Christians of the Holy Land: Have they a Future?
Lecture given at Chester Cathedral November 1999 and Rediscovering Palestine Festival in London and Birmingham, Septepmber 2000

Underneath the beautiful Sea of Galilee, the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea lies a hidden fault line that runs down through the Red Sea, the Arabian Peninsula on to the heart of East Africa. Over thousands of years, earthquakes along that fault line have devastated many civilisations. Today there is a human fault line running through the same land - a fault line that is largely hidden from view until it erupts in violence. The cause of those volcanic eruptions has to do with the pressure of two peoples, like two tectonic plates trying to occupy the same land - one the military occupier, the other the occupied. Most Christians in Britain when they visit the Holy Land are oblivious of that fault line and its causes. Worst of all they are ignorant of an minority indigenous Christian community which makes up 10% of the Palestinian community which is haemorrhaging and now close to extinction largely because of the way they are ignored or maligned by fellow Christians from the rest of the world. Afif Safieh, as a Christian Arab Palestinian, would have shared his heart with you this evening. I do not know whether he would have answered the question with a yes or no. As a friend and advocate of the Palestinian Church I will answer that question by introducing you to some of the Palestinian Christian leaders and let them speak for their people. You won't have to wait to the end of this lecture to know my answer. I am going to give you five reasons why I believe the Christians of the Holy Land have no future there at all - without your help.

But first something of the background. Israel is a unique country, born out of the ravages of war and the Holocaust, its 20,000 square miles of territory, claimed by two peoples, the Israelis and Palestinians, its holy sites shared uneasily by three religions, Jewish, Moslem and Christian, often in close proximity as at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem or the Tomb of the Patriarchs at Hebron. According to Barbara Tuchman, "more blood has been shed for Palestine than for any other spot on earth".

'To Protestant England it was not only, as Lord Curzon said, "the holiest space of ground on the face of the globe," the land of the Scriptures, the land of the Crusades, the land "to which all our faces are turned when we are finally laid in our graves in the churchyard." It was also the geographical junction between East and West, the bridge-head between three continents, the focal point in the strategy of empire...'

Few countries attract so much media coverage, or arouse such intense religious feeling and political controversy. It is a fact though that,

'The UN voted six hundred and five resolutions between its inception and the Gulf War. Four hundred and twenty nine of those resolutions, or, sixty-two percent of the total of the UN's resolutions were against Israel or its interests.'

It is a fact that Israel has been criticised for its human rights record more times by the UN than any other country in the world. Even well known Jews have been critical of Israel's policy toward the Palestinians. The world-renowned Jewish violinist Sir Yehudi Menuhin, on receiving the Wolf Foundation prize for music in the Knesset, a few years ago, soundly rebuked the Israeli government for treating the Palestinians in the same way the Jews had been treated by the Nazi's. Referring to Israel's continued illegal occupation of the Old City of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, Menuhin said,

'This wasteful government by fear, by contempt for the basic dignities of life, this steady asphyxiation of a dependent people, should be the very last means adopted by those who themselves know too well the awful significance, the unforgettable suffering of such an existence. It is unworthy of my great people, the Jews...'

It is the consistent and explicit intention of successive Israeli governments including Barak, to continue to deprive Palestinians of their dignity, their land, their homes, their citizenship and their future in Palestine. Historically and politically, the Arab-Israeli issue is complex, controversial and emotive. I want to introduce you to five key issues facing the indigenous Christians that will determine whether they survive beyond the next 20 years. ABCDE - Apartheid, bantustanisation, concealment, distortion and emigration.

1. Apartheid
Comparisons with the way the United States government treated the indigenous Indians in the 19th Century by placing them on reservations or the 20th Century South African apartheid experiment with Bantustans are clear and self evident. Let me give you the example of Elias Chacour. Story of Elias Chacour at Ben Gurion airport "We Belong to the Land" While Israel presents itself as a Western democracy, supposedly respecting and protecting the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, the Palestinian experience appears very different. There is an "undeclared apartheid" which disadvantages Palestinians whether in rights in law, education, health care, housing, social services or employment. Palestinians suffer systematic political repression. Uri Davis in his book, "Israel: An Apartheid State" for example, contrasts the "right of return" - that is the citizenship of Israel given to any Jew born any where in the world, with the denial of that same right of citizenship to Palestinian's even children actually born in the State of Israel. On top of that there are 3.5 million Palestinian refugees currently registered with the UN living in camps around the Middle East who have been denied the right to return to their homes in pre 1948 Israel or the pre 1967 borders of the Occupied Territories.

