by Mary Pneuman
When we visited the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City during the first week in Advent, 2013, everyone was anticipating that preparations for Christmas would be in full swing. A tall tree was being uplifted near the New Gate entrance, but for the first time in my many visits, there was an almost ghostly quiet in the streets. The usual bustle of school children, nuns, and clergy in flowing cassocks was absent. Shopkeepers told us that there were few customers these days, and many shops have closed. The lines of worshippers at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher were relatively short; only a few knelt at the anointing stone, and the queue to enter the Edicule, which marks the site of the Resurrection, was cordoned behind Israeli police barricades.
The Palestinian Christian population has fallen to below 2 percent since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, when some 70,000 Christians became refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. In 1945 an estimated 32,000 Palestinian Christians lived in Jerusalem alone; now there are only about 10,000, according to Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, Canon Emeritus of St. George’s Anglican Cathedral in Jerusalem.
Bethlehem, also, is nearly surrounded by settlements and the Wall, along with some 32 additional barriers— settler by-pass roads, checkpoints, roadblocks of razor wire and rubble, and security buffers that separate Palestinians from their farms, olive groves and grazing lands, as well as from each other. Currently, 22 Israeli settlements have been built in the Bethlehem governorate. The Christian population of Bethlehem stood at more than half in 1990 but is now down to about 18% of this city of 22,000, dominated in equal measure by churches and mosques.
In addition to problems with access, aggressive acts against worshippers attempting to reach the Church of the Holy Sepulcher have been increasing. Following the Holy Saturday* celebration in April, 2013, thirteen Patriarchs and heads of churches issued the following statement:
We, the heads of Churches in Jerusalem watched with sorrowful hearts the horrific scenes of the brutal treatment of our clergy people and pilgrims in the Old City of Jerusalem…it is not acceptable that under the pretext of security and order that our clergy and people are indiscriminately and brutally beaten and prevented from entering their churches, monasteries and convents.In response on May 31, 2013, Reverend Gradye Parsons, the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, USA, wrote to the Reverend Dr. Suzan Johnson Cook, United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, to express concern about violations of the religious rights and the physical abuse of Orthodox and other Christian worshippers in Jerusalem. Not only do West Bank residents have limited access, but even Jerusalem Palestinians are finding it harder to gain entry even on their holiest days, he said. He especially decried the beating by Israeli police of 85 year old cleric Fr. Arsanios, head of the Coptic church in Ramallah.
In his letter to Suzan Cook, Rev. Parsons also expressed “growing concern over what appears to be the use of military permits to control/restrict the movement of visitors, including our fellow church-workers, many of whom have come to work with partners not only in Israel, but also in the West Bank. We have reported evidence that they have been required to sign affidavits that that they will not enter Area A [set aside in the Oslo accords for administrative and security control of the Palestinian Authority] or any area under the Israeli occupation, or Area C [the 60 percent of the West Bank now under both Israeli administrative and/or military control] without a special military permit issued by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories.” Some are not been fully informed as to how to get the military permit that will allow entry into the West Bank and, as a result, are not able to do so, he said. “These measures create a significant obstacle to members of the Christian community to “fulfill their missions of humanitarian aid, compassion and support for our Palestinian partners.”
*Holy Saturday is one of the most important religious celebrations for Palestinian Christians. The ceremony takes place on the eve of the Orthodox Easter, when a flame, or Holy Fire, from the tomb is kindled and passed by candles and torches to thousands of worshippers in and on the roof of the Sepulcher. The flame is also used to light lamps that are transferred to other Christian communities. It is a time of great joy.Providing context for Parson’s letter, ruling elder Robert Trawick, professor of philosophy and religious studies at St. Thomas Aquinas College in New York and a member of the Presbyterian Church, USA’s Middle East Peacemaking Issues Committee, observed that these actions “ are part of a pattern of increasingly aggressive actions by Israeli security forces dating back a decade or more.” He also pointed out that a US State Department International Religious Freedom report that found preferential treatment was given to Jews celebrating Passover and to international visitors making pilgrimages, while the authorities enacted restrictions that impeded the activities of local Christians celebrating Easter.
Commenting on the situation, Ms. Hind Khoury, former international ambassador for the Palestinian Authority and board member of Bethlehem Bible College, said “People are not coming to Jerusalem anymore from the West Bank. Who wants confrontations and tear gas?”
Fast forward to Holy Week and Easter, 2014. The Guardian reported that “Palestinian Christians from the West Bank and Gaza are required to seek permission to travel to the Old City, a lottery in which it is never clear how many permits a family will receive, if any. Last week, Christian leaders complained that – as in recent years – they had faced either obstruction from the Israeli authorities or a lack of travel permits preventing many from celebrating Easter in Jerusalem.”
