"We are profoundly and deeply saddened by the recent escalation of violence that killed eight in the Yeshiva last night and 120 in Gaza in the last week," said the Rev Munib A Younan, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Holy Land and Jordan, in a statement. "We express our sincere condolences to all who are mourning the loss of loved ones."
Yet the bishop pointed out that it is those who see no future that resort to violence to address their problems.
"We in the church have been steady and strong voices for non-violence. As it says in one of our Lutheran schools, 'violence is the tool of the incompetent,'" Younan said. "I believe it is also the tool of the desperate and the hopeless.
"This is not to excuse any violence on any side but to face the hard reality that unless people have something to live for they have nothing to lose."
A Palestinian gunman, a resident of East Jerusalem, killed eight Israeli students and wounded nine when he opened fire in the library of a prominent Jewish seminary on Thursday evening.
The shooting was the deadliest incident in Israel since a suicide bomber killed 11 people in Tel Aviv on April 17, 2006. Moreover, the seminary shooting was the first major attack by Palestinian militants in Jerusalem since a suicide bomber killed eight people on February 22, 2004.
On Thursday, students were gathering for a nighttime study session in the seminary's library when shooting suddenly broke out. Unprepared students scrambled to escape by jumping out of windows and fleeing the attack.
Yehuda Meshi Zahav, head of the Zaka rescue service, described the scene after the attack: "The whole building looked like a slaughterhouse. The floor was covered in blood," he said. "The floors are littered with holy books covered in blood."
The seminary, Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, is one of the most prestigious centres of Jewish studies and is closely tied to the leadership of the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank. It oversees some 400 high school students and young Israeli soldiers, many of which carry arms.
The seminary shooting comes on the heels of renewed fighting between Israel and Gaza that has resulted in the deaths of more than 120 Palestinians and four Israelis since last week.
