| Church leaders say Israelis are tightening
vise
Second in a two-part series
By PAT MORRISON
Like many of the other 100 or so protesters outside the University
of Toledo, he held a sign reading “End the Occupation.” But there was
something distinctive in his passionate presence that sparked this
reporter’s special interest. Perhaps it was his age -- he was about 40 --
or his red hair and freckled face that set him apart from the younger
dark-eyed, dark-haired students of Middle Eastern descent, some wearing the
traditional checkered Palestinian keffiyeh.
He was quick to explain the sense of urgency he felt about the
deteriorating situation in Israel and Palestine. And for him, more than
politics was at stake.
“I’m Jewish,” the man said. “At least a dozen
of my family members died in the Warsaw ghetto. I believe that Israel has a
right to exist, a right to its security. But what I see Israel doing to
Palestinians is exactly the same thing that happened to us under the Nazis. The
[Palestinian] people are totally cut off. There are roadblocks, huge ditches
isolating the villages. There’s virtual house arrest, so that people
can’t get food, can’t get medical care, can’t get to school.
Land is being confiscated with no legal recourse. Palestinian-owned homes and
businesses are being destroyed. And if we don’t say no to it, it’s
only going to get worse.
“We Americans need to realize that our tax dollars and our
foreign policy are supporting the extermination of a people. We let the
Holocaust happen because nobody believed what was going on. Well, here’s
one Jew to say, ‘We’re doing it to another people, all over
again.’ The only thing different? So far, no ovens.”
The man gave his name, but asked that it not be used.
“I’d like to get back into Israel one of these days,” he
explained, with a slight chuckle.
That was two years ago. Some might wonder if today the red-haired
Toledo protester knows how sadly prophetic he was.
Every so often, some newsworthy event in the ongoing
Israeli-Palestinian conflict catches Americans’ interest for more than the
usual sound bite’s length -- such as when Bethlehem cancels Christmas to
protest the Israeli military occupation of the city. But most of the time the
message running beneath the news appears to be “same old, same old”
sequence: Palestinian suicide bomber, innocent civilians killed; Israeli
retaliation, innocent civilians killed; Palestinian retaliation to the
retaliation, Israeli military occupation or curfew imposed, homes demolished.
The cycle seems endless.
Tightening the noose
But to those living through the situation, and to observers from
the outside, this phase of the intifada isn’t just more of the same.
It’s getting worse. And, some say, there is a plan in place to
systematically drive the Palestinian people, Christians as well as Muslims,
from their homeland.
When Israeli Defense Forces rolled their tanks into Bethlehem in
November, residents knew they were there for the long haul. The city was
effectively under house arrest for more than a month, with lengthy curfews that
kept residents from working, going to school, buying food or getting medical
care (see NCR, Dec. 20) When Christmas approached, Christian civic and
religious leaders staged a formal protest; all public Christmas festivities and
outdoor decorations were cancelled. Only the religious celebration of Christmas
in the town where Jesus was born was left intact.
In his Christmas homily in the Roman Catholic Church of St.
Catherine, next to the Church of the Nativity that marks the traditional
birthplace of Jesus, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem called on Palestinian
Christians to reflect on love. But he also had a stern message for the Israeli
government occupying his homeland.
“It is not impossible to love, to love all those with whom we
live, all our brothers and sisters, Muslims, Jews, Druzes and Christians, and
even the Israeli soldiers who impose upon us siege, curfew and
humiliations,” Patriarch Michel Sabbah told the congregation. He urged
Palestinian Christians to practice patience, and as Christians continue to
emigrate from the region in record numbers (see related story on Page 4), he
pleaded with them “not to weaken and [not] to escape. ... We do everything
that must be done to put an end to the occupation and to the sufferings that
ensue from it.”
Sabbah, the first native Palestinian to head the Latin church in
Jerusalem, pulled no punches in his message to Israelis. Acknowledging their
own suffering and loss of innocent life in the ongoing bloodshed, Sabbah
nevertheless pointedly told Israel that its peace and security would come about
only when they end the occupation that fuels Palestinian violence.
“We tell you that the ways of peace are not those that you
follow. ... In your hand, not in the power of your army, is the capacity to
stop all what you say to be violence and terror. Your armies won wars and until
today didn’t win peace,” he said, calling for new Israeli leadership
that can demonstrate “new visions able to make peace that ... can procure
your security, while granting to Palestinians their rights, their liberty and
their security.”
