Christmas
2002 Bethlehem in the crosshairs
First in a two-part series
By PAT MORRISON
BROTHER Jerome Sullivan decided to
walk down the hill to attend Mass on the second Sunday of Advent. Normally,
strolling to church on a Sunday morning is not a major event. But in the
biblical city of Bethlehem, as for much of the West Bank, nothing is
normal.
A few blocks from Bethlehem University, which his order sponsors
and staffs, Sullivan was stopped by a soldier of the Israeli Defense Forces.
The entire city of Bethlehem was under curfew, with residents forbidden to
travel or even be out on the streets.
He stopped me, asked to see my documents, examined my
passport, and then let me go ahead, Sullivan said in a Dec. 8 telephone
interview with NCR. But if I had been a Palestinian, Im sure
I would have been turned back -- or worse.
The brothers at Bethlehem University have a unique vantage point
for viewing the endless cycle of killing and retribution in Bethlehem.
The endless debate hardly needs rehearsing. The Israeli argument
is that suicide bombings of innocent civilians bring the retribution. The
Palestinians respond, of course, that the retaliation is all out of proportion
and directed against an already oppressed people driven to extremes by their
situation.
Whatever view one takes, the unrelenting reality -- and irony --
is that in Bethlehem this Christmas the entire population is under a total,
citywide lockdown.
A native New Yorker and former head of the De La Salle Christian
Brothers New York province, Sullivan is the universitys vice
president for development. Previously a teacher and administrator at several of
the orders high schools in the New York area, he is no stranger to
challenges. But he and the faculty at Bethlehem University admit that the past
year has been the most difficult in their tenure and probably in the
universitys 28-year history. He and his confreres -- one from Great
Britain, one native Palestinian and seven other Americans -- are struggling to
hold a major university together and keep it functioning while the Israelis
continue to lock much of the West Bank, and Bethlehem in particular, in virtual
house arrest that began in the spring.
Br. Neil Kieffe, the universitys vice president for academic
affairs, recited a litany of woes that would have driven many other
universities to hang a CLOSED sign on the door and send students
elsewhere. The universitys newest construction project, a multi-million
dollar complex named Millennium Hall, was dedicated in February, featuring
state-of-the-art classrooms, labs, an auditorium and office building. In March,
Israeli anti-tank missiles slammed into the new buildings, clearly targeting
their support columns -- a common maneuver the Israeli forces usually reserve
for civilian dwellings, to ensure that they are too badly damaged to repair.
More than 100 Israeli soldiers commandeered the campus for their barracks in
April, despite the fact that as a religious and educational institution the
university should be protected from military incursion by international law. In
October, Kieffe said, every building on the campus was damaged by the
Israeli invasion, with an estimated repair bill well over $100,000.
Worrying about human toll
But the brothers worry about the human toll on faculty and
students as well as loss of learning more than damage to the buildings.
We lost over 100 class days due to the total lockdown, Kieffe said.
When students werent turned back at IDF roadblocks or locked in their
homes by the curfew, they sometimes risked their lives to get to class. Because
of the frequent road closures, one taxi cannot make the entire trip,
which means that students sometimes have to take five or six taxis to get
to the university. And when they do, they may discover their instructors
werent able to get in.
The university lost two faculty members this past year, both to
emigration, Kieffe said. It was just too much stress for them. They
both lived fairly close, but sometimes it took all day to make a trip
that should be a half hour, and then when theyd get to campus, there were
no students.
Fadi Kattan is one person whos committed to staying, but he
shares the frustration of his colleagues and his students. Kattan, a Roman
Catholic who is a lifelong resident of Bethlehem, is dean of Bethlehem
Universitys College of Business Administration.
Kattan, 36, has seen most of his extended family emigrate to the
United States and South America in the past two years. They wanted to
remain -- this is their homeland, this is a sacred place they come from -- but
they couldnt survive anymore. The parents are willing to make sacrifices
themselves, but they want something better than this for their children. They
want more than constant fighting and killing. So those who can, leave,
Kattan told NCR in a telephone interview.
