Editorials Fleeing Bethlehem
Fleeing Bethlehem True or false: The Christian church in the Holy Land is dying? False, if you mean by "church" the throngs of Christian pilgrims and tourists who visit the holy sites in Jerusalem,...
...As with anything having to do with the Holy Land, the reasons are complex and the history is long...
...Six miles down the road in Bethlehem, it is the same story: a decline from 80 percent to 20 percent...
...Following the suicide bombings by Palestinian terrorists in Israel in 1996 and 1997, Israeli authorities reacted swiftly and firmly...
...And why is it that Christians, who constitute 6-7 percent of the 6 million Palestinians worldwide, are only half that in their homeland...
...Today, that aim is worth a paramount effort on the part of Christians, Jews, and Muslims...
...In fact, 92 percent of Palestinian Christians have relatives living outside the Holy Land, who offer a ready landing pad when economic or political calamity strikes...
...Christians leave at a greater rate because they are better able and prepared to do so...
...Motivated by the gradual loss of Palestinians' property rights in Israel, restrictions on building homes and businesses, the search for a more secure economic future, and the desire for greater freedom, Christian Palestinian migration has become a flood...
...For without a living Christian community in the Holy Land, the dream of lasting peace will be seriously diminished in the region...
...Christian emigration from Palestine, and from the Middle East and North Africa in general, has been going on for a century...
...A staggering 50 percent of Palestinians lost their jobs, at least temporarily, and 50,000 foreign workers were brought in to replace them...
...But due to a lack of progress in the peace process and to frustration as a result of the deterioration in both the political and economic situations, emigration started picking up...
...And to help stem the flow, in 1994 the Franciscans established the nonprofit Holy Land Foundation...
...Added to these hardships, the Israeli government began revoking longstanding residency permits of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, stepped up the demolition of Palestinian homes there while pursuing a policy of extending Jewish settlements such as Har Homa, and subsidized the housing of 70,000 Jewish families while providing for only 555 Palestinian families...
...As Michel Sabbah, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, has noted (Cornerstone, Autumn 1997), while economic and cultural factors have always played a part in Christian migration from the Holy Land, they have been decisively augmented by recent political pressures...
...The historical reasons have to do primarily with their educational patrimony...
...Whatever gains Israel hopes to make by such policies are offset by the deepening resentment of innocent Palestinians...
...Based in Washington, D.C., and Jerusalem, it provides housing, scholarships, and medical care to a small number of Palestinian Christians...
...They account for a substantial portion of tourism in Israel, and their numbers will increase as we move toward the millennium...
...Israel's security concerns are real and its reaction to terrorist attacks understandable, if often counterproductive...
...The marvel of the Holy Land-and its promise-is in the historic variety of its peoples: their living faiths and the potential positive interaction among them...
...False, if you mean by "church" the throngs of Christian pilgrims and tourists who visit the holy sites in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Galilee each year...
...Obviously, the more that Christians leave, the harder it becomes for the dwindling remnant...
...But it has progressively accelerated...
...Referring to the near-demise of the Oslo Accords under the Netanyahu government, Sabbah notes that "when the peace process started there was a slowdown in emigration...
...These, in turn, have been welcomed abroad...
...Today, these Christians constitute less than 3 percent of the population of Israel (160,000 people, compared to 1 million Muslims and nearly 5 million Jews...
...But true if by "church" you mean the living, faith-constituted indigenous community of Christians (under a historic and dazzling variety of rites and denominations, including Armenian, Coptic, Latin, Orthodox, Protestant, Syrian, etc...
...And as Pope John Paul reminded Prime Minister Netanyahu this summer, "History, above all in the Holy Land, teaches us that great hopes, if unfulfilled over a long period of time, can cause further unforeseen provocations and uncontrolled situations of violence...
...Yet these efforts alone can hardly stem the tide of migration...
...today they account for under 2 percent...
...Peaceful political change in the Holy Land must be fostered not only in Israel but from abroad...
...Still, why, in terms of percentages, do more Christians migrate than their Muslim compatriots, and does it matter...
...But even this small number is down 25 percent in the last twenty-five years...
...They cut off Palestinian access, not only to Israel itself but internally to much of the West Bank and Gaza...
...Abandoning the Holy Land would be a grievous loss for the church, but also for Jews and Muslims whose own religious identities are inextricably bound up in a historical and physical relationship to Christians living in the land of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob...
...Palestinians were also prevented from visiting their relatives and from praying at their holy shrines...
...Thanks to a variety of Christian schools and colleges founded in Palestine over the last century, Christians have had greater access to education and to a variety of technical and other marketable skills...
...While they may help convince some Christians to remain, only a substantial change in the political picture is likely to make a difference...
...In 1922, Christian Palestinians constituted more than 50 percent of the population of Jerusalem...
...foreign policy...
...There have been periods when this was the case in the Holy Land...
...Patriarch Sabbah and other Christian leaders have urged their people to remain home, even if it entails considerable personal and familial sacrifice...
...So far, 62 apartments have been built in Bethany, with another 132 planned in Bethlehem, Jericho, and Nazareth...
...It should also be a goal of U.S...
...Specifically, since the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel and its spectacular victory in the 1967 Six Day War, the pressure for emigration has grown more intense...
...in the holy places: those who call the land home and are linked with 2,000 years of uninterrupted Christian presence there, the mother church of Christianity...
Vol. 124 • December 1997 • No. 22
