Arab Christians under Palestinian authority

as appeared in MIDSTREAM, May 1996

By David Blewett

In January 1966 I was in Bethlehem with a group of Christian tourists. We left the buses to enter the Church of the Nativity and were confronted by a two-story banner of a smiling Yasser Arafat looking down on Manger Square. The banner had been left since Christmas when Arafat had stood on the roof of the church next to a Palestinian flag and greeted Christian pilgrims by saying, "This is the holy city, the city of the Palestinian Lord, the Messiah of Peace and Freedom." The Muslim leaders of the Palestinian Authority had then crowded the church, making it virtually impossible for Christians to attend Christmas services.

After the tour I returned to Bethlehem to meet with Palestinian (Arab) Christians and was shocked to discover how the peace process is affecting them. (It is still difficult for me to call Arabs "Palestinians" because the word referred to Jews in the land of Israel until 1948 - the year the U.N. made them Israelis.)

Israel has withdrawn from all areas where Arabs are in the majority, for the first time in history, 450 villages and all major cities in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria are under Arab Authority. During a press conference with President Bill Clinton on December 11, Prime Minister Shimon Peres said, "Israel has implemented one of our greatest moral promises -- not to rule other people."1

Most of the world press heralded Israel's withdrawal as a victory "for all the oppressed Arabs," but one group of oppressed Arabs is not celebrating. Arab Christians in Judea and Samaria admit privately that they view the change from Israeli to Palestinian rule with fear.

The new Palestinian Authority is said to represent all Palestinians, but in reality it is controlled by Muslims who have shown little or no concern for the Christian minority.2 They follow the dhimma system of Islamic law that permits only a restricted life to Christians and Jews ("people of the Book"); consequently, the Arab Christian minority is shrinking.3 Since Christians tend to have better educations, higher incomes, fewer children, and family abroad, they can travel almost anywhere in the Western world and assimilate more easily.4

Many Palestinian Christians had openly criticized Israeli rule in the past because they feared the PLO more than they feared Israeli rule. But now they are concerned about their future because they are afraid they will no longer have Israel to protect them. They have been moved into an overwhelming Muslim society, where they are seen not only as inferior but as potentially disloyal to Islamic authority, especially in light of a growing radical fundamentalism.

Christian Arabs wonder: What place will they have as dhimmis in Muslim society under Palestinian Authority? Present indications are not encouraging. Several Christian lay people in Bethlehem told me they have to be "one with the tongue, one with the heart," by which they mean that although their hearts are often united with Israel, they must speak in unity with their local leaders. This is not new. For many years they have had to prove their loyalty to local leaders by joining in defying Israel. I was told by several Arab Christians that this is the price they must pay for security. One man told me, "When we go East [into the Arab states] we have to shut our mouths, when we go West [into Israel] we can open them."

Arab Christians are an intimidated minority who find it difficult to oppose their Palestinian leaders. They know what has been done to others who disagreed with PLO policies, and they remember Arafat's January 1989 threat of "ten bullets in the chest for any one who collaborates with Israel." They know that he has arrested and threatened journalists, intellectuals, and human-rights activists who have angered him by documenting abuses by the Palestinian security service.5

They know what happened to the editor of Al-Quds, the leading Palestinian newspaper in Jerusalem. Maher Alami was imprisoned for a week because his paper ran a flattering article about Yasser Arafat on page three rather than on page one, where Arafat thought it belonged.6 They recall that at the height of the intifada, three times as many Arabs were killed by Arabs than by Israelis. The New York Times reported that when Palestinians hear a knock at the door, they are relieved to see an Israeli soldier rather than a masked Pales-tinian.7 And they understand what is meant by the graffiti on a wall in Beit Zahur: "First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people."8

I was told that during the intifada pilgrims walking to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem were sometimes stoned, but the Greek Orthodox patriarch dared not report it. I was also told that a statue of Mary had been taken from the Beit Jala convent near Jericho and burned. When questioned about it, the nuns were shocked and asked, "How did you know? We did not report it!" And when asked why, a nun put her finger to her lips and whispered, "We were told not to."

Such incidents do not reach the Western press, but can you imagine the uproar if Israel were responsible for such outrages? More than once I heard people say in various ways, "Our condition is not so bad as it could be without Israel's presence." Everyone who spoke to me indicated that their only hope within the present situation still lies with Israel.

The problems, as I see them are:

First, because of their fear of what will happen to them and their families, local Christians must say whatever the Palestinian Authority tells them to say.

Second, most mainline Protestant churches in the U.S. hear what Palestinian Christians are forced to say and, unaware of threats of intimidation, believe them.

Third, church leaders have invested much of their own credibility in support of the Palestinian Arabs' cause. They have portrayed Israel for so long as the troublemaker, the obstacle to peace in the Middle East, could they now admit that the only real friend Arab Christians have in the area is Israel? Could they admit that they have been used and are still being used to spread anti-Israel propaganda? Their continuing to bash Israel, the Arab Christians' only hope for assistance, does nothing to help the Arab communities the church leaders claim to support.

And fourth, the turning over of Bethlehem to the Palestinian Authority has created a potential bombshell. An Israeli leader told me he was afraid that their giving up Bethlehem -- without any protest from the Christian world -- could set a precedent that would lead to the redividing of Jerusalem. And a Christian with the same concern said that Israel's abandon-ment of Bethlehem may have given misinformed Christians an argument for the abandonment of Jerusalem. If there is no reaction to the Palestinian Authority controlling Bethlehem, why should there be any problem with their controlling part of Jerusalem?

We must remember that only under Israel have all peoples of all religious faiths had access to Jerusalem. We must also remember that the PLO has still not changed its stated goal of ridding the land of Jews -- or that Christians are also regarded as dhimmis to be mistreated.

What is our challenge as Christians in the U.S.? Our need to support Israel remains unchanged, but it is given new impetus as we consider our responsibility to our Christian sisters and brothers who feel alone and abandoned under the Palestinian Authority.

True peace cannot come to the region through jihad, which Arafat continues to promote when he speaks in Arabic (and which he says means "nation building" when he speaks in English). It can only come through learning to live and work together, the policies that Israel has promoted since its inception.

1 Near East Report, 18 December 1995.

2 Arab Christians are a distinct minority in Judea and Samaria, numbering about 50,000 people or 2.4 percent of the total population, down from 20 percent in 1948 (New York Times,31 December 1995). The Eastern Orthodox are the largest group, followed by Catholics who have the most powerful voice due to the recent Vatican-Israel relations. The Protestants are a tiny, fractured, hardly measurable group with no significant native voice. They must rely on their various church leaderships to make their voices heard abroad.

3 According to Catholic figures, Bethlehem was around 79 percent Christian from 1931 until 1967. The latest unofficial figures, compiled by Father Ignacio Pena in 1984 for the Catholic publication, Holy Land Review, revealed that Bethlehem's Christian population had shrunk to 40 percent: 5,150 Eastern Orthodox, 4,400 Catholics, 180 Protestants, and one Copt (The Jerusalem Post Magazine, 15 December 1995). It is estimated that the Christian population has now shrunk to about 32 percent.

4 Israel has often been accused of causing Christian Arabs to emigrate, but the Christian population in Israeli towns and cities has more than quadrupled since 1948 -- from 30,000 to 146,000 as of 1993 (Jerusalem, seventh edition; Israel Information Center, 1995).

5 Boston Globe, January 1996.

6 Dispatch from Jerusalem, January-February 1996; Jerusalem Insider, 4 February 1996.

7 Myths and Facts, p.170; New York Times, 12 June 1991.

8 New York Times Magazine, 24 December 1995, p. 40.