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Christianity in Palestine: Misrepresentation and Dispossession

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  • Christianity in Palestine: Misrepresentation and Dispossession

    CHRISTIANITY IN PALESTINE: MISREPRESENTATION AND DISPOSSESSION

    Electronic Intifada, IL
    Aug 2 2006

    A view of the Old City of Jerusalem -- with both the Haram a-Sharif
    and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre visible -- from Dominus Flevit
    church on the Mount of Olives (Timothy Seidel)

    "You are a Christian?" a foreign tourist inquires with marked disbelief
    of a Palestinian tour guide in Bethlehem. "When did you convert?"

    This response by foreigners, Christian or not, is unfortunately not
    uncommon in Palestine. Even in Bethlehem, the origin to which many
    trace the very roots of their Christian faith, this disbelief goes
    hand-in-hand with tourists' visits to the Church of the Nativity --
    visits that seem to carry with them some image of a time long past
    with only archaeological or religious sites remaining with little
    consideration for the "living stones" that have continuously borne
    witness to this tradition for two millennia.

    Many Christians from the Global North have a hard time seeing
    and relating to Christianity in the Arab world as living, vibrant
    communities of faith with rich spiritual and theological traditions.
    This may be partly due to a lack of understanding about the shape
    of Christianity in other parts of the world, but may also be partly
    due to the often racist and ethnocentric notions of what a Christian
    should look like.

    Christianity in the Arab world has had a long and lively history,
    including in Palestine, where one still finds today communities of
    faith that stretch back thousands of years to the very beginnings of
    the church, where Arabic is spoken in liturgies and sermons, and where
    the church has played an integral role in the development of society,
    whether in terms of providing leadership in very difficult times or
    in pioneering valuable social services like education.

    Today, of the roughly 3.9 million Palestinians living in the Occupied
    Territories, less than two percent are Christians. Of the 1.4 million
    Palestinians living inside Israel, meanwhile, roughly eight percent
    belong to Christian communities. Though small, these communities bear
    witness to two millennia of continuous Christian presence in the land
    called "holy" by much of the rest of the world.

    Greek Catholic (Melkite) Palm Sunday service in Bethlehem (Christi
    Hoover Seidel)

    Palestinian Christians belong to several traditional communities of
    faith, communities that can be grouped into four broad categories.
    The first are the traditions of the Eastern Orthodox churches. These
    would include the Greek Orthodox communities, claiming a continuous
    presence in the Holy Land since the times of the apostles. The second
    group is made of up what is sometimes referred to as the "Oriental"
    Orthodox churches, such as the Syrian, Coptic, and Armenian Orthodox
    communities. A third category consists of those churches belonging
    to the Catholic family of churches. In addition to Roman Catholic
    communities, referred to in the Middle East as the "Latin" church,
    one finds "Eastern Catholic" or "Eastern Rite Catholic" churches.
    These churches, though in communion with Rome and recognizing the
    authority of the pope, have maintained their own distinctive liturgy
    and traditions. Members of such communities as Greek Catholic or Syrian
    Catholic outnumber the number of "Latin" Catholics in Palestine and
    have a long history of involvement in the Palestinian struggle for
    justice. Finally, there are various Protestant communities, including
    not only Anglican and Lutheran churches, present since the nineteenth
    century, but also independent evangelical churches, including Baptist,
    Pentecostal, and more.

    Today in Palestine, Christianity is experiencing what many would
    consider a crisis. This is not due to the growth of so-called
    Islamic fundamentalism or the persecution of "believers" by their
    Muslim neighbors, misrepresentations that are unfortunately used
    to distract from the realities of occupation. Instead, the plight
    of the Palestinian Christian is very much connected to that of the
    Palestinian Muslim in that both, whether in the Occupied Territories
    or inside Israeli itself, are experiencing daily injustices at the
    hands of oppressive and discriminatory policies imposed on them by
    the Israeli government.

    Palestinian Christians, like their Muslim brothers and sisters, have
    experienced a long history of dispossession and have not been immune
    to Israeli policies of occupation and discrimination. If anything,
    they have felt more strongly the feelings of forsakenness, knowing
    full well that many Christians in North America and Europe support
    without question the state of Israel in its oppression of their
    people. Daily experiences of humiliation at checkpoints, of land
    confiscation to make way for the separation barrier, the illegal
    occupation and colonization of Palestinian territory, lack of mobility
    and access to basic services, unemployment, poverty, and no sense of
    hope for a better future for their children have all contributed to
    this growing emigration of Palestinian Christians from the historical
    land of Palestine.

    Like their Muslim neighbors, who are prevented by checkpoints and
    roadblocks from making pilgrimage to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem,
    Christians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are denied basic
    religious freedoms, routinely prohibited from traveling very short
    distances to worship in one of the most holy sites in Christianity --
    the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Old City of Jerusalem, where
    the church commemorates Jesus' crucifixion, burial, and resurrection
    from the dead.

