VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican said Thursday peace between Israelis and Palestinians would never be possible until the Jewish state withdrew from the occupied territories and a Palestinian state was born.
The Vatican made its position clear at the end of a day-long meeting presided by Pope John Paul II and attended by Catholic religious leaders from the Middle East.
In his address at the start of the meeting Thursday morning the pope condemned violence by both Israelis and Palestinians, saying people were being crushed by ``two different extremisms'' that were disfiguring the face of the Holy Land.
A statement from the Vatican spokesman Thursday night said peace between the two peoples ``can be realized only if rights and equality about fundamental questions are respected.''
It listed these fundamental points as ``security for Israel, the birth of a state for the Palestinian people, the evacuation from occupied territories, an internationally guaranteed special statute for the most sacred parts of Jerusalem and a fair solution for Palestinian refugees.''
The future of Jerusalem, which Israel had declared its ''united and eternal'' capital, is one of the most thorny topics in the Middle East peace process.
Israel has thus far resisted calls by the Vatican for a special statute to protect Jerusalem as the city sacred to Christians, Muslims and Jews. Palestinians see East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967, as the capital of a future state.