It is strangely incongruous that we as westerners can travel thousands of miles to visit the holy sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem but Christians living just a few miles away are denied access to those same sites. Christians living in Ramallah or Bethany just a few miles away cannot worship in Jerusalem or visit a hospital without a permit, even if it is an emergency. Stories of pregnant mothers and children dying at border crossings because they have been denied access to emergency treatment are a regular occurrence. According to Betselem, the Jewish human rights organisation at least ten babies died in the last three years in such circumstances. Edward Said, a leading Palestinian academic, is critical of suggestions that the election of Barak will bring any serious resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Ehud Barak, everyone's new hero of the hour, has been passing himself off as the peace candidate, an almost meaningless phrase. For Barak, Jerusalem remains basically non-negotiable; the settlements for the most part will stay, as will the by-pass roads that now criss-cross the territories; sovereignty, borders, over-all security, water and air rights will be Israel's; refugees will have to look elsewhere for help. Other than that there can be a Palestinian state and the Authority can continue its, at best, flawed rule."

Speaking of Barak's choice of Ariel Sharon as defence minister, Edward Said insists,

"Both are confirmed Arab-killers, both are clearly contemptuous of Arabs except as second- or perhaps even third-rate aliens tolerated in what both consider to be the land of Israel, and neither Barak nor Sharon is much given to visions of coexistence or equality between Palestinians and Israeli Jews."

Jonathan Kuttab is a Palestinian Human Rights lawyer. I asked him to elaborate on the worries he has for the future.

'He has already said he doesn't want Jerusalem to be shared but instead retain total and exclusive Israeli control. He wants the settlements to continue. He doesn't want to return to the 1967 borders but wants to keep some of that land under Israeli sovereignty. We don't know whether he is willing to make some progress on the ground. The Israeli coalition is always a reflection of Israeli society. We have watched Israeli society move to the right and become more racist, more fascist, more stubborn and less open to real compromise. It definitely going to be a factor. Barak is going to want to please his constituency and coalition rather than the Palestinians or the demands of the international community.'

I want to examine now how this policy of apartheid or ethnic cleansing has brutalised the Palestinian community.

2. Bantustanisation
The creation of the State of Israel as a sovereign and safe homeland for Jews in 1948, just three years after the Holocaust, was seen by many as one of the greatest achievements in human endeavour of the twentieth century. Yet paradoxically, Israel was only established at the expense of another people, the Palestinians, and the enforced creation of another Diaspora, and what Kenneth Cragg calls "the slow but sure Judaization of their homeland." The occupation of the West Bank in 1967 merely added to the number of Palestinians dispossessed. Over 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed since 1948.

In the last 10 years over 2000 Palestinian homes have been demolished in the Occupied Territories making at least 13,000 Palestinians homeless. Since then the Israeli government has also planted 140 illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories appropriating 60% of the land. Local Christians often describe the West Bank like a piece of Swiss cheese - its full of holes made by new exclusive settler roads and security zones. Increasingly, comparisons are being made between the isolated autonomous Palestinian areas and the South African apartheid experiment with Bantustans.

Bethlehem is a microcosm of this dispossession. There used to be a green hill on the edge of Bethlehem known as Abu Ghoneim - the Green Mountain which is part of the shepherd's fields. It used to look beautiful, now it is a construction site - part of the land grab to complete the ring of Israeli settlements around Jerusalem on Palestinian land. It is part of the territory occupied by Israel during the 1967 war, which the international community has repeatedly insisted must be returned to its Palestinian owners. The mountain was originally declared a green belt and contains several sites significant to Christians including St. Theodore's well, Byzantine and Georgian monasteries and has strong associations with St. Lucas and St. Marinus. The intention is to build another 6,500 housing units exclusively for 25,000 more American and European Jewish settlers on 462 acres of forcibly confiscated Palestinian land.

