Canadian Anglican Archbishop Shane Parker Blames Israel for West Bank and Gaza "Devastation"

COMMENTARY

By David W. Virtue, DD

www.virtueonline.org

April 3, 2026

Canadian Anglican Archbishop Shane Parker has described the situation faced by Palestinian Christians—and Palestinians in general—as "extremely challenging," claiming that evidence of Israel's intention to occupy, inhabit, and control Palestinian territory is everywhere. He pointed to what he called "the devastation of Gaza," major roads dividing the West Bank, and the "perennial inconveniences" faced by Palestinians across the region.

What is striking is what the archbishop did not say. There was no mention of Hamas—not once.

The Omission of Hamas

Any honest accounting of Gaza's devastation must begin with Hamas. The destruction there is inseparable from Hamas's foundational ideology: the elimination of Israel and the killing of Israelis. Hamas has consistently refused to lay down its arms, rejected negotiated settlements, and made clear it will pursue martyrdom rather than concede anything. Its fighters have watched their own people die without apparent remorse, because the destruction of Israel takes precedence over the welfare of Gazans.

While no single verified figure exists for Hamas combatants killed in Gaza, credible estimates range from approximately 8,900 named fighters to Israeli claims of between 10,000 and 20,000. The true number remains uncertain because Hamas does not publish combatant-specific data, and Israel's public statements have at times differed from its internal intelligence assessments.

Israel's Record of Reactive, Not Proactive, Warfare

The archbishop's framing also ignores a consistent pattern in Israel's military history: its wars have been reactive, not aggressive.

In the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, five Arab armies invaded after Israel declared independence.

In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israeli territory.

Hamas attacks from 2001 through 2023 involved sustained rocket fire, kidnappings, and terrorist strikes that initiated each escalation cycle.

Hezbollah's cross-border raids and rocket fire in 2006—and in the years since—have repeatedly triggered Israeli military responses.

In each case, Israel's actions were defensive and framed as measures of survival. Furthermore, the Israel Defense Forces have consistently warned civilians ahead of military operations—a practice that Iran, the Houthis, and Hezbollah have never followed.

Gaza: The Facts on the Ground

Archbishop Parker states that Israel's intention to "occupy, inhabit and control" Palestinian territory is self-evident. But this assertion requires scrutiny. In 2005, Israel unilaterally disengaged from the Gaza Strip, dismantling all 21 Israeli settlements and withdrawing its military forces. Gaza was left under Palestinian control—and subsequently fell to Hamas, which used the territory not to build civil institutions but to construct tunnels and launch rockets into Israeli civilian areas.

That history does not appear in the archbishop's remarks.

On the question of the West Bank, the international legal consensus holds that Israel's continued control of the territory—including East Jerusalem—is illegal under international law, as the occupation has become prolonged, permanent, and linked to annexation policies. These are legitimate concerns deserving serious engagement. But they must be weighed alongside Israel's legitimate security needs, which the archbishop also failed to acknowledge. This co-called consensus usually cites UN Resolution 242.

According to this resolution, Israeli withdrawal from Samaria (clumsily called the West Bank) was to take place in the context of mutual recognition of the right to exist and territorial adjustments to achieve secure boundaries.  Withdrawal was ordered from "territories," not "the territories."  Both Arthur Goldberg and Lord Carrington, the primary authors of this resolution, have said that the word "the" was purposely omitted because it was not intended for Israel to give back all of her territories, since they recognized that some were needed for secure boundaries.

Despite the fact that most Arab states have refused to recognize Israel's right to exist (a condition of Resolution 242), Israel has implemented the principles of the Resolution three times.  When Egypt terminated its claims of belligerency in 1979, Israel returned the Sinai.  When Jordan signed a peace agreement, Israel returned land claimed by Jordan.  Then in September 2005 Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, only to be met with new attacks on her civilians launched from that territory.

The charge of illegal occupation must therefore be rejected.  Israel has made repeated efforts to comply with UN stipulations for the territories, while her Arab neighbors have not.  When the Palestinians appeared to accept Israel's right to exist during the Oslo negotiations, Israel turned over control of major West Bank cities to the Palestinian Authority (PA).  But when the PA showed support for terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens in 2000, Israel resumed control of those cities.  In that same year Israel offered to return 92% of the West Bank, which some dismiss as ungenerous because, they claim, Israel never owned the land in the first place.  

Yet Jews have lived in ancient Samaria (the West Bank) for over three thousand years.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has argued that violence in Judea and Samaria should not be attributed to settlers broadly, but to what he calls "unsettlers"—those who commit terrorist acts and do not represent law-abiding residents. Whatever one makes of that framing, the security reality is undeniable: continued attacks within Israel make an open border with the West Bank untenable.

Israel's West Bank separation barrier was built in direct response to the Second Intifada (2000–2005), a period marked by frequent suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians. Construction began in 2002 following a surge in deadly attacks. The archbishop described the resulting checkpoints and road divisions as "inconveniences" to Palestinians—without once acknowledging why they exist.

The Wider Regional Threat

The archbishop also made no mention of Hezbollah's attacks from Lebanon—a country that contains one Anglican church: All Saints Anglican Church in Beirut, the sole Anglican parish in Lebanon, belonging to the Diocese of Jerusalem. One might reasonably ask why Archbishop Parker has not pressed the Lebanese government to protect that congregation from Hezbollah's destabilizing influence.

Most conspicuously absent from the archbishop's remarks was any reference to Iran, which has been launching rockets toward Israel since March 12. In a coordinated barrage, Iran and Hezbollah fired more than 100 rockets and missiles at Israel in a single nighttime assault, with no apparent effort to distinguish between civilian and military targets.

A Final Word

Israel is a state surrounded by adversaries—seven nations, by some counts, and so is fighting on seven fronts—that have at various times called for its destruction. It is worth noting that if that destruction were ever achieved, the first people likely to be executed under theocratic rule would be Christians: the very people Archbishop Parker claims to speak for.

A pastoral voice on this conflict is not unwelcome. But pastoral concern that omits Hamas, ignores Iranian aggression, says nothing of Hezbollah, and is ignorant of the history of the conflict while cataloguing Israeli offenses is not balanced commentary. It is a selective indictment—and the archbishop's flock deserves better.  It is straining at gnats while swallowing camels.