As an educator, he feels the frustration of seeing young people
not able to live up to their potential because the education has been so
erratic. Its like trying to teach normally when youre in a
war zone, he said. By the time they come to university, what they
learned before was very poor, because school happens in between constant
fighting. They lose weeks of school, the teachers cant follow a decent
curriculum. Then, when they do come here, we cant really ask too much of
these kids. They cant study because they havent slept in weeks,
they hear gunfire all night, they have nightmares. Or theyre depressed --
all of them have lost someone to death, a relative, a friend. I cant
assign them any field work, because they cant get around, they cant
travel outside their community to do it.
But Kattan, Kieffe and Sullivan all agreed that the situation at
Bethlehem University is nothing compared to the plight of the residents of
Bethlehem.
The past year has seen a pattern of escalating oppression and
harassment against the population of Bethlehem and neighboring Beit Sahour and
Beit Jala -- the two West Bank villages with the largest and oldest Christian
populations, built on the site of the shepherds fields described in the
Christmas story.
All under house arrest
Approximately 150,000 people live in the city of Bethlehem, the
two villages, and three refugee camps, including Dheishah, the largest, which
Pope John Paul II visited during his March 1999 pilgrimage to the Holy Land and
where he called for a Palestinian state. For much of the past year, the entire
population has been under house arrest that began in April with the siege at
Bethlehems Church of the Nativity -- the traditional birthplace of Jesus
(NCR, April 26 ).
The years first military occupation of Bethlehem lasted for
39 days, from April 2 through May 10. Twenty days of freedom followed -- until
June 20, when the Israelis locked the city down for a full 60 days. Again, a
period of relief followed -- until Nov. 22, the latest incursion, which
Bethlehem residents are told will last until the end of the year.
Israelis call the episodic lockdowns a curfew. But that term
is insidious, said Kieffe. Curfew makes you think that people have
to be home by a certain time, or cant go out for a few hours at night.
This is house arrest, plain and simple.
Everyone [in Bethlehem] is totally restricted to their homes
24 hours a day. In the past nine days we were only allowed out for four hours,
to do a little shopping for food and medicine.
According to Israeli party line, the military occupation of
Bethlehem and surrounding towns is a security measure, because
Palestinian gunmen have been shooting at IDF troops from the towns, or as
retaliation for suicide bombings. It has become a relentless cycle. A
Palestinian suicide bomber kills Israeli civilians or soldiers; within hours,
Israel retaliates by demolishing the homes of Palestinian civilians, or
strafing villages with gunfire. More people, usually women and children, are
killed. Palestinians respond to the newest violence, and the killing goes
on.
From within Bethlehem, both Palestinians and other nationals
working there have a vastly different perspective. Those living in Bethlehem,
Beit Jala and Beit Sahour believe that the issue is much more than simple
retaliation or security. The total disproportion of the Israeli response has
convinced many that what they are experiencing is an organized campaign of
orchestrated, systematic ethnic cleansing -- an effort on Israels part to
drive all Palestinians from the region.
Sharons pattern
In his assessment of why Israel acts as it does in the West Bank,
Kieffe points to Ariel Sharon.
Just watch Sharons pattern, said Kieffe, who for
18 years chaired the nationally recognized aviation department at Lewis
University outside Chicago. Every time it quiets down a little, he needs
to stir things up. Things were quiet for three months, from Aug. 20 until Nov.
22. Then -- pow! -- here come the tanks again, here come more soldiers. Total
lockdown. You punish 150,000 civilians because a supposed Hamas militant
orchestrated a suicide bombing?
