Bishop asks for U.S. leadership to defuse Israeli-Palestinian tensions WASHINGTON (CNS) -- In a Nov. 8 letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on International Justice and Peace took both Israel and Palestine to task for actions that he said undermined the possibility of a two-state solution in the Holy Land. The situation, said Bishop Richard E. Pates of Des Moines, Iowa, calls for "strong U.S. leadership that holds both parties accountable for building a just and lasting peace." Israel, Bishop Pates said, must "stop settlement expansion in the West Bank, ease residency requirements that separate families, cease home demolitions in East Jerusalem in order to protect Palestinian families, allow movement of people and goods in the West Bank, and review the route of the security barrier for its impact on Palestinian lives and livelihoods, including in the Cremisan Valley." For its part, he added, Palestine must "end violence, improve security and strengthen governance." Bishop Pates said, "The recent barrage of rocket attacks from Gaza into Southern Israel represents a continuing pattern of morally unjustifiable uses of indiscriminate force against civilians. They spread fear among Israeli families and damage the Palestinian cause by undercutting the trust necessary for negotiations." But in his letter to Clinton, he especially focused on Israeli actions in the Cremisan Valley. "A recent statement of the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land expressing great concern over the route of the Israeli-Palestinian separation barrier in the Cremisan Valley