wfn.org | Title: Occupied Palestinian Territories: still home to

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World Council of Churches
For Immediate Use 03-09
24 June 2003

Occupied Palestinian Territories: still home to Christians

By Joel (*)
ecumenical accompanier within the WCC's Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in
Palestine and Israel (EAPPI)

Free photos to illustrate this feature are available (see below). 

It is easy to forget that the West Bank, home to so much modern injustice and
violence, was once home to other events as well. It was in the West Bank -
Bethlehem to be exact - that Jesus was born. And it is in the West Bank that
Christians have lived for nearly 2,000 years. To this day, church steeples in
many Palestinian towns and villages remind the visitor of the long history of
Palestinian Christians in this troubled land.

Their lives, however, have not been easy. The past century has witnessed a
startling drop in the number of Christians living in the Occupied Territories
(both the West Bank and Gaza).	They have emigrated in large numbers.  Today,
no more than two percent of the population is Christian, compared to as much
as 20 percent in 1948.	The population of towns like Bethlehem and Ramallah
were once over 90 percent Christian, but today, Bethlehem is less than 25
percent Christian while in Ramallah, the percentage is even lower.  In fact,
there are more Christians from Bethlehem living in Chile and Brazil than in
Bethlehem.  Similarly, there are more Christians from Ramallah living in the
American cities of Detroit and Jacksonville than in Ramallah.

Today, fewer than 50,000 Christians still live in the West Bank (about 2,000
also live in Gaza).  Each month, especially during this current intifada, the
number has shrunk further.  Many fear that this will be the century that the
two thousand-year-old Christian community in the West Bank and Gaza
disappears.

While not making light of these concerns, it is important to emphasize that
the church is still alive today.  Christians are heavily involved in running
schools and hospitals.	Others are organizing centres that foster cultural
activities and provide a positive setting in which young people can come
together.  Each Sunday, people fill the pews of Catholic, Orthodox, and
Protestant churches alike.  And from these sanctuaries, they worship a Lord
who passed through the very towns that many Palestinians still call home
today.

Heartache, abuse 

While Christians in Palestine constitute a small segment of the population,
they will express a broad range of opinions and focus when asked about their
lives in the Occupied Territories.  Many, of course, will share their
perspectives on the Israeli occupation. Reportedly, dozens of Christians have
been killed by Israeli forces during this intifada, mostly in the Bethlehem
area.				     

Others are well acquainted with interrogation and imprisonment in Israeli
facilities.  The stories of heartache and abuse at the hands of Israeli
soldiers can be heard in every church, and probably in every pew.

For example, two months ago in the northern West Bank village of Zababdeh,
one 33-year-old mechanic, a member of the Roman Catholic community, was taken
from his shop by a passing military jeep to be used as a human shield while
the soldiers fired beside his head in response to a Molotov cocktail that
someone had thrown near their jeep.  It was his wife's 24th birthday.  The
practice of taking human shields is illegal according to international law,
and Christians - like their Muslim neighbours - share the fear of and anger
at being abused by Israeli soldiers who break the law and take advantage of
Palestinians.

One of the priests in Zababdeh, Father Aktham, points to another realm in
which the Israeli occupation causes difficulty for the Palestinian Christian
community.  The Shas Party, a right-wing component of Prime Minister Sharon's
government, was given responsibility last year for the Ministry of the
Interior.  Many priests and nuns ministering in Palestinian congregations
depend on a work visa to maintain their legal status in the West Bank.	For
the past year, the minister has refused to renew these visas, leaving some
eighty priests and nuns in a very awkward position: they want to be faithful
to the congregations they serve, but find themselves no longer with the legal
right to be in Israel or the West Bank.  The ministry is now in the hands of
another party that promises to rectify the problem.

Minority status

While some Christians focus on the occupation as the most crucial issue in
their lives today, others are more preoccupied with being a minority in a
predominantly Muslim environment.  All Christians agree on the injustice and
abuse that Israeli occupation has brought into their lives, but there is less
agreement on what it means to be a minority in the midst of a Muslim
majority. One Christian, for example, may complain about the myriad ways that
Muslims discriminate against Christians.  The officials who hire teachers at
the public school will hire a Muslim over a Christian, he says, because they
would rather have a co-religionist than a perhaps better qualified Christian
influencing the lives of children.  A neighbour, however, disagrees, and
points to numerous examples of Christians being treated equally.  He even
identifies the ways in which Christians have received preferential treatment.
 For example, Yasser Arafat has a higher percentage of Christians in his
government than there is in the population at large.