    A famous ancient mosaic in the Church of the Loaves and Fishes on
    the sea of Galilee (taken by Christi Hoover Seidel)

    For the Palestinian Christians of Bethlehem, for example, traveling the
    six-mile (ten-kilometer) distance to Jerusalem's Old City is impossible
    without special permission. Roughly half of Bethlehem's residents are
    Christian. Church leaders estimate that over 2,000 Christians have
    emigrated from the Bethlehem area since September 2000, representing
    a decline of more than nine percent of Bethlehem's total Christian
    population. [1]

    Rev. Alex Awad, Palestinian pastor of the East Jerusalem Baptist
    Church, reminds us that "Palestinian Christians have existed in
    the Holy Land since the day of Pentecost and have kept the torch of
    Christianity burning faithfully for the past two thousand years." The
    erosion of Christianity in her birthplace, he poignantly observes
    "is a loss for the body of Christ everywhere. Can we imagine the Holy
    Land devoid of the Christian presence and a church which has been a
    faithful witness for Christ since the day the church was born?" [2]

    Unfortunately, various reportings of this phenomenon has revealed
    stereotypes in North America and Europe that continue to see the
    root socio-economic problem for Palestinian Christians as their
    Muslim neighbors. It is disconcerting that the portrayal of the
    Christian absence in Palestine, for example, is often played off
    as the fault of Muslims and not of the illegal Israeli occupation,
    as if Muslims are oppressing Christians and that this is the root
    of the problem for Palestinians. It is the occupation that has made
    life so difficult that many Christians have moved from Palestine. This
    continues to be a serious problem, ignored especially by "Christian"
    tour groups who while visiting the "Holy Land" seldom bother to even
    come to Bethlehem to see these ancient sites, let alone see these
    Christian communities and recognize their existence.

    These attempts to frame this conflict in such anti-Muslim ways only
    distracts (often intentionally) from the burden of responsibility
    that sits squarely on the shoulders of the state of Israel and its
    intentional violation of international law and the U.S. for its 100
    billion dollar financing of this structure of violence and death.

    An example of this is a resolution that is currently being circulated
    around the U.S. House of Representatives claiming to be concerned
    about the plight of Palestinian Christians and their diminishing
    presence in Palestine. Yet this resolution makes no mention of the root
    causes of this conflict but instead blames Palestinians themselves
    for their own victimhood, grossly misrepresenting this situation and
    the Palestinian people.

    Only recently, while the world fixes its gaze on the ongoing Israeli
    assault on the people of Lebanon -- both Muslim and Christian -- and
    gives little attention to Gaza and the Israeli-caused humanitarian
    disaster for the million and a half people living there, the Israeli
    military has begun uprooting ancient olive trees in Bethlehem's
    Cremisan area, marking out the path of the separation barrier to be
    built through one of the regions most valuable heritage sites.

    Israel's wall in the West Bank is effectively annexing a large
    percentage of Bethlehem's agricultural land (Timonthy Seidel)

    The Cremisan area is of significant heritage value, home to the only
    winery in Palestine and two monasteries. Some of the finest examples
    of the regions ancient terraced landscape can be found here. The wall
    will carve through these terraces destroying agricultural landscapes
    that have survived for centuries. When the wall is completed, Beit
    Jala district of the Bethlehem area will have lost access to two-thirds
    of its land.

    It is not the Palestinian Muslim population that is responsible
    for the expropriation of more land for the construction of this
    430-mile/700-kilometer separation barrier. It is not the Palestinian
    Muslim population that is responsible for the expansion of illegal
    settlements and the creation of a "Greater Jerusalem" depopulated of
    its Palestinian citizens. It is not the Palestinian Muslim population
    that is responsible for the checkpoints that obstruct mobility, nor the
    demolition of homes and other forms of collective punishment. It is not
    the Palestinian Muslim population that is responsible for the "one big
    prison" status of Gaza. It is not the Palestinian Muslim population
    that is responsible for this separation barrier that will become the
    de facto border of a "Palestinian State" composed of several isolated
    islands of land on roughly 40 to 50 percent of the West Bank. It is
    not the Palestinian Muslim population that will be responsible for,
    absent a viable, contiguous Palestinians state, the "reservation"
    life that will parallel the Native North American experience in the
    United States. No, it is the ongoing Israeli structure of occupation
    and dispossession that continues to devastate Palestinian livelihood
    for both Christian and Muslim alike.

    At a time when the U.S. Congress is considering the plight of
    Palestinian Christians, they are witnessing the destruction of their
    community's land, heritage and livelihood. The people of Bethlehem
    have been very clear in their message to the international community,
    "If you want to help us, stop the construction of Israel's Wall." [3]

    Anyone who lives in this society long enough is aware of tensions that
    might exist between Christians and Muslims. Palestinians society like
    any other society in the world is dealing with its own problems.
    But to focus on this internal tension to the exclusion of other
    factors is missing the mark and emptying this issue of its context.

    It is indeed hard to be Palestinian Christian these days. But it is
    also hard being a Palestinian Muslim. The fact of the matter is that
    it is hard simply being a Palestinian.

    Timothy Seidel is a peace development worker with Mennonite Central
    Committee in the Occupied Palestinian Territories where he has lived
    for the past two years.

    Footnotes [1] For more on these conditions in Bethlehem, see the
    report from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
    (OCHA) and the Office of the Special Coordinator for the Peace Process
    in the Middle East (UNSCO), "Costs of Conflict: The Changing Face of
    Bethlehem" (December 2004).

    [2] See Rev. Awad's article in "Christian Zionism and Peace in the
    Holy Land," MCC Peace Office Newsletter 35/3 (July-September 2005).

    [3] See Open Bethlehem's report "Bulldozers start work on Wall to
    annex Bethlehem's Cremisan Monastery," and the Urgent Appeal from
    the city of Beit Jala in Bethlehem district.

    http://electronicintifada.net/v2/articl e5380.shtml
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