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.
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