Why would Israel wish to violate both the letter and the spirit of the Interim Peace Agreement between Israel and the Palestinians by this provocative act? Quite simply the massive settlement at Abu Ghoneim closes the circle of exclusively Jewish settlements around the north, east and south side of Palestinian Jerusalem and changes the demographic character of the West Bank for ever. Har Homa is destined to give the Jews a strategic fortress as part of the process of "Judaising" Jerusalem before the final status talks. It lays siege to the Christian Palestinian communities of Beit Sahour and Bethlehem. It eliminates their land reserves, isolates them from Jerusalem and cuts them off from the rest of the West Bank to the north. It threatens the very existence of these ancient Christian communities. Afif Safieh press release February 1997.

According to Daoud Kuttab, a Christian Palestinian journalist, "A calculated and premeditated process of changing the character and the demographic nature of the Holy City... is taking place.' Only 13% of the land of East Jerusalem remains in Palestinian hands. The rest 87%, has been confiscated for further exclusive Jewish settlements, for by-pass roads or closed military areas. Israeli planning for "Greater Jerusalem" is an open secret. Israeli's assertion that Jerusalem will remain the "eternal and undivided capital of Israel" is a unilateral claim to exclusive Israeli sovereignty over the city that pre-empts genuine negotiation. Let me give you an illustration as to how this impacts ordinary families.

Bishara Awad is the Principal of Bethlehem Bible College. Bishara is a father figure, gracious, patient, yet this time, when we met in May, he was clearly distressed. The story he shared typifies the reasons why peace is so elusive and why many Palestinians are sceptical of ever seeing the Oslo agreement implemented.

"Tony is a student of the College. He loves the Lord. He is a Christian. All his family are Christians. The family own a piece of land on the outskirts of Bethlehem which they bought in 1924. One day the family went to work on their land and found a bulldozer opening up a new road into their land near the edge of the Neve Daniel settlement. When they tried to stop the bulldozer, the Israeli settlers took Tony's brother to the police station. He was not released until he signed a document promising never to go back to his land again. This has naturally been very disturbing for the family. Its not strange for us because it is happening all the time. But this is something near to our hearts and to our students. It happened just two weeks ago. All we could do as a College is have a prayer right on the land. We prayed for peace, for justice. We prayed for the settlers, that the Lord would give them a soft heart, that they would not take someone else's land."

Speaking of the territory around Bethlehem, Bishara insisted, "There is an Israeli agenda, a Zionist dream to take all this land and they don't want any Palestinian's on the land. So they do this in many ways, they do this in subtle ways. They will not allow any new housing projects for the Palestinians, and if we do try and build houses on our land they come and demolish them." It is also the systematic policy of the Israeli government to evict Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem, even though they may have lived there for many generations and this practice contravenes international law. They achieve this by denying or removing the residence permits of Palestinians forced to work in other parts of the West Bank or who leave temporarily to study, visit family members or marry abroad. This policy of 'ethnic cleansing' in Jerusalem has also recently affected the faculty of Bethlehem Bible College. Bishara explains:

"Two of our teachers at the College are from Jerusalem. They were born in Jerusalem. Their parents and grand-parents are from Jerusalem for many, many, generations. They are Jerusalemites. They went to study abroad, one of them, Raheb, married a Spanish girl and he tried to get a family reunion for years and years. His wife is living in Spain. They have been separated for a year. He still does not have his papers. He cannot renew his ID for Jerusalem and return to live there. He cannot get permission for his wife to join him either. Another member of our faculty, Hanna, is just back from studying at a seminary in the United States. He is engaged to get married so when he came back to renew his Jerusalem ID card. they said they could not renew it. He asked why. They said, "Because you have relatives in Australia." He is engaged to be married but Hanna said, "If they don't give me my ID card I cannot get permission for my wife to join me. I cannot register my marriage. I can hardly do anything legally." There is no legitimate legal reason for the Israelis to do this. Raheb and Hanna still work for the College but I fear they will eventually give up and leave their land and go and live with their wives abroad. This is exactly what they Israelis want. We do need prayer that these teachers would be able to live in Jerusalem and continue to work in the College. We badly need leaders in the churches here."

Unfortunately Raheb and Hannah are just two of the 13,000 husbands and wives or parents and children living apart, separated by this illegal Israeli occupation. I asked Bishara what he would say to Mr Barak if he had the opportunity. He replied,

"Have fear, God is alive. You need to fear God. Don't repeat the stories of your previous leaders. The Palestinians are the natives. They have rights. If you need to have peace with the Arab countries, first get the key and make peace with the Palestinians."

