CHRISTIANS IN THE HOLY LAND

When I write about the Holy Land I am referring to that strip of land largely between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, from the southern border of Lebanon and western border of Syria extending south to the Gulf of Aqaba and the border with Egypt and Jordan, including a little of Jordan east of the river and Dead Sea.

When I write of Christians here, one could refer to them in two ways – those of the past and those of the present.

Christians, of course, have been here from