The Rev. Mitri Raheb, pastor of Bethlehems Christmas
Lutheran Church and director of the International Center of Bethlehem, agrees
that the hunt for militants is simply an excuse. The Israelis are looking
for nothing. This is just a pretext, he said in a telephone interview
with NCR Dec. 6. [Sharon] wants to show that he can occupy even
Bethlehem at Christmastime. It has nothing to do with looking for militant
people. The rationale is that Sharon wants to bring more hopelessness to the
Palestinians. He wants more extremists among the Palestinians.
According to Raheb, a Bethlehem-born Palestinian, it is in
Sharons interest to have Hamas and Islamic Jihad growing, and it is in
the interest of the Palestinian militant groups to have Sharon taking action.
The right wing of both societies are helping each other. The normal
people in both societies are suffering, he said.
The lack of proportion in Israels response, Kieffe said, is
part of Sharons game plan: Sharon wants all of the West Bank, and
hell spend the rest of his life trying to do it. Simply put, he wants all
Palestinians out. And if he cant do it militarily, he aims to just wear
people down, grinding down their quality of life as much as he can.
Sullivan agreed. The raw aggression and bullying of the civilian
population by the Israeli Defense Forces demonstrate that we totally have
lost control of everything in Bethlehem, he said.
He described an event Dec. 5, when the Israelis announced they
were lifting the curfew for a few hours, from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. Of
course, as soon as 11 a.m. would come, the entire town would descend on the
market. They had gone for days without being able to buy food. So some produce
merchants went out around 10 to set up their stands, to be ready when the
crowds of shoppers came. But the soldiers went into the market and overturned
the tables. Some they smashed with their rifle butts. Then they threw all the
produce on the ground -- and they couldnt leave it at that: They stomped
on all the fruit and vegetables, destroying it, so the vendors had nothing to
sell. We told you 11, not 10, one soldier yelled to the merchants
as his rationale for the action.
The message is: Shop, if you can; send mail, if you
can; drive your car, if you can. Were stronger than you. And were
doing this because we can get away with it.
Bullying food merchants is small change when compared to
Israels other forms of aggression against the Palestinian people.
The plan is to totally isolate Palestinian villages by ringing the
entire region with Israeli settlements -- illegal according the Oslo Accords,
but nevertheless proliferating under the Sharon government. The most egregious
is Har Homa (Abu Ghuneim in Arabic), which dominates an entire hillside just
northeast of Bethlehem. Construction was stalled in 1999, when Bethlehem and
neighboring municipalities protested the settlement on legal grounds -- it was
being built on confiscated land, for one thing. To build it, Israel confiscated
several hundred acres, or dunum, belonging to Beit Sahour, and destroyed
thousands of the villages olive trees-- their wood, oil and fruit a
principal source of income -- to build access roads for the settlements.
Strategic isolation
Today Har Homa is a pre-fab concrete giant, poorly designed and
ugly, looming over historic Bethlehem. But more than its lack of aesthetics
worries its Palestinian neighbors. The settlement is ready for occupancy, with
50,000 apartments available tax-free for Jews coming to Israel from all over
the world, especially Eastern Europe and the United States. Many settlements
are dominated by U.S. Jews, with Brooklyn accents sprinkled among the Hebrew
and Russian one hears in the West Bank.
Har Homa is expected to bring environmental disaster to the
beleaguered region, generating millions of tons of waste that will probably end
up polluting the severely limited Palestinian water supplies. Israel is already
in breach of numerous provisions of the Oslo Accords, which prohibit
confiscation of or use of Palestinian water sources and aquifers. Currently 65
percent of Palestines water is illegally being siphoned off and going to
45,000 Jewish settlers, with only 35 percent of Palestines water left for
1.2 million Palestinians.
Each settlement also means dozens of access roads -- built with
U.S. taxpayer dollars as economic aid to Israel -- and totally off limits to
the Palestinian people whose land they bisect.
As the settlements continue to strategically ring the West Bank,
they form a noose suffocating Palestinian movement, their roads cutting off
Palestinians from their land, slicing between houses and farmland or terraces.