Some Christians also talk about how their lives are impacted by Western
media.	Muslims often interpret the movies and sitcoms that are broadcast
into Palestinian homes as evidence of the moral failures of Christianity.  A
naked and unmarried Western couple, frolicking on a Muslim Palestinian's TV
set, contributes to the stereotype that Christians are a loose, ungodly
people.  Palestinian Christians then find themselves having to deal with
these associations some Muslims make with Christianity.  As one Palestinian
priest says, "Western TV hurts us."

Palestinian Muslims who live in areas where there is no Christian population
may be ignorant of both the history and presence of Palestinian Christians. 
For example, some first-year students at the Arab American University,
located just outside the predominantly Christian village of Zababdeh, are
surprised to discover that some Palestinians are not Muslim.  Despite the
important role that Christians have played in Palestinian society, some
Muslims do not appreciate their contributions to Palestinian history, often
because they never learned about them.

Some Muslims accuse Christians of not being involved in the struggle against
the Israeli occupation, saying that Muslims suffer for the cause while
Christians live an easy life.  For Christians, however, this is a painful and
false accusation.  Christians are sometimes killed, jailed and beaten, just
as Muslims are.  Christians too are confined to their homes when a town is
placed under curfew.  Christians also have difficulties at checkpoints and
are forbidden to use settler by-pass roads.  They too suffer from
unemployment and worry about what kind of future their children will have.

Even after recounting some of the above difficulties, Palestinian Christians
recognize and speak with pride about the many ways Muslims and Christians
co-exist positively in the Occupied Territories.  In Zababdeh and other
communities, Muslims and Christians attend school together, learning from
both Muslim and Christian teachers.  Sheikhs and priests sometimes pay visits
to one another on important religious holidays, or to discuss community
issues.  The Palestinian constitution, currently being created, has been sent
to church leaders for their review and feedback.  Yasser Arafat, when not
confined to Ramallah, attends Christmas Eve mass in Bethlehem each year.

Christians and Muslims are united in their opposition to Israeli occupation. 
There is, however, some apprehension about what an independent Palestinian
state might look like once the occupation ends.  Islamic movements have taken
on an increasingly powerful role in Palestinian political culture, and
generally call for the establishment of an Islamic state in Palestine. 
Christians, on the other hand, along with many other Muslims, are united in
their call for a more secular and inclusive political system.  For them, it
would be a dubious improvement to go from an Israeli occupation to an Islamic
state.

The life of Christians in the Occupied Territories is complex.	They live
amidst the realities of a military occupation.	They also live as a small
minority in a predominantly Muslim society.  And in many ways, they live
isolated from the church in other countries, where Christians are often more
interested in the aging biblical sites in places like Bethlehem than in the
living communities that live there.

(*) 29-year-old Joel from the USA has just completed a stint as an ecumenical
accompanier in Zababdeh within the WCC's Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme
in Palestine and Israel. In the small, predominantly Christian village of
Zababdeh, Joel and two other ecumenical accompaniers were working within a
loose network of churches and organizations including a Latin Patriarchate
convent and secondary school, Greek Orthodox, Greek Melchite and Anglican
churches. From their base in Zababdeh, the three ecumenical accompaniers
participated in classes at the Arab American University, accompanied school
buses, and helped Jenin's YMCA provide food and water for the municipality
while it was under curfew. Joel has a BA in Political Science and Sociology,
and a Masters in Church History with a thesis on the Palestinian church under
Israeli rule. (The Ecumenical Accompaniers are not named in full for security
reasons.)

See photos at: 
http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/international/palestine/eappi/index_10.html#z
abadeh 
For a free of charge high resolution version of these photos, please contact
us at: 
media@wcc-coe.org 

Other reports and photos on the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in
Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) appear on our website:
http://www2.wcc-coe.org/eappi.nsf 
http://wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/international/palestine/eappi/index.html 

For further information, please contact the Media Relations Office,
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