3. Concealment
The presence of tens of thousands of Western Christian tourists and pilgrims in the Holy Land at any one time has great potential for good. Ironically, for the most part, the Western Christian presence does great harm. That is because most Christians visiting the Holy Land follow a predetermined itinerary purposely designed by the Israeli Government Ministry of Tourism to bring them into contact with a Jewish Israel perpetuating a myth of how the Zionist dream is being fulfilled. There will invariably be visits to the Knesset, Yad Vashem, Masada, the Western Wall, the Dead Sea and Kibbutz's, etc, all under the watchful influence of a licensed Israeli guide, while ignoring or avoiding Palestinian Israel and the Occupied Territories as much as possible. Most tour groups are oblivious of the fact that they will be passing through heavily armed checkpoints into what is still, under international law, illegally held "Occupied Territory" on the West Bank, in order to visit places such as Bethlehem and Jericho. Even more significant, based on recent research, something like 95% of pilgrims who visit the Holy Land do not even meet any indigenous Christians who are 99% Palestinian. There are now only 165,000 indigenous Christians living in Israel and Palestine. That represents 2.4% of the population of the Holy Land. As Bishop Kenneth Cragg, once said,

"Sharp moral issues are easily submerged by outsiders in archaeology or tourism, while the local Christianity is relegated to sentiment and the museum."

I wonder if you can imagine what it must feel like to watch countless air conditioned coaches full of Christians from around the world driving past your crumbling church and impoverished community every day to visit yet another holy site, guided by someone of another religion, and fearful of any contact with you because they have been fed the lie that you and your people are just a bunch of terrorists? Largely cut off from personal or meaningful contact with Western tourists and pilgrims, the local Palestinian Christian community feels isolated, indeed invisible. One friend put it like this: "People who come here wear dark glasses. When the sun comes out they see nothing." Sometimes this "invisibility" is orchestrated by those whose interests lie in perpetuating the myth that there are no indigenous Christians present. Bishop Kenneth Cragg observes,

'Local Christians are caught in a degree of museumization. They are aware of tourists who come in great volume from the West to savour holy places but who are, for the most part, blithely disinterested in the people who indwell them. The pain of the indifference is not eased insofar as the same tourism is subtly manipulated to make the case for the entire legitimacy of the statehood that regulates it.'

When the Israeli Ministry of Tourism does have to acknowledge the presence of indigenous Christians, according to Bishop Riah, they refer to them as "Greek Orthodox", "Roman Catholic" and "Anglicans", terms which suggest they are remnants of European civilisation rather than something indigenous. 'The Greek Orthodox, none of them is of Greek background, the Anglicans, none of them is of English background, we are all Arab Palestinians.'

I have worked with Zionist Christians who equate Arab with Moslem and deny the very existence of a discrete Palestinian Christian presence. Some refuse to use the word "Palestinian" referring to them as Arabs who already have their State in Jordan where they ought to go and live. Much of the isolation Palestinians experience is due to the misrepresentation and propaganda directed against them.

4. Distortion
Palestinians are deeply upset at their image as portrayed in the West. They believe there is much blatant misrepresentation which extends not only to Palestinians as a people and to the designation of their home land but also as an ancient Christian community. They are convinced that the impression given to pilgrims exploits Orientalist prejudices and polarises ethnic and cultural differences, while "magnifying the achievements of modern Israel" in a land "empty for 2000 years" [Palestinian, 1993:3.1]. They feel they are always portrayed as "troublemakers" or "terrorists".

Bishop Riah claims the intention is to make pilgrims feel unsafe and insecure in their presence. He frequently hears guides say "We are coming now to Nazareth, watch for your wallets, or stick together." One young Christian student put it like this,

'Look at me. Do I look to you like a monster? Lion? Did I bite you? You are a visitor in my house. I respect you. I don't think there is any problem with pilgrims visiting Arab villages or Arab places. We are not demons.'

Another Palestinian student described how he thought Westerners viewed him and his culture.

'They tend to look at Arab culture and Palestine as an exotic one, as a strange one, something they need to see like they are watching a movie. Now the Israeli culture or society is as normal as can be, they can feel more relaxed in Israeli society. For them the Old City with its bazaars and its shops, it's like being on a different planet.'

