Keeping the Faith

WHEN THE POPE visited the Holy Land in 2000, he expressed a hope that, during the jubilee year, many thousands of Christian pilgrims would converge on the Holy Places where Christ lived, taught, and died. Four years later, the al-Aqsa intifada – an ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians – has seen economies ruined, cities decimated and more than 3000 people killed. Whatever the ‘map’ may have looked like, suicide bombs, targeted assassinations, security fences and undying hatred have gradually churned the road for peace into an impassable quagmire.
In the current climate, it is unsurprising that pilgrims are staying away from the land of their Messiah’s ministry, and that its indigenous Christians should want to escape the ongoing cycle of violence. However, this increasing trend of emigration has dire implications – within little more than a generation, there may be no Christians left in the land of Christ.

Cause for concern

The statistics make for worrying reading. A hundred years ago, Palestinian Christians represented 13 per cent of the total population of the Holy Land, and were in the majority in the old cities of Jerusalem, Nazareth and Bethlehem. Now, out of a total population of around eight million people in Israel and Palestine, there are 165,000 Christians – a mere two per cent, and falling every year.
Despite their dwindling numbers, though, Christians in the region still punch above their weight. The Catholic Church alone operates more than 100 schools – with 63,000 students – a university in Bethlehem, 10 hospitals, 15 orphanages and houses for the handicapped and underprivileged.
And the Christians are driven by a fervent vocation, as Mgr William Shomali, secretary of the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem, points out, “to remain, despite our small number, in the places where Jesus preached, redeemed Christianity and founded the Church, and to be conciliators and peace-makers among Palestinians and Israelis.”
However, Shomali highlights the difficulties inherent in the current crisis. Before the intifada began in September 2000, many Christians worked in the pilgrimage and tourist sectors. Since the outbreak of fighting, the number of visitors to the Holy Land has dropped drastically, leaving hotels empty, wares unsold, and many small businesses bankrupt. Unemployment and poverty have become rife.
Furthermore, Shomali adds, Christian families “have had their houses destroyed, and their olive trees and vineyards uprooted. Many Christians working in Israel have lost their jobs because their permits to travel were withdrawn.”
During curfews last year, the Latin Patriarchate – aided by donations from Christian charities in the US and Europe – distributed cash and food packages to assist families, paid for several thousand medical prescriptions for the poor, and created employment schemes for those who had lost their jobs as a result of the intifada.
But it is no surprise that those who have the wherewithal to emigrate do so, and reports suggest that, as the violence continues to rage, consulates have been helping Christians to leave the war-ravaged country. The greater financial resources of Palestinian Christians living abroad, and their closer ties with the Western world, facilitate this escape.

Daunting task

The Holy Land’s Christian leaders face a daunting task. The most politically prominent of them, His Beatitude Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, plays an active role in demanding “dignity and rights” for Palestinians, and the “restoration” of East Jerusalem – including the Old City – to Palestinian rule. His views are at least partially supported by the Holy See, which stands by UN resolution 242 about Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land. Less politically active, but equally concerned, is the Franciscan Custos of the Holy Land, Friar Giovanni Battistelli, who is responsible for those holy places that are under Catholic control, and the Christians who live around them.
But the majority of Christians in the Holy Land belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, whose traditional enmity with the Western Churches is gradually subsiding in favour of warmer relations. These religious leaders have joined, together with the other Christian denominations in the Holy Land – Anglicans, Armenians, Copts, Maronites, Lutherans, Syrians, Ethiopians – to condemn the bloodshed and call for a restoration of negotiations. Their words may be having scant effect, but they are a reflection of the alarming state of affairs in the Holy Land for a Christian population among whose falling numbers there is increasing frustration and despair. This month (January 2004), a conference will be held in Jerusalem bringing together Christian leaders from around the world to discuss Christian responses to the dilemma.

