The Daily Star – Lebanon
Dec 23 2006

How can the Arab Christians survive?

By Rami G. Khouri
Daily Star staff
Saturday, December 23, 2006

"A commandment of love" was the theme that the Latin patriarch of
Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, stressed when I asked him last week about
what Arab Christians should be doing to address the many challenges
and threats in the Middle East today. I was especially interested in
the role of Arab Christians because their plight is highlighted this
Christmas week, even as a delegation of United Kingdom church leaders
makes a timely Holy Land pilgrimage.

Christians experience the same pressures and challenges as the
majority Muslim population living under Israeli occupation, the
assault of Western armies, or the incompetent, autocratic
mismanagement of their own Arab political leaders. A strangled
Bethlehem, though, is likely to catch the attention of Western
citizens and church leaders more than a stressed Alexandria, Aleppo
or Casablanca. The four British pilgrims are the archbishop of
Canterbury, Rowan Williams; the archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal
Cormac Murphy-O’Connor; the moderator of the Free Churches, the
Reverend David Coffey; and the primate of the Armenian Church of
Great Britain, Bishop Nathan Hovhannisian.

The focal point of their four-day visit is a pilgrimage to the Church
of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Their trip and witness will help
Christians and other people of good faith around the world better
appreciate the impact of the Israeli occupation on all Palestinians,
including Christian communities.

Sabbah welcomed the pilgrimage and noted that, "at a time when our
communities in the two Holy cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem are
separated by a wall and checkpoints, the visit of the churches’
ecumenical delegation is a reminder to us, to the Israelis and the
Palestinians, and to the world, that the pilgrims’ path of hope and
love must remain open."

Hope and love stand in sharp contrast to the Israeli colonization and
control policies in and around Bethlehem that have shattered the
physical, spiritual and economic integrity of the community, by
cutting off the built-up areas from thousands of hectares of
agricultural land and water resources. The main culprits are Israel’s
separation wall to fence in the Palestinians, and an associated
system of smaller cement walls, 27 Israeli settlements, and a network
of electric fences and apartheid-like "Jewish settlers-only" roads
and checkpoints, almost all built on land confiscated from
Bethlehem’s private owners. The result is a prison-like environment
for the people of Bethlehem, 70 percent of whom now live below the
poverty line. After Israel’s attacks and reoccupation of Bethlehem in
2001 and 2002, some 3,000 Christians emigrated, representing 10
percent of the local Christian population.

Leila Sansour, the Palestinian chief executive of the Open Bethlehem
project that works to preserve the city’s physical, spiritual,
demographic and economic integrity, wrote last week: "A UN report
into Christianity in Bethlehem predicts that our community will not
survive another two generations. We live from pilgrimages, and our
city is closed. We have traditionally stored our wealth in land, and
our land behind the wall has been seized. Our lives are intimately
bound up, economically and socially, with the Christian community in
Jerusalem, yet we are forbidden to enter that city, which lies only
20 minutes away."

When I met with Sabbah in Larnaca, Cyprus, last week, I asked him if
he saw a particular role that Arab Christians could and should play.
His reply was clear, and challenging: "My vision is that we
Christians, whatever are our numbers, are Christians in and for our
society, which is a Muslim Arab society. Christians have something
specific to give as Christians, because of their belief in Jesus
Christ and all the values that Jesus Christ taught us. This is an
obligation. Our commandment is a commandment of love, and it is shows
the way to build a society. Christian love is about accepting the
other or not accepting him. It is about building with the other or
refusing to build with him. All the Christian Arabs can bring to Arab
society this love as a power of cohesion within the society … to
love themselves and show how to live together with the Muslims who
are the majority in these societies."

He went on to say: "There must be a broad project, a social,
economic, political project so that people together can see how they
can prepare a country and homeland, and enrich every citizen so that
he or she feels at home, content and secure, without any fear of the
other. All citizens must have the same place and opportunities in
terms of their social and political rights."

In replying to a question of mine about whether Arab Christians could
play a role as bridges to the West, he answered: "We Christians can
be a true bridge through all the churches that are present in the
world. All of us together can have an impact. We have an obligation
to understand Islam for what it is, therefore we have the obligation
even to have alliances with Muslims, in order to build a new type of
society, and bring this as a model of coexistence to the West."

Love, indeed, seems worth a try. In that spirit, I say Merry
Christmas to all, and early Eid al-Adha and Happy Hanukkah wishes to
my Muslim and Jewish brothers and sisters, hoping that all of us
together will respond to Michel Sabbah’s call for an ideology of love
to replace this time of war.

Rami G. Khouri writes a regular commentary for THE DAILY STAR.