote, “I pledge to continue and strengthen the Church’s dialogue and cooperation with the Jewish people in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration Nostra Aetate.”

Twelve days later, when speaking to Jews and Muslims at a meeting convened in Rome, he reiterated: “The theological dialogue between Christians and Jews remains ever important and close to my heart.” He continued, “Even in these difficult times, marked by conflicts and misunderstandings, it is necessary to continue the momentum of this precious dialogue of ours.”

To my mind — although he hasn’t asked my advice! — Leo might consider developing the Church’s teachings on the Jewish people in one way.

In past Church teachings, Jews were expelled from Israel as part of their punishment for the death of Christ. But since the deicide charge has now been rejected, that punishment is no longer tenable. Is it time for Catholics to teach that the Jewish return to the land of Israel may well be part of the promises made by God that are irrevocable?

This is not to affirm the extreme religious nationalism of far-right Israeli ministers like Bezalel Smotrich or Itamar Ben-Gvir, but rather to provide breathing space for moderate Zionism. Moving to such a teaching would also not undermine the Church’s support for the Palestinian people, but rather give responsible credibility to the Vatican’s continued support of the two state solution.

It is also not to suggest that Leo should cease to be outspoken about the suffering of Palestinians. Like the pope who came before him, his empathy for Palestinians has so far been a hallmark of his papacy.

After the only Catholic Church in Gaza, the Church of the Holy Family, was hit by shrapnel — or shelled directly — on July 17, Leo called for the end of the “barbarity of war,” the protection of religious sites, and proper respect for civilians. He subsequently received a call from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who apologised for this incident.

He met Israeli President Isaac Herzog in September discussing the urgent need for a ceasefire, humanitarian access for Gaza and a two state solution. He plans to visit Lebanon soon to show solidarity with Middle Eastern Christians. His papacy will be characterised by his efforts to reconcile differences — as he has been doing so successfully within the Catholic Church.

As the Middle East moves carefully toward peace, in the wake of the recent ceasefire, Leo must walk this tightrope, keeping these two deep commitments in careful balance: a love of the Jewish people and a love of the Palestinian people. This is his signature statement: seeking peace between peoples and nations using all the power of his office.

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