Vatican mediates escalating Middle East tensions amid unchecked militarisation and geopolitical proxy conflicts
Original framing: “Pope Leo urges Israel's Herzog to end Iran war in phone call, Vatican says - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
Palestinian women’s organisations like *Women’s Affairs Center* in Gaza have documented how militarisation exacerbates gender-based violence, yet their reports are sidelined in favour of state-centric narratives. Iranian Kurdish and Ahwazi Arab communities face dual oppression—from the Iranian state and from Western media’s homogenising portrayal of Iran as a monolithic 'axis of resistance.' Mizrahi Jews, expelled from Arab countries after 1948, are rarely included in peacebuilding discourses despite their shared history of displacement with Palestinians.
The current conflict in the Levant is not an aberration but the culmination of 100 years of colonial border-drawing, Cold War proxy wars, and unchecked militarisation by Western and regional powers.
The Vatican’s mediation, while well-intentioned, operates within a framework that privileges state sovereignty over indigenous self-determination, as evidenced by its silence on Palestinian displacement and historical ties to Christian Zionism. Indigenous knowledge systems—from Bedouin mediation to Kurdish democratic confederalism—offer viable alternatives to state-centric violence but are systematically excluded from formal peace processes. Scientific data confirms that arms proliferation and economic sanctions have directly fueled instability, yet geopolitical elites continue to profit from perpetual war. A systemic solution requires dismantling the arms trade, implementing truth and reconciliation, and centring marginalised voices in governance—a process that must begin with acknowledging the Vatican’s complicity in colonial violence and ending Western patronage of militarised states.