wfn.org | War comes to Jesus's birthplace

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Note #7092 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

15-March-2002
02105

War comes to Jesus's birthplace

Bethlehem is no longer a haven from Israeli-Palestinian violence

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - Nuha Khoury never thought she'd see snipers crouching on the roof of the Dar al-Kalima Model School, although it sits atop a strategic hill in Bethlehem, Israel.

Although last year's violence sometimes spilled over into Bethlehem, she didn't think the historic city eight miles outside of Jerusalem would have to contend directly with soldiers and tanks.

But three Israeli tanks were parked in the yard of the Lutheran-operated school on a recent Friday morning. Khoury, who works there, said the Israeli military was using the site to monitor the Dheisheh refugee camp that sprawls down the hill behind the school.

Last week Israeli soldiers rounded up men aged between 14 and 45 years old at the Dheisheh camp. The Israelis were heavily armed and supported by machine-gun fire from tanks and Apache helicopters. It was a part of Israel's 14-day campaign against Palestinian militants.

To the Israelis, this is an effort to arrest and neutralize suicide bombers and other gunmen. But to the Palestinians, it is one aspect of a policy of harassment. They point out that it hasn't caught many combatants, most of whom have slipped away before soldiers arrived. It is the Palestinian civilians who a left behind to face the blindfolds, handcuffs and interrogations.

Bethlehem has two refugee camps at its outskirts - Dheisheh to the south and another, Aida, to the west. 

In the Dheisheh camp, men and boys left their homes with their hands in the air, offering no resistance.

" I guess we thought, although the Israelis were concentrating their efforts around the camps ... that Bethlehem (might be spared)," said Khoury, adding that Bethlehem's inhabitants have assumed through the years that the violence would not extend to their town, thought to be the birthplace of Jesus and therefore held sacred by Christians.

They knew they couldn't expect the Israelis to have a hands-off attitude about nearby Beit Jala, from which gunmen often fire at the Jewish settlement of Gilo.

"Now we know that Bethlehem is like every other Palestinian town," Khoury said.

She said the school, which teaches non-violence, also has been vandalized. One of its treasures - a ceramic cross that was a gift from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) - was among the items destroyed.

While the soldiers are mostly on the outskirts of town, Bethlehem has been under a state of siege for a year. Last week, one Palestinian woman said, was "the worst."

Resident Joseph Canavati describes Bethlehem as "the Stalingrad of the 21st century, a modern Stalingrad."

"Everybody is afraid to go anywhere," he said. 
"Everything is closed. There is a curfew. There are snipers on rooftops, tanks, Apache helicopters constantly."

Canavati said the snipers are shooting to kill. A few nights ago, when he tried to get his sick mother to a hospital on the Hebron Road, he was told not to risk it, because the hospital's general manager had just been shot by a sniper.

Such is life nowadays, full of anxiety and uncertainty.

Psychiatrist Viveca Hazboun has crossed the military checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem every day for years. But now, she said, Israeli soldiers hold guns to her head as she searches for her passport.

Hazboun spends her days counseling children and families at her Bethlehem clinic and devotes countless hours to reconciliation work. One topic she talks about often is how to keep children from becoming suicide bombers.
Hazboun's building was destroyed in a recent air assault.

"The thing we were afraid of is happening," she told the Presbyterian News Service. "People have lost control of their impulses. People have gone haywire - everybody. They try to put out fire with fire. That sometimes works with fire. But for human beings, it is not the way to go.

"Containing the pain is the only way to stop this mess. And that means putting up with a lot of stuff," Hazboun said. "But trying to solve it any other way just makes it worse."

It was a long week in Bethlehem. Buildings were blown up. Schools were trashed. Living rooms were occupied. Some residents complained that Israeli solders came into their homes and used their phones to make long-distance calls, putting their charges on the homeowners' bills.

"Here in Bethlehem, the perception is that (the raids) are simply a way to demonstrate who is boss, who is in control," said Terry Rempel, a U.S. citizen who lives in Bethlehem and works for Badil, an activist organization that lobbies for the Palestinian refugees' right to return to their home areas. "Hundreds of people ... are taken away (and detained). People who knew they were on 'the wanted list' knew the Israelis were coming in, and probably had plenty of time to slip away."

Rempel said the Israelis caused "senseless" damage to private property, although the raids were less than a full-scale military operation. "More than 200 Palestinians were killed last week, and most of those who've been killed were civilians," he said.

He said the Israelis' show of force was "a piece of theatre in some ways ... that was filmed extensively for domestic consumption.

If the people of Bethlehem once believed that their tiny town would be spared violence, they know better now, after more than a year of economic consequences and repeated shelling along the outskirts of the city.

"Now people say, 'Why should Bethlehem be spared when these things are occurring in other Palestinian towns?' said Doug Dicks, a Presbyterian Church (USA) mission co-worker who has lived in Bethlehem for more than six years. 
"They've been saying for a while now, 'It's only a matter of time before it happens to Bethlehem.' People figured that the target would be Aida or Dheisheh."

Dicks said the Israelis have bulldozed trenches in the roads near the camps, sliced water lines and disrupted telephone service - things he termed "collective punishment" for the many, for the actions of a few.

"What people can't understand," Dicks said of the residents of the refugee camps, "is that they can't leave."

"They left their homes in 1948. They left their homes in 1967. They have no place to go. They're not going anyplace this time. Israelis and Palestinians are either going to live together or they're going to die together."
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