Palestinians believe that this kind of ignorance is common among Western visitors. Very often it is only when pilgrims return to the Holy Land, whether on their own or when they choose to leave their party and the well worn pilgrimage path, that they discover the presence of a Palestinian Christian community. "When tourists come on their own a second time, they say "we didn't see that, we didn't know about that, how come?" I said "If you come like sheep you left like sheep"

This ignorance extends to a lack of understanding and sensitivity about the history of the church in the Holy Land. Several Palestinians described the amazement and embarrassment they feel when asked about when they had "converted" to Christianity.

"I was often asked "when did you convert to Christianity?". I was amazed at this question. I am a Christian before the United States was born. Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem not in New York or England. They think Arab = Moslem. They think that we are converted to Christianity but we were Christians here from the first Pentecost. These ideas that many people have in their minds about Arabs."

The principal means by which Palestinians have coped with the trauma of creeping annexation, land confiscation, detention without trial, deportations, concealment and misrepresentation has been through emigration.

5. Emigration
Emigration is the critical issue facing the Christian Palestinian community, and is, according to many, entirely a consequence of antagonistic and repressive attitudes and actions on the part of the Israeli authorities.As one journalist from Jaffa put it,

It's like living in jail here. We want to feel free. Many people like my brother therefore emigrated to Canada to be free. 80% of the Christians have left Israel to go to places like Canada and the United States. [Palestinian, 1994:3.15]

Whereas Moslem Palestinians are viewed with suspicion within the wider Moslem world, Christian Palestinians, encouraged by Israel to emigrate to America, Canada or Australia, have historically received a sympathetic reception. Consequently therefore there is a new diaspora of Palestinians who have integrated into Western society, and act as a base for subsequent immigrants seeking a more secure future than under Israeli military control. In 1971, Archbishop George Khodr of Beruit made this prediction.

According to our knowledge, after four more decades of the rhythm of evacuation, no Christians will be left in Jerusalem. The result will be that the Holy Places will remain without the presence of the people. It will be an assemblage of churches.... viewed in that land as a pre-Israeli relic... It will be like visiting Baalbec when you see the Temples of Bacchus and Jupiter and then without any emotion except the aesthetic emotion... Some religious influences will be left, some nuns... and highly qualified professors of theology, and archeologists from the Protestant world who will serve as natural guides for tourists. (Cragg, 1982:110)

Said Aburish, the Moslem writer laments,

Oh, there will be a Christian presence in the Holy Land; this is not the point really. The issue is what kind of presence, how big, small, integrated, local or foreign it will be. Having a single church is a Christian presence, but is it acceptable? (Aburish, 1993:61).

Kenneth Cragg argues that Western Christians should not leave the responsibility of rectifying such a situation to the Israeli authorities, since they are only concerned with maintaining access to shrines, exploiting Western Christian tourism and bringing in "lucrative foreign exchange". The absence of Palestinian Christians simply makes the realisation of this objective less complicated.

"If Christian minorities suffer... it is no more than unfortunate. The Christian museum will be in safe hands." (Cragg, 1982:111)

Five reasons why the Palestinian Christian community have no secure future in the Holy Land. Apartheid, Bantustanisation, Concealment, Dispossession, and Emigration. Do the Christians have a future in the Holy Land? Humanly speaking that is up to you. They will only if they can be allowed to share their own land with Jews and Moslems; only if their basic human rights are recognised; only if Western governments apply the same sanctions used against apartheid South Africa or the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia; only if we as Christians in the West show them solidarity. For Western Christians to ignore the Palestinian Church in such a troubled situation, where they are brutalised and maligned, is not only deeply offensive to them, it is surely a contradiction of our faith, and ultimately immoral before God. It is nothing less than to perpetuate the evil of the Levite in the Parable of the Good Samaritan who walked by on the other side. He should have known better.

If you want to help secure the future of our brothers and sisters of what is our mother church, then please don't walk by on the other side. Get involved. For example join Sabeel, Christian Aid, World Vision, Bible Lands and get their updates regularly.

Garth Hewitt is a friend who has written many songs about the plight of the Christian community in Israel Palestine. "Ten measures of beauty God gave to the World" in which he calls us all the pray for the peace of Jerusalem. The chorus is a prayer: I am going to pray it now and follow with one written by Gerald Butt, the BBC correspondent in Jerusalem.

May the justice of God fall down like fire and bring a home for the Palestinian. May the mercy of God pour down like rain and protect the Jewish people. And may the beautiful eyes of a Holy God who weeps for His children Bring the healing hope for His wounded ones For the Jew and the Palestinian.