As part of the many events during the Jubilee year, His Holiness Pope John Paul II made a statement yesterday, Sunday March 12 asking for the forgiveness of the Catholic Church.

As a Christian Palestinian, I have always been proud of the capacity of Christianity to indulge regularly in an exercise of critical introspection.

However, one would hope that this noble message will not be again misunderstood and exploited to give the State of Israel an immunity from its wrongs and to release it from criticism from now to eternity.

In the days before the visit of the Pope to the Holy Land, one would hope that reciprocity is also contemplated and that in Israel it is received as an opportunity for a similar endeavor in self-examination and soul - searching.

Israel was supposed to be the solution to what was called the Jewish question. As a result, we the Palestinian people, Muslims and Christians alike, are now constantly a question on the international agenda, still awaiting an equitable and satisfactory answer to our dispossession as a people.

We the Palestinians have become the Jews of the Jews, the victims of the victims of European History. An Israeli apology to the Palestinian people and to the Lebanese people is long overdue and could be another confidence building measure that diplomats have not secured in our quest for Peace with Reconciliation.