No one is talking about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Christians – Ramzi Baroud – Translated by: Hatef Rahmani

The Palestinian Christian population is shrinking at an alarming rate. The world's oldest Christian community is on the move. And the reason for this move is Israel.

Christian leaders from Palestine to South Africa sounded the alarm at a conference in Johannesburg on October 15. Their conference was titled “The Holy Land: The Palestinian Christian Perspective.”

A major issue that stood out at the conferences was the rapid decline in the number of Palestinian Christians in Palestine.

There are varying estimates of how many Palestinian Christians still live in Palestine today, compared to the pre-1948 era when the state of Israel was established over Palestinian towns and villages. Regardless of the source of the various studies, there is a close consensus that the number of Christian residents of Palestine has declined by nearly tenfold (to the current population) over the past 70 years.

A 2017 census conducted by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics found that 47,000 Palestinian Christians live in Palestine – referring to the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. 98 percent of Palestinian Christians live in the West Bank – concentrated mainly in the cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jerusalem – while the remainder, a small Christian community of just 1,100, live in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The demographic crisis that plagued the Christian community decades ago is now boiling over.

For example, 70 years ago, Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, was 86 percent Christian. The city’s demographics, however, have changed radically, especially since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in 1967, and the construction of the illegal apartheid wall, which began in 2002. Parts of the wall were meant to separate Bethlehem from Jerusalem and isolate its residents from the rest of the West Bank.

Explaining the devastating impact of the wall on the Palestinian city, the organization “Open Bethlehem” said: “The wall surrounds Bethlehem on both the east and west, continuing south of East Jerusalem. The land separated by the wall has been annexed by settlements and closed under various pretexts, leaving only 13 percent of the Bethlehem area accessible for Palestinian use.”

Many of Bethlehem's Palestinian Christians have been driven from their historic city by the escalating siege. According to Vera Babun, the city's mayor, by 2016, Bethlehem's Christian population had fallen by 12 percent, to just 11,000.

The most optimistic estimate places the total number of Palestinian Christians in all of occupied Palestine at less than two percent.

The connection between the decline in the Christian population in Palestine, and the Israeli occupation and apartheid can be unquestioned, as it is obvious to Palestinian Christians and the Muslim population alike.

A study conducted by Darkal Kalima University in the West Bank city of Beit Jala and published in December 2017 interviewed nearly a thousand Palestinians, half of whom were Christians and half were Muslims. One of the main goals of the study was to understand the reasons behind the shrinking Christian population in Palestine.

The study concluded that “the pressure of the Israeli occupation, ongoing restrictions, discriminatory policies, arbitrary arrests, and land confiscations add to the general sense of helplessness among Palestinian Christians,” who find themselves in a “desperate situation” where they no longer see a future for their children or for themselves.

Claims that Palestinian Christians are leaving Palestine because of religious tensions between them and their Muslim brothers are baseless and therefore irrelevant.

Gaza is another case in point. Only 2 percent of Palestinian Christians live in the impoverished and besieged Gaza Strip. According to an estimate in 1967, when Israel occupied Gaza, along with the rest of historic Palestine, there were 2,300 Christians living in Gaza. But today only 1,100 Christians still live in Gaza. Years of occupation, horrific wars, and a brutal siege have brought that scourge upon a society whose historical roots go back two thousand years.

Like the Muslims in Gaza, these Christians are cut off from the rest of the world, including the holy cities in the West Bank. Every year, Gaza Christians register with the Israeli army to join Easter services in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Last April, only 200 Christians were granted permission to travel, but they must be 55 or older and are not allowed to visit Jerusalem.

The Israeli rights group, Geisha (a human rights organization active in Israel), described the Israeli military's decision as "a further violation of Palestinians' fundamental rights to freedom of movement, freedom of religion and family life," and rightly accused Israel of trying to "deepen the separation" between Gaza and the West Bank.

In fact, Israel’s goal is to do more than that. By isolating Palestinian Christians from each other, and from their holy cities (as it does for Muslims), the Israeli government hopes to weaken the socio-cultural bonds that give Palestinians a collective identity.

Israel's strategy is based on the idea that a combination of factors – enormous economic hardship, permanent siege and apartheid, and the severance of communal and spiritual ties – will eventually drive Christians from their Palestinian homeland.

Israel is eager to portray the “conflict” in Palestine as religiously motivated as possible, and instead labels itself as a Jewish state under siege in the midst of the vast Muslim population of the Middle East. The continued existence of Palestinian Christians is a thin line within this Israeli agenda.

Unfortunately, however, Israel has succeeded in distorting the struggle in Palestine – from a political and human rights struggle against settler colonialism – into a religious struggle. It is equally unfortunate that Israel’s most ardent supporters in the United States and elsewhere are religious Christians.

It must be understood that Palestinian Christians in Palestine are neither strangers nor spectators. They have suffered as much as their Muslim brothers, and through their resistance, spirituality, deep attachment to the land, artistic participation, and the growth of scholarship, they have played a significant role in defining the modern Palestinian identity.

Israel should not be allowed to expel the world's oldest Christian community from their ancestral homeland, as this may add a few points to Israel's deeply disturbing drive for racial supremacy.

Our understanding of the legendary Palestinian “resilience” and solidarity cannot be complete without understanding the central role of Palestinian Christians for the modern Palestinian narrative and identity.

Source: Daily News