A beacon in Bethlehem

In the current climate, it is unsurprising that Bethlehem University – the only Catholic University in Palestine, founded by Pope Paul VI to maintain a Christian presence in the Holy Land – is struggling to continue the spring semester. In its 30-year history, no academic year has been finished on schedule and the university has been closed a dozen times. With tuition fees of US$ 1,000 p.a., even though it costs US$ 3,000 to educate a student for a year, it is hard to see how this loss-making enterprise survives. The completion of Israel’s security fence will make it even harder for students, many of whom come from Jerusalem and Hebron, to attend classes.
How will this fence – comprising reinforced cement, barbed wire, electrical fences, trenches, and guard towers – affect Bethlehem? With its planned construction in the middle of the main road from Jerusalem, it will isolate the whole of the northern part of the town, inhabited by 4,000 people, and close the single bottleneck entrance used by visitors and pilgrims. As Gerard Kaufman, an outspoken Jewish Member of Parliament in the UK, has said “All of this is happening allegedly to increase Israeli security. However, not only will holy sites be desecrated, but Bethlehem’s tourist trade and its agriculture, on which the city depends almost entirely for its livelihood, will be destroyed.”
The United Nations General Assembly and leaders of all the European Union member states at the European Council have declared their opposition to the fence and consider its infringement into Palestinian land to be illegal. Even US President George Bush, a staunch supporter of Israel, has called the fence “problematic”. Yet, construction still continues unimpeded. When completed, the fence, which is costing US$ 1.6 million per kilometre to construct, will leave 45 per cent of the West Bank on Israel’s side, and incorporate 80 per cent of Israel’s illegal West Bank settlements. It will annex the richest Palestinian agricultural land, including the aquifer system which provides more than half of the West Bank’s water resources. It will separate farmer from olive tree, tour operator from pilgrim, and student from classroom.

Increasing dissent

American born Br Vincent Malham, Bethlehem University’s president, adds the fence to a list of hurdles which make life increasingly difficult for Palestinian civilians. Other hardships include: checkpoints, which can cause several-hour delays; reduced trade, with all Palestinian goods subject to Israeli tariffs; poverty, with unemployment (45 per cent) five times higher and the annual average income (US$ 500) five times lower than in 2000.
These grievances are echoed by political analysts, lawyers, American Jews and congressmen, Israeli airforce pilots and even Avraham Burg – a past speaker of the Knesset – decrying the current attitude of the Israeli regime to the Palestinian people, and citing this attitude as a contributory factor to Palestinian violence. “These are voices I hear all the time,” says Malham. “Some are voices of the discouraged and suffering; others of the concerned; still others of the courageous who dare to speak out. All are voices yearning for justice, for reconciliation, for an end to violence.”
Malham does not place the blame for this violence squarely on Israel and its internationally reviled occupation and settlement policies. Palestinians, too, must “clean up their act” by ending corruption, reforming the government, and establishing a viable democracy. Nor is he an apologist for suicide bombers, condemning the “violence and corruption of young minds taught hatred,” while reasoning that “when fear, humiliation and terror bruise the Palestinian population and when the closures imposed by the IDF starve the population, how can one think that the number of volunteers for suicide attacks is going to diminish?”
But Malham remains optimistic “When I meet people who are losing hope I tell them: ‘Go over, go under, go around, go through. But never give up.’” Epitomising the unshakeable faith of those striving to keep Christianity alive in the Holy Land, he and 11 La Salle confreres (eight American, two English, one Irish and one Palestinian) oversaw the graduation of 425 students in 2003. 2,100 are enrolled for this academic year, including 600 freshmen.

The true ‘road map’

First and foremost in ensuring progress, Malham believes, is a genuine engagement from the international community – with the US in a leadership role. “Vested interests must be put aside and tough decisions made – with strategic sanctions if necessary – to encourage and facilitate a fair, just and peaceful political negotiation.”
Though demographically, Palestinians will outnumber Israelis in the Holy Land in little more than a generation, Malham believes the emigration of indigenous Christians can only be prevented by the fuller involvement of the international Church. Its leaders, he believes, need to take a “dynamic, prophetic role” in the promotion of peace in the Holy Land. “If Christians are to be encouraged to remain, they must be given hope that there is a future for their children, a country in which they can lead normal lives, have education and employment opportunities, be allowed to travel freely and to live in dignity and respect.”
These sentiments are echoed by Rabbi David Rosen, head of the Anti-Defamation League, and president of the World Conference on Religion and Peace. “This is not a religious conflict,” Rosen argues. “It is a territorial one. The problem is that you can’t avoid religion, because it is so bound up with human identity that any expression of that identity involves religion. What you need to do is to enlist moderate religious forces to support the peace process. By doing so, you are neutralising the extremist elements.”
The stoic resolve and determination demonstrated by Christian leaders in the Holy Land suggests that they are prepared to be enlisted in any proposed peace process, so maybe the future is not so bleak for the area’s Christians. If Bethlehem University can both survive and develop in such a depressing time of conflict, imagine the possibilities in a time of peace.