In the case of Har Homa, the access roads have effectively paralyzed several
small villages around Bethlehem, the inhabitants now stranded on virtual
islands, totally surrounded by Israeli settlements and unable to move freely to
schools, churches, mosques and work outside their communities.
The roads are deliberately designed to crisscross the
landscape, so that little Palestinian areas are isolated by Israeli
roads, Kieffe said. Squeeze them until you kill them off.
Listen to Sharon and he talks about transfer of
the Palestinians from the region. Thats code for ethnic cleansing, and
the settlements are effectively doing that. Thats why instead of stopping
them, as Israel committed to doing, hes going full steam ahead -- and
neither the United States nor the United Nations is willing to slap his
hand.
Reem Gedeon is not a politician. But she knows from painful
firsthand experience what the strangling of Bethlehem means. The 19-year-old
honors student at Bethlehem University lives halfway between the university and
Manger Square with its 1,600-year-old Church of the Nativity.
Like most Palestinian young people, she lives at home with her
parents, sisters and brother -- in her case a total of five siblings. With lack
of jobs, no money for rent, and the impossibility of buying or building homes
of their own, young Palestinians often live in their parental home into their
30s, with newlyweds sharing space with extended family for years. And like most
of her Bethlehem neighbors, her family has had no source of income for
months.
Gedeons father, Francis, 56, is a tailor with a shop in
central Bethlehem. But business stopped completely when the military incursion
began. People have no money to buy clothes or have them sewn, and
the few who do dont have money for alterations, she said. Her brother
Fadi is an accountant, but he cant work because he cant travel to
his job near Jerusalem; the same with an older sister, a nurse. The only way
that Gedeon can afford to go to college is that she attends Bethlehem
University on scholarship -- despite the difficulties of the past two years,
she maintains a 3.81 grade point average.
Because of the lockdown, Gedeon said she could get to the
university just one time during the entire past semester -- for 15 minutes of
class time. But 15 minutes is better than nothing.
No Christmas in Bethlehem
The Gedeons are Roman Catholics; they can trace their Catholic
roots back for centuries, and they are proud of their faith. One of the
greatest sorrows for Gedeon is that the military occupation of Bethlehem means
no Christmas.
Here we are, living in the very city where Jesus was born,
and we cannot celebrate Christmas. People all over the world will be thinking
of Bethlehem, because of Jesus, but in Bethlehem there will be no
happiness, she told NCR.
There is speculation that Israel, as a public relations move, will
lift the curfew at the last minute on Christmas eve, allowing some movement to
the Church of the Nativity. But even if that happens, much of the public
celebration has officially been called off. The city of Bethlehem each year
hosts an elaborate parade and procession into Manger Square, complete with
marching bands, with each Christian tradition presenting its own music,
elaborate costumes and prayer rituals. City officials have already said there
are no plans for any such public display this year.
I live 10 minutes from the Church of the Nativity,
said Kattan, and [because of the curfew] I cant go there for
Christmas. That is wrong. The world needs to know that the Christians in
Bethlehem cant celebrate the birth of Jesus in the place where he was
born.
For some Christians, celebrating Christmas 2002 in a lower key is
the closest they can come to a boycott as a show of solidarity with their
Muslim neighbors. The Muslims could not go out to buy their food, to
celebrate the feast of Eid [al Fitr] at the end of Ramadan, Gedeon said.
How can we then have a big party for Christmas? Well have prayers,
but no party, because the Muslims couldnt have their party.
Gedeon says when she ventures out into the streets when the curfew
is lifted, theres nothing going on. There are no decorations, no
trees, nothing of Christmas. You hear just the sound of tanks, and you see the
damage from the guns and tanks. Everybody walks around very sad. They get their
groceries and hurry home, no life in their faces.
Bethlehem is suffering so much. I feel depressed, because it
seems the world has forgotten about us. You cant understand what it is
like here, with a gun pointed at your head all the time. Your home is a jail,
because you cant go out.
