The Fate of Christians in the Holy Land
Ninety church leaders met with Moslem and Jewish spokesmen for a two day conference at Lambeth Palace, hosted by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster. The Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, Suheil Dawani, and the Catholic Patriarch, Fouad Twal, were among many guests, clergy and laity, from the Holy Land. The purpose, according to Dr. Williams, was to raise “literate, compassionate awareness” of the Christian plight and to galvanise action.
The diminishing numbers of Christians in the birthplace of their faith is a cause of great concern. Whereas Christians represented 30 percent of the population at the time of the British Mandate in 1948, today their share of the population is estimated at 1.25 percent. The risk, as the Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, has put it, is that the Holy Land is becoming a ‘spiritual Disneyland’ – full of glittering rides and attractions, but empty of its indigenous Christian population. French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for Interreligious Dialogue, offered another evocative image: The Christian centres of the Holy Land as “archeological and historical sites, to be visited like the Colosseum in Rome, museums with entrance tickets, and guides who explain the beautiful legends.”
This decline in the Holy Land is part of a broad Christian exodus all across the Middle East. The reasons were summarised as fourfold:
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The Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which affects Arab Christians just as much as Arab Muslims;
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Economic instability and lack of opportunity;
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Rising Islamic fundamentalism, now compounded by fear that the promise of the Arab Spring could become a winter of insecurity and theocratic regimes;
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The fact that Christians in the area are disproportionately better educated and more affluent, and thus stand a better chance of leaving. One said “In the Middle East frustrated Christians emigrate physically, while frustrated Muslims emigrate ideologically.”
The Conference considered why Christians in the West should care about the Christian presence in the Holy Land.
There were two main points:
1. Their survival is critical to Christianity’s identity
Archbishop Rowan spoke to the first point. “Christianity is an historical religion,” he said. “At its centre is a set of events that occurred in a particular place and at a particular time. It is not open to Christians to say that Christianity is whatever they choose it to be. We are responsible to what happened in the Holy Land two millennia ago.” A Christian witness in the place where these events occurred, the archbishop said, was “No small thing, to say that the Christian presence in the land of Our Lord does not matter would be cutting ourselves loose from history.” The archbishop spoke of the significance of the Arab Christian witness “They remind us that in its origins, Christianity is an exotic Eastern religion, not bound up with Western culture.” He reminded the Conference that “Christianity was not born in Europe, or even on the shores of North America -which is quite good for us all. It is, therefore, as alien to the capitalist West as it is to the Far East.”
2. Christians can be a key to peace in the region, and therefore to peace in the world
Several speakers from the Holy Land insisted the presence of Christianity kept alive the notion of a pluralistic space in which tolerance, democracy, and respect for human rights are essential – and, conversely, the disappearance of Christianity would send the wrong signal about the future direction of the region. In that sense, the presence or absence of a flourishing Christian minority is essential for the political and cultural health of the society. Speakers repeatedly stressed that although Christianity has a small sociological footprint, it is a minority that matters. Churches continue to operate “a vast network of schools and universities, hospitals, and social service centres, and individual Christians make key contributions to business, politics, and arts and culture.”
Perhaps the most compelling form of that argument came from Lubna Alzaroo, a young Palestinian Muslim who attended Bethlehem University, an institution sponsored by the Catholic church. Raised in Hebron, Alzaroo said her family can trace its roots in the area back 1,500 years. In the mid-1960s, Alzaroo said, Hebron had a small Christian community, but today it has entirely disappeared. (There’s a Christian elementary school, she said, but its student population is entirely Muslim.) As a result, she didn’t actually meet a Christian until she was 18 years old, and that encounter came during a study programme in the United States. It’s not a coincidence, Alzaroo said, that Hebron has become the most religiously conservative city in the Palestinian Territories, and thus an incubator for more radical and militant currents. “Part of the reason is the lack of pluralism,” she said. “The more isolated they become, the more they think their way is the only way.”Given the link between the presence of Christianity and the plausibility of a democratic and tolerant Palestine, Alzaroo offered this dramatic warning:” If Christianity were to disappear, it would have ramifications as catastrophic for the Palestinians as the Nakba in 1948,” she said.
Political issues
Samer Makhlouf, a Latin Catholic and executive director of “One Voice” a Palestine grassroots movement that brings together young Palestinians and Israelis to promote peace, said that of the four problems facing Christians in the Holy Land, the first three are “occupation, occupation, occupation.” Makhlouf described Israeli military and security policy as “the father of all the problems in the region.” Over and over, Palestinian Christians insisted that the main factors fueling their exodus – political discrimination and a sense of second-class citizenship, lack of economic development and employment, restrictions on their freedom of movement, and so on – are fundamentally the result of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, rather than explicit discrimination against Christians. One frequently cited difficulty involves access to Christian holy sites. Palestinians living in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem hold different residency cards, and they cannot move from one place to the other without special permits. It can be virtually impossible for a Christian in Bethlehem, for instance, to travel to Jerusalem to worship in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. As one put it, “It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a Palestinian to go to Jerusalem.”
Residency policies also had a devastating impact on families. It was said that there are more than 200 Christian families living apart today, split between members in the West Bank and members in Jerusalem.
There was also an undercurrent of frustration about negotiations which have lingered since 1993 over the “Fundamental Agreement” made between Israel and the Vatican, which was meant to regulate the tax and legal status of church properties. The agreement had not been implemented by the Israeli Knesset, and instead Israel had declared important Christian sites, such as Mount Tabor and Capernaum, to be national parks, overriding Christian control. Those acts, it was said, were part of the Israeli policy of creating “facts on the ground” that unilaterally reshape negotiations.
Hana Bendcowsky, a Jewish Israeli affiliated with the Jerusalem Centre for Christian Jewish Relations, warned of hardening Israeli attitudes towards Christianity. A 2009 survey, she said, found that 18-29 year old Israelis hold more negative views of Christians than older generations. At root, she said, Jews in Israel have a hard time thinking of themselves as a majority. They tend to see the Christians in their midst not as an embattled minority, but a “doubly threatening majority” – part of both the Arab world and the Christian west.
In the concluding plenary session Catholic Patriarch, His Beattitude Fouad Twal, reminded the conference that discussions with Israelis need never be partisan, because
“The only authentic pro-Israeli stance is also pro-Palestinian and therefore pro-peace”.
