Christians go as Bethlehem's star dims
International Herald Tribune
BETHLEHEM -- In the town where Christ was born, the Christians are leaving.
Four years of violence, an economic free fall and the rapidly rising Israeli separation barrier have all contributed to the hardships facing Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem, one of the largest concentrations of Christians in the region.
An estimated 3,000 Christians in the Bethlehem area have moved abroad since the Palestinian uprising began in 2000, according to Bernard Sabella, an associate professor of sociology at Bethlehem University who has tracked the issue. While some others put the number a bit lower, there is a consensus that 10 percent or more of the Christian population in Bethlehem and two adjoining towns has left and that the exodus is continuing.
"Christians all over the world need to know this reality. If there is not a breakthrough in the peace process, this trend will continue," said Hanna Nasser, a Christian who is the mayor of Bethlehem. "Imagine the town of Bethlehem without Christians."
Bethlehem's central square should be packed for Christmas celebrations. But the town's economy is dependent on year-round tourism, and the pilgrims stopped coming when the fighting began.
"For four years there has been no business, no way to earn a living," said Saleh Michel, 88, a Roman Catholic.
For decades, Michel ran what seemed a recession-proof family business. His musty souvenir shop, the Bethlehem Oriental Store, is less than 10 paces from one of Christendom's most important shrines, the Church of the Nativity, built on the site where tradition holds that Jesus was born.
Yet Michel rarely opens these days and one of his adult sons has moved to Italy.
"I asked him to stay," Michel recalled. "He said, 'then feed me.' He had no choice but to leave and find work elsewhere."
Michel began working at the store in 1936, the year that Arabs launched an uprising against the British rulers of Palestine. Bad days have come and gone, but for the first time he cannot even pay the rent.
"There were difficult times, but there were always tourists. This uprising has ruined us," said Michel.
Just five years ago, Bethlehem and its Christians were giddy with optimism.
The stone square outside the Church of the Nativity was overflowing with tourists for Christmas and New Year's celebrations. Palestinians were talking up the possibility of statehood in 2000. Pope John Paul II visited in March 2000, helping fuel a surge in visitors. Several new hotels were rising to accommodate them.
"We all had high hopes," said Fayez Khano, who carves olive wood souvenirs in a workshop dusted with flakes of blond wood.
But today, Khano, a father of three, has a son and a daughter in Dublin and another daughter who is about to move to the United States.
"We depend on our kids to send us money," said Khano, who along with his brother, has been crafting Jesus figures and manger scenes at his shop for a quarter-century. "I want to stay because I was born here, but my wife is pushing me to leave. If the situation continues, I will have to consider it."
This recent exodus marks an acceleration of a decades-old trend that has seen the steady emigration of the Christian population throughout many parts of the Middle East.
Bethlehem was more than 90 percent Christian until the middle of the last century. But the 1948 war, launched by Arab states with the founding of Israel, brought an influx of Muslim refugees to the Bethlehem area and signaled the start of a demographic shift.
Today, Christians account for about 21,500 of 60,000 Palestinian residents, or about 35 percent, according to Sabella. The figures include Bethlehem and two neighboring towns, Beit Jalla and Beit Sahour.
The Christians, most of them Greek Orthodox or Catholic, have not been directly involved in the fighting, but have suffered the consequences.
In the early days of the uprising, Muslim gunmen in the Bethlehem area took hilltop positions in Beit Jalla, which is predominantly Christian. This afforded them a clear line of fire at the southernmost part of Jerusalem, which is built on land Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war.
When the Israeli military responded, Beit Jalla residents found themselves on the front line of the conflict, and occasionally among its casualties.
Israeli troops have staged multiple incursions in the Bethlehem area in pursuit of militants involved in attacks. During the most sweeping raid, more than three dozen Muslim gunmen charged into the Church of the Nativity in April 2002, and remained for 39 days before surrendering.
Also, Palestinian suicide bombers have slipped out of Bethlehem and unleashed deadly attacks in neighboring Jerusalem several times.
Today, Israel's separation barrier, a network of concrete walls and electronic fences, is a hulking presence on the edges of Bethlehem. The barrier is isolating the town from Jerusalem, and separates some residents, including the mayor, from olive groves and other farmland that have been in Palestinian families for generations.
Bethlehem residents cannot travel the short distance to Jerusalem without Israeli permission, and the town is surrounded with 78 obstacles, including dirt mounds, checkpoints and concrete barriers, according to a report released this week by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Near the main entrance to Bethlehem, the Israeli military has erected a series of tall concrete barriers to protect Jewish visitors to Rachel's Tomb, the place where tradition says the biblical Jewish matriarch is buried. The number of visitors is relatively few, but the military presence has turned the area into a ghost town, and 72 of the 80 Palestinian businesses in the immediate vicinity have closed in the past two years, according to the UN report.
Arab Christians have been a relatively prosperous minority inside Israel as well as in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But today they account for less than 2 percent of overall population, and many question the future prospects of the Christian community.
The Christians are generally well-educated and middle-class, and many have relatives or other connections abroad that allow them to move with relative ease to the United States, Europe or Latin America.
Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, a Dominican priest and a longtime professor of the New Testament at Ecole Biblique, in Jerusalem, says Christians are feeling squeezed by both sides.
"No matter who wins, the Christians feel they are treated as second-class citizens," he said. "If the Israelis win, then they are Arabs. If the Muslims win, then they are Christians."
When Father Murphy-O'Connor arrived from Ireland in 1963, some 200 Arab Christians attended Sunday services at St. Stephen's Basilica, the church of the Ecole Biblique. Today there are fewer than 10.
The Christian emigrants tend to be quite successful and rarely look back. In one striking example, the two main candidates in El Salvador's presidential election this year - the winner, Tony Saca, and the runnerup, Schafik Handal, were both descendants of Arab Christian families that came from Bethlehem.
In an attempt to stem the Christian exodus, Father Amjad Sabarra, the Catholic pastor of Bethlehem, has launched a job creation program directed at young men.
In the past year, more than 400 Bethlehem residents have received at least some part-time work, mostly in housing restoration.
Sabarra is also working with recent university graduates, finding them internships and counseling them on the historic role of Christians in the Holy Land.
"I used to have one person working in my office," he said, laughing. "Now I have 20."
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Posted by Editor at December 23, 2004 06:59 AM