But judging from activity along the military landscape in the West
Bank, there’s no sign Israel is about to listen to the patriarch. If
peaceful coexistence within Israel is the Christian churches’ theme, it
doesn’t appear to be embraced by Ariel Sharon’s government. Har Homa,
the largest illegal settlement to date -- and according to the Oslo Accords,
they’re all illegal -- is ready to open, placing more than 6,500 housing
units for an estimated 50,000 Jewish settlers smack in the middle of
Palestinian territory.
While the Israelis call the settlement Har Homa, the local
Palestinians know it as Jabal Abu Ghneim, literally “hill for
grazing.” In fact, this is the site the Christmas story records when it
describes “shepherds in the hills, watching their flocks.” The
settlement construction is the in-your-face equivalent of confiscating the
shepherds’ fields of Bethlehem, driving out the Christian community that
has lived there for centuries.
There’s no question that Har Homa is illegal. In July 1997,
the United Nations General Assembly voted 131-3 to condemn the construction
project. Even Washington, normally supportive of Israeli activities, criticized
plans to expand the settlement in March 2001. But the project continued, and
under the Sharon government, expanded even more.
An American priest who has worked in the Holy Land for 40 years
and lived there for the past dozen says that Sharon’s basic agenda is to
buy more time. “The more time he has, the more the settlements keep
growing -- and not just the settlements, but their so-called ‘buffer
zones,’ which means they can expand indefinitely.”
Settlements, demolitions
increase
Now, as if the settlement expansion is not enough, Israel has
served demolition notices for hundreds of homes in Beit Sahour -- including a
housing project of the Greek Orthodox church built on church-owned land (and
with a 99-year lease).
Beit Sahour, the largest Christian village in the West Bank, is
down the hill from Har Homa. In 1996, to stem the flood of emigration and
provide affordable housing for Beit Sahour residents, the Greek Orthodox church
began construction of 15 four-story buildings on five acres of land. When
completed, the project would total 120 apartments. The seven completed
buildings are currently home to two dozen families.
Beit Sahour Mayor Fuad Kokaly launched a legal appeal before the
Israeli Supreme Court, which has issued a temporary injunction to halt the
demolition. Kokaly, who has urged the worldwide Christian community to take
action in support of the village, says the demolition papers are boilerplate
Israeli legalese for confiscating and destroying any Palestinian property the
government chooses.
Home demolitions by the Israelis are daily occurences in the West
Bank and Gaza -- several more took place in the days following Christmas.
“They just want to wear us down, to wear us out, hoping we
will go away,” said an area priest in a Dec. 28 phone interview with
NCR. “They try to say this is about security, to eliminate Islamic
militants. So what is their excuse in harassing Christian villages? There are
no terrorists, no militants here. There are school children and elderly people
and families who want to live in peace. It makes no sense -- except they want
everyone out but them[selves.]”
An American who has worked in Israel for more than a decade
concurred. “In Jenin [site of an incursion by Israeli forces that left
more than 100 civilians dead] they kept the press out, so no one could document
what really happened. If they clamp down on not just the Palestinians, but
Americans and all non-Israelis, the government has carte blanche to do whatever
it wants,” he said.
Does that include forced, large-scale deportations of
Palestinians? “I wouldn’t be at all surprised, although the
government denies it.”
The Israelis have succeeded in doing it elsewhere, and it is not
accidental. According to Robert Blecher, writing in the Winter issue of
Middle East Report, the “transfer” of the Palestinians has
begun, and there’s strong support for it: “A substantial portion of
the Israeli public agrees that the very presence of Palestinians in Israel and
the West Bank constitutes a threat to the future of the Jewish state.” In
a March 2002 poll administered by Tel Aviv University, Blecher reports, 46
percent of Israeli Jews supported the transfer of Palestinians from the West
Bank and 31 percent advocated the same treatment for Palestinian citizens of
Israel; 60 percent said they supported “encouraging” Palestinian
Israelis to leave Israel; a full 80 percent objected to the inclusion of
Palestinian Israelis in decisions of national importance.
According to Blecher, assistant professor of history at the
University of Richmond, “transfer” -- the euphemism referring to
expulsion of Palestinians from Israel-Palestine, “enjoys more legitimacy
today than it has since 1948, the year of the state of Israel’s creation
and the first Arab-Israeli war.”
