The Vatican supports a Palestinian state, according to Pope Leo XIV.
“The Holy See has for many years publicly endorsed the proposal of a solution of two states,” the pope told reporters Sunday on board a flight from Turkey to Lebanon. “We all know that in this moment, Israel does not accept that solution,” he said, adding that the Vatican sees it as the “only solution” to end the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
The Holy See is the governing authority of the Roman Catholic Church and is headed by the pope in the Vatican.
Israel and Hamas are still engaged in a ceasefire agreement that took effect in October, just over two years after Hamas carried out a terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that left 1,200 people dead and another 251 captives in Gaza. Since the ceasefire took effect, Israeli troops have pulled back to the designated “yellow line” within Gaza. All the living hostages were returned on Oct. 13, but Israel has accused Hamas of slow walking the remains of the deceased hostages. The bodies of two dead hostages are still believed to be in Gaza.
The U.S. helped to broker the current peace deal between Israel and Hamas that is based on President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan, that includes a complete end to the war and the disarmament of Hamas.
Leo stressed that the Vatican is a friend to Israel, adding, “we try with both sides to be a voice of mediation that can help get closer to a solution with justice for all.”
Leo, who is the first American pope, is not the first pope to openly endorse a Palestinian state. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI called for a “sovereign Palestinian homeland,” and before his death earlier this year, Pope Francis said he believed a two-state solution was the “the only solution” to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
In 2015, the Vatican signed its first “Comprehensive Agreement between the Holy See and the state of Palestine,” in which it declared a “hope that the much desired two-State solution may become a reality as soon as possible.”
An argument for a two-state solution in which Palestine would receive formal statehood crosses political divides and has received support from some Republicans and Democrats. Still, there is significant opposition to a two-state solution, especially on the political right, fearing that the “solution” would ultimately lead to the erasure of Israel.
The two-state solution, in which Israel and Palestine would have their own state side by side, is “a great branding move,” but it is “not a solution,” Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Eugene Kontorovich previously told The Daily Signal. “It is an interim step to the destruction of Israel.”
“The minimum demands of the Palestinians are the ethnic cleansing of every single Jew in Judea and Samaria, every single Jew in the Old City of Jerusalem,” according to Kontorovich. “They want something no one has ever asked for before—they want an independent country, free of Jews, free of an ethnic minority.”
Instead of agreeing to a diplomatic solution, Kontorovich says the Palestinians have chosen “war and jihad.”