A good part of Gedeons sadness is more than melancholy.
Its rooted in genuine loss, and understandable anger. Her 23-year-old
brother Osama died of cancer in April. He had been sick at home, while the
military occupation was in full force because the siege at the Church of the
Nativity was underway.
We couldnt get him out to go to hospital, because they
would let no one leave, she said. And we couldnt get a doctor
to come. So my brother died here in our house, without the medical care he
needed. He might still be alive, she said softly. I would look at
the church [of the Nativity], where they had ambulances waiting outside for the
soldiers and see my brother here dying because he couldnt get to
hospital. And there was nothing any of us could do about it.
For several days after his death, the family could not bury Osama
because of the house arrest. We had no funeral, no procession, no
Mass, Gedeon said. We could not even go out to the cemetery.
Finally, the Christian Brothers at the university arranged for her brother to
be buried in a tiny cemetery behind the university and helped the family
transport his body for burial.
Despite her grief and anger at seeing her town under military
occupation, Gedeon is determined not to let hatred win out. And although she
hates violence, she believes the intifada is the only way Palestinian young
people have to express themselves.
The only way we have is stones, she said. They
have tanks and guns. But this is our land and we want to stay on it. The
occupation is wrong, and it must end sooner or later. No other nation in the
world is under occupation for more than 50 years, she said.
I try not to hate and I dont want to hate. We want
peace, for all people, Gedeon said. By peace we can make the world
a better one.
As Christians around the world prepare to celebrate the birth of
Jesus, Christians in Bethlehem have prayers to offer and requests to make.
I pray they have a beautiful Christmas, said Nancy
Elias, a Bethlehem-born Catholic faculty member at Bethlehem Universitys
College of Education. And I would say to them, please dont forget
us. Bethlehem needs peace, but it needs justice first. Tell President Bush to
stop supporting actions that hurt the people of Palestine, the people of
Bethlehem. Think about Christmas here, and you will want to work for
peace.
Ask them to pray for us, to remember us, said Gedeon. You
love Jesus. Well, we are the people trying just to exist where Jesus was
born.
Ask questions, said Kattan. Always ask Why? When
you hear your government is doing something, ask why, what people will be
affected by this action?
Raheb, the Lutheran pastor, hopes that Catholics especially will
be motivated to take action when they learn of the oppression of Bethlehem
Christians. The people of Bethlehem, he said, are saying, What are
the 50 million Catholics in the United States doing, with Bethlehem under
curfew at Christmas, the little town that everyone is singing about? If
this happened to Jewish people, the churches would cry out and say, Look
at the discrimination the Jews are suffering.
The little town of Bethlehem is under curfew and the
Christians who have been living here for 2,000 years will not be able to
celebrate this Christmas. How can [U.S. Christians] sleep in peace?
Pat Morrison is NCR managing editor.
NCR senior writer Margot Patterson contributed to this
story.
Both Morrison and Patterson have done investigative reporting
in the Middle East, especially in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Web
sites
Bethlehem www.bethlehemcity.org
Bethlehem
University www.bethlehem.edu
BTselem, The Israeli
Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
www.btselem.org
International Center of Bethlehem
www.annadwa.org
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
www.icahd.org
Rabbis for Human
Rights www.rhr.israel.net
Sabeel www.sabeel.org |
Books/Publications
At the Entrance to the Garden
of Eden: A Jews Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy
Land By Yossi Klein Halevi William Morrow Harper/Collins, New
York, 2001
The Body and the Blood: The Holy Lands Christians at
the Turn of a New Millennium By Charles M.
Sennott PublicAffairs, New York, 2001
I Am a Palestinian
Christian By Mitri Raheb Fortress Press, Minneapolis,
1995
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs Washington,
D.C.
We Belong to the Land By Elias
Chacour HarperSanFrancisco, 1990 |
National Catholic Reporter, December 20,
2002
|