The pro-expulsion mood within Israel has gained in visibility in
the past year, with billboards, taxis, and radio and television shows
advocating ethnic cleansing in everything from graffiti to Madison-Avenue style
posters: “Transfer = Security,” “Expel the Arabs!” “No
Arabs, No Attacks,” “Jordan is the Palestinian State.”
For Palestinians -- as well as Israeli Jews -- who’ve lived
through other times, there’s an ominous sense of déjà vu.
Palestinians remember the forced expulsion of 300,000 of their people during
the 1967 war, some deported on buses marked “Free Passage to Amman
[Jordan].” For Jews who oppose the occupation and their government’s
direction, there’s the terrible memory of other “transfers”
during the Nazi era.
The fundamental root of the problem -- and the momentum behind
“transfer” and ethnic cleansing, according to an American professor
who has lived in the Holy Land for over a decade -- is the radical form of
Zionism that maintains that the land belongs only to the Jews. “Of course
there are all kinds of variations of Zionism, but this is the most extreme and
it’s gaining in popularity. And at the same extreme [among Palestinians]
is Hamas, which wants to ‘drive all Jews into the sea,’ but of course
Hamas doesn’t have Israel’s military power or U.S. funding.”
But the world, which ignored the forced deportation and internment
of millions of Jews during World War II, appears to have selective amnesia in
the current situation in Israel-Palestine as well. The last residents of the
West Bank village of Yanoun took their remaining belongings from their
destroyed homes and abandoned their village Oct. 18. The Israeli government has
confiscated property of the Armenian church at Baron Der, which the church has
held since 1641. Despite village protests, the demolition order for Beit Sahour
homes still stands. And increasing numbers of civilians, from newborn infants
to a 93-year-old grandmother, seem to have been direct targets of Israeli
troops, killed not by shrapnel or in bombings, but by rifle fire.
Daily reports from international observers, such as the
Mennonite-sponsored Christian Peacemaker Teams, document escalating violence in
areas like Hebron, where settlers, many of them children and teens, continue to
attack Palestinians and even unarmed international observers, all with
impunity. Israeli Defence Forces on the scene frequently do not intervene at
all, and sometimes have appeared to incite further violence.
Hebron, home to the most violent settler movement in the region,
is the target of an orchestrated effort to isolate and choke off Palestinian
homes by expanding the circle of settlements and access roads. Recent
incursions have left one Palestinian family on a tiny piece of their original
land, their orchard and olive trees uprooted and burned. Despite the
family’s participation in the Peacemaker Team’s Campaign for Secure
Dwellings since the program’s beginning, and monitoring by team’s
staff, the family is now totally cut off by settler roads and threatened by
continual settler harassment.
Bethlehem the barometer
No West Bank community is a better barometer of the situation than
Bethlehem. “We’ve been under curfew more often, and for longer
periods, than any other West Bank town,” said Br. Neil Kieffe, one of the
De La Salle Christian Brothers who staff Bethlehem University. The native of
St. Joseph, Mo., is vice president for academic affairs, completing his 12th
year at the university. In the school’s 28-year history, he says, the last
two years have been the most difficult, particularly with the frequent Israeli
military occupation of the town, “and it doesn’t show any signs of
easing up.”
Betty Scholten is a Catholic from Washington, D.C., who recently
returned to the states after two weeks as a member of a delegation with
Christian Peacemaker Teams reserve corps. Visiting Bethlehem and staying with
Palestinian Christians in the weeks before Christmas, she experienced the
terror, fatigue and hopelessness the residents know daily -- being turned away
at checkpoints, climbing over back roads to find alternate passage, then noting
the eerie silence and absence of life on the streets. “Only a few children
were brave enough to defy the curfew and the soldiers,” she said, but
eventually, desperate to get their story out to the world, the residents came
forward, first waving tentatively from rooftops or calling out greetings.
“Occasionally a door would open a crack to reveal a family, desperate to
make a connection,” she told NCR.
While staying with their Palestinian host family, the Christian
Peacemaker Team learned that a house in the neighborhood would be blown up that
night by the Israeli forces. Scholten said, “I’ll never forget seeing
the frightened 10-year-old son clinging to his father, asking, ‘Will we be
safe?’ What could his father say?”
The St. George Restaurant near Manger Square is normally packed
from Christmas Eve until the wee hours of Christmas morning. This year,
three-fourths of the tables were empty, the only customers the journalists and
photographers who descended on the town to record the historic non-Christmas.
