An Israel Government spokesman today termed “malicious and unwarranted” a statement issued yesterday in Rome by the Sacred Congregation for Propagation of the Faith advising pilgrims planning to visit the Palestine area during the Vatican-proclaimed Holy Year of 1950 to avoid sectors under Israel control because they “might be denied permission to enter the Arab zone.”
The official spokesman asserted that Israel was the only country which has as yet “adopted adequate measures for facilitating to every possible extent” the forthcoming pilgrimage to the Holy Places. He pointed out that 95 percent of the Holy Places were in Arab-held territory and emphasized that the Jewish state has made it clear that “pilgrims would be allowed to cross to the Arab lines from Israel territory and would also be allowed to cross into Israel from the Arab countries.”
(The statement issued in Rome, as reported in a dispatch to the New York Times, said that the Israel Government looks upon the influx of 100,000 “pilgrims as a possible source of revenue.” Although there are “protestations of friendship and accord with the Arabs on the part of the Jews,” the Congregation’s statement continued, “the pillaging of Arab possessions in the Jewish zone continues and the life of most of the Arabs in the Jewish zone is a hard one.”)
The spokesman, noting that the Israel Government recently appointed an inter-Ministerial committee on its own initiative to make all necessary arrangements to ease the stay of pilgrims, said the “gravest view is now taken by official circles at the maligning attitude adopted by Vatican bodies.”
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