Fouad Twal, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and head of the Catholic Church in Israel, Cyprus, Jordan and the Palestinian territories, stated during a visit of Palestinian Christian leaders to Ireland that the number of Palestinians attending Palm Sunday processionals this year was “very low,” and he blamed Israeli actions for the sparse turnout. “About 50,000 Catholic and Orthodox Christians live in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and many need a permit to travel to Jerusalem in the days before Easter... Maybe there were less permits, maybe they came late, or they gave one to the father but not to the mother,” he said.
On Wednesday of Holy Week, Father Firas Aridah, priest of St Joseph's parish in Ramallah on the West Bank at the Latin patriarchate said, “The Israeli authorities have said they are giving more permits this year to come from the West Bank, but the point is that Christians should be able to come here without permits. I've spoken to people in Bethlehem. Most say they still haven’t received their permits, and among those who have, it is only a couple of members of the family. It may be those who don't have them now will get them one or two months later, as happened last year.” It is not uncommon for clergy to be denied permits to travel to Jerusalem.
Loss of access to religious sites (both Christian and Muslim) is the result of draconian policies of the Government of Israel that dispossess and discriminate against Palestinians, whether in the West Bank and Gaza or inside the State of Israel. These policies have been legalized by the enactment of an expanding array of laws that separate Palestinians from their lands and livelihoods and deny basic human rights. Since Benjamin Netanyahu became Israeli Prime Minister in 2009, the government has ramped up its program of land confiscation and settlement expansion, revocation of Palestinian residency permits and housing discrimination, and pressure on businesses through threats of closure for unpaid taxes. The process has been accelerated in East Jerusalem. Not untypical, a bookseller we visited in December said he was taxed on the basis of the number of books he was expected to sell, not the number he sold. A shopkeeper in the Christian Quarter said he had so little business he could scarcely afford to stay open.
When the separation barriers and buffers for the settlements are completed, the Wall will be more than twice the length of the 1949 armistice “Green Line,” the official boundary separating Israel from the West Bank. According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, 85% of the barrier will be inside the West Bank instead of conforming to the Green Line, isolating over 9% of the West Bank and E Jerusalem from other parts of the West Bank. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that about 150 Palestinian communities have part of their lands isolated by the barrier and must obtain “visitors” permits or receive prior permission to access these areas. Palestinians cannot enter or pass through Israel without special permission.
Of special concern is the isolation of some 11,000 Palestinians in 33 communities or households in the so-called “Seam Zone” area between the Wall and the Green Line between the State of Israel and the West Bank. The majority of these require “permanent resident” permits from Israel to continue living in their homes. Israeli settlers living in the Seam Zone are exempt from this regulation. Few health or educational services are available in this area, where residents must pass through checkpoints to reach their agricultural land, workplace or essential services. By tradition, Palestinian land owners have gone out from the villages, where they had their homes, to work in their fields, fruit and olive groves, and grazing lands.
Since 1948, confiscation of Palestinian land has been authorized by Israel’s complex and often expanded Absentee Property Law. The law was originally designed to permit confiscation of property from Arab refugees who had fled or were evicted from their homes during and after the war leading up to the creation of the State of Israel. By the end of the Six Day War, when the West Bank became occupied by Israel, the law applied to anyone who did not reside or was not physically present in the annexed area on the relevant date (June 28, 1967) and therefore considered to be an ‘absentee’ owner.
More recently, the law has been applied to Palestinians residents of East Jerusalem, who have been continually present, but by virtue of annexation or redrawn municipal boundaries are now considered “absent” from Jerusalem. As explained in the Israeli daily Haaretz (June, 2013), “this is about Palestinians who live in the West Bank – and sometimes, meters from their property in Jerusalem – who had their homes confiscated because they’re now ‘absentees,’ that is, no longer Jerusalem residents. … we’re not talking about the homes of Palestinians who are already spending a second or even third generation in Jordan or Lebanon or somewhere much further afield – we’re talking about people who still live in the vicinity, under Israeli rule, but now find themselves on the wrong side of the line for maintaining their property….”
Over the last decade, the combination of the Wall and other separation barriers, restrictive laws and zoning regulations has conspired to make it very difficult for Palestinians to maintain ownership control of their property inside municipal Jerusalem, the Seam Zone or any other parcels of land chosen by Israel for settlement construction, closed military zones or other purposes. Once declared “absent” there is little the landowner can do except appeal to the Israeli courts—a costly process which can take years and is most often unsuccessful.
Following Secretary of State John Kerry’s failed efforts to broker a compromise, Churches for Middle East Peace reported that, according to Israeli watchdog group Peace Now, the negotiations were a boon to the settlement enterprise. They calculated that, “During the 9 months of Secretary Kerry’s efforts in the region, the Israeli Government promoted plans and tenders for at least 13,851 housing units in the settlements and East Jerusalem - an average of 50 units per day and 1,540 units per month.” Most notably, “the average yearly number of tenders was 4 times higher compared to previous years.”
Next: Part 6b—the situation currently facing two Christian families and a Christian monastery, their legal efforts to hold on to their properties near Bethlehem, and more about “price tag” attacks on Christian institutions.
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