Graphic: Pope's speech in detail

Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Israel yesterday to make an appeal for peace in the Middle East, calling for the creation of a Palestinian homeland alongside the Jewish state.

In his address after stepping off an aircraft from Jordan, the Pope — on his first trip to the Holy Land — made the first of a series of speeches calling for peace, justice and security.

He has tried to avoid politics in what he says is a spiritual pilgrimage, but his call for a Palestinian homeland set him at odds with the right-wing Israeli Government, which has refused to back a two-state solution. Aware of the controversy over his reinstatement of a British-born bishop who denied the extent of the extermination of European Jews in the Second World War and of his background in the Hitler Youth, the Pope denounced anti-Semitism.

Plans by the Vatican to make the wartime pope Pius XII a saint have angered Israelis and the current pontiff avoided an exhibition in the Holocaust museum that accuses Pius XII of turning a blind eye to the fate of Jews in Nazi death camps.

Offering prayers later in the day at Yad Vashem, the monument to Holocaust victims, the Pope reiterated his condemnation of the genocide. “May the names of these victims never perish,” he said. “May their suffering never be denied, belittled or forgotten.” His prayers were not enough to mollify many Israelis. Some demanded that the Pope should be arrested over Jewish treasures hoarded by the Vatican.

Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, the chairman of the Yad Vashem council, said that comments by the Pope did not go far enough in healing the rift between the Catholic Church and Jewish people. “There certainly was no apology expressed here,” he said.

A further row started after the Israeli President introduced the Pope to the family of a soldier captured by Hamas militants almost three years ago. Groups representing about 10,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails said that the Pope should also meet families of the prisoners.

Israel allowed about 100 Christians from Gaza into Jerusalem for the visit but denied entry to about 200 more on security grounds, which angered some Palestinian officials. One called on the Pope, who had demanded free access to the Holy City for people of all faiths, to intervene. A Palestinian media centre in east Jerusalem was also shut before the Pope arrived.

There have been fears of unrest because the Pope will be in Israel on May 15, when Israelis celebrate Independence Day but which is marked by Palestinians as the day when hundreds of thousands were displaced.