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May 12, 2009 22:50 | Updated May 13, 2009 21:28
Some truths about Palestinian Christians
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
Palestinian and other Arab Christians are a perennial political football,
especially with Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the Holy Land. Seen by some as the
epitome of what happens to minorities under Islamist rule (when their shops are
firebombed in Hamas-run Gaza), they are also continually used by the Western
media to show how the Israeli security fence divides those in Bethlehem from
Jerusalem. Even as their community shrinks they seem to get more and more
attention. They were a centerpiece of Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace not
Apartheid.
Pope Benedict XVI gestures to worshippers as he leaves a mass in Manger Square,
next to the Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, Wednesday.
Photo: AP
It is worthwhile therefore to consider a little about their recent history and
dispel some of the myths that have grown up about them. A recent Time magazine
article by Andrew Lee Butters notes that "the creation of Israel has been a
disaster for Christians in the Middle East. Many of the Palestinian refugees...
were Christians. The flood of Palestinian refugees into Lebanon helped spark a
civil war between Muslims and Christians there... the ongoing occupation of the
West Bank [by Israel] is strangling the life out of those Christian communities
that are left."
The truth is quite different. There were roughly 150,000 Arab Christians in
British mandatory Palestine on the eve of Israel's 1948 War of Independence.
Some 75,685 fled the areas that became Israel, leaving 32,000 in Israel in
1949, mostly in Nazareth, some villages in the Galilee and in Haifa, Acre and
Jaffa. Family reunification and repatriation programs brought their numbers to
39,000 by 1951. Most Christian refugees came from Jaffa, Haifa and West
Jerusalem, and almost all of them fled before Israel declared independence in
May 1948.
In fact Ben-Gurion ordered the IDF to give special protection to Nazareth when
it was seized on July 16: "Those who penetrate into the city will fight
valiantly against invaders and gangs wherever they resist; at the same time
they will meticulously and conscientiously refrain from harming, despoiling or
pillaging holy places." Christian villages in the Galilee, many of which are
also shared with Druze, were given special protective treatment as well, and
few were harmed by Israelis or abandoned by their Christian inhabitants.
CHRISTIANS ACTUALLY benefited demographically from the creation of Israel,
rising from 1 in 7 of the Arab population to 1 in 3 by the 1950s. Rather than
being "many" of the refugees, they formed a small minority and fared much
better than their Muslim counterparts. Most were middle class, educated and
spoke foreign languages. Because of this, prominent Palestinian Christians such
as the families of Edward Said and John Sanunu (Ronald Reagan's chief of staff)
easily assimilated in the West. Their being overwhelmingly urban - in 1947
115,000 lived in towns and cities - made them both vulnerable during the war
and also made it easier to flee the fighting.
Christian communities suffered most in the West Bank, where Muslim refugees
were cynically settled in their midst. Thus Ramallah was 90% Christian before
the war and contained only 5,000 inhabitants, while Bethlehem was 80% Christian
and had only 9,000 inhabitants. By 1967 there were 16,000 people in Bethlehem,
of whom only 6,400 were Christian, and Ramallah is a large Muslim city today
Lebanon was certainly harmed by the influx of Palestinian refugees, but its
Christians were hurt primarily as a result of the 1970 Jordanian Civil War,
after which Arafat's PLO created a state within a state in Lebanon and, in
alliance with other Muslim militias, destabilized the country. Far from
"strangling the life" out of Christian communities in the West Bank, where
there are barely 50,000 Christians, access to Israel and its economy, education
and medical facilities helped them. In contrast the Hamas victory in Gaza after
the Israeli withdrawal hasn't made their life better. Compared to Christians in
the Palestinian territories, the ones in Israel have flourished even though
demographically they have declined to 2% of the population.
THE OTHER SIDE of the story of Palestinian Christians is that they have had a
long and hallowed role in Arab nationalism. Mathilda Moghannem, a Protestant
Palestinian feminist, declared in January 1948 that "Christians will become
Muslims to defeat Zionism."
George Habash, founder and leader of the communist terrorist PFLP, was a
Christian, as was Yasser Arafat's wife. In the 1970s a Catholic Christian
priest, Hilarion Carucci, was even convicted of running guns for the PLO.
Palestinian Christians suffer periodic bouts of intimidation and harassment.
Their churches are spray-painted with graffiti, and while Christian women marry
Muslim men and Palestinian law ensures their children must be raised Muslim,
when a Christian man is rumored to date a Muslim women riots have ensued.
Larry Derfner recently wrote in The Jerusalem Post that they are a "minority
that tends to get along... [and] keep their complaints to themselves" and that
attacks on them may reflect "class resentment." Such talk about minorities
might remind us of how these were supposed to behave as dhimmi under Islamism,
or how the Jews lived in Europe before the Holocaust. People resented the Jews'
class as well - hardly an excuse to attack and harass them.
The writer, a PhD student in geography at the Hebrew University, wrote his M.A.
thesis there on Arab Christians. A contributor to various publications, he runs
the Terra Incognita Journal blog.
[email protected]
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