Azmi Juha, who has owned the eatery for 24 years, announced he was closing for
good after Christmas -- or at least until the current intifada is over.
At the Khano brothers’ workshop, stacks of olive wood
Nativity figures in various stages of carving filled several tables, unsold
witnesses to a dead tourist economy. Like the Khanos, the Giacaman family has
lived in Bethlehem for generations. Joseph and Mary Giacaman -- appropriate
names for a Christian Arab couple from Bethlehem -- run a souvenir store near
Manger Square. They closed the store three hours early on Christmas Eve.
Normally the biggest night of the year for sales, receipts Dec. 24 were less
than $100.
In desperation over the failing economy, some Bethlehem residents
have taken their merchandise abroad to find new markets. It’s a Christian
take on the proverbial “bringing the mountain to Mohammad”: If the
pilgrims can’t come to Bethlehem, bring the craft items to them. One group
of 600 Bethlehem-area families who comprise about 200 workshops has recently
formed a cooperative, the Holy Land Christians Cooperative Society, to bring
their work to the United States (see related story). Another of these
entrepreneurs is Wisam Salsaa, a native of Beit Sahour whose family has been
Catholic since the 13th century -- and who have been been master carvers in
olive wood and mother-of-pearl for almost as long.
Salsaa, 27, was recently in the United States for a speaking
engagement at the Peace Center in San Antonio. Salsaa, who holds degrees in
social work and biblical tourism from Bethlehem University, is passionate about
getting the word out, especially to American Christians, about the reality the
Palestinian people are living under occupation. Given the dire economic straits
of his people, he’s also hopeful that he can sell some craftwork while
stateside and bring the money back home. “The people need to retain their
dignity,” Salsaa told NCR. “Right now people who own hotels,
shops, have no business. When they’re not totally unemployed they’re
living on about a dollar a month in Bethlehem.”
Litany of Desperation
Like others who live and work in Palestine, Salsaa ticked off the
litany of woes the region is enduring: childen who are not getting food or
education, increasing domestic violence because of unemployment, the damaging
psychological effects of living for extended periods in a war zone.
Unlike many Palestinians who leave, Salsaa feels a commitment to
return to Palestine. “This is our land just as much as it’s the
Israelis’. And we have to protect the faith here too. It’s up to us
as Christians to make sure there will still be Christians here in years to
come,” he said.
But he also knows it’s possible he won’t get back into
his homeland. Getting out was difficult enough. Unable to leave from Tel Aviv
because of military restrictions on Palestinians, Salsaa left from Jordan.
Because of the numerous roadblocks and checkpoints throughout Palestine,
“a trip that should have been a 35-minute drive took nine hours and three
taxis.”
Americans living in Palestine like Kieffe and Palestinians like
Salsaa worry that the months ahead will get worse, particularly if the United
States goes to war with Iraq.
“Sharon is determined to enforce the hard line, and among
most Israelis there’s a shift to the right because they will support
anyone who claims to take a tough stand against violence,” said the
veteran American priest who asked that his name not be used. But Sharon’s
claim that a hard line ensures Israeli peace and security is sheer fallacy, he
added. “More Israelis have died in the past two years than at any
comparable two-year period since 1948.”
According to several Americans living in Israel, both educators
and staff of nongovernmental organizations, Israel is definitely stepping up
the pressure against Palestinians, and with a carefully calculated intent.
“Sharon’s Likud Party desperately wants the vote, so they actually
welcome more violence from Palestinians. Every new suicide bombing enables
Israel to justify a more aggressive stance,” said one American who spoke
with NCR in a phone interview. “It’s a cycle of cynical
manipulation, designed to keep spiraling downward.”
In the meantime, Israel continues its suffocating chokehold on the
Palestinian people. And Palestinian Christians continue to ask why the world,
especially fellow Christians, seems to be ignoring their plight.
“Last year when whales were beached, it was on the news
around the clock, and the whole world was rushing to help,” said Nancy
Elias, a Catholic from Bethlehem who is on the faculty of Bethlehem University.
“Where is the help for us? Why doesn’t the world pay attention to
what’s happening here?”
One person paying attention is the Jewish protester whose family
perished in Hitler’s “final solution.” Palestinians hope
he’s not the only one.
Pat Morrison is NCR managing editor. Her e-mail address
is pmorrison@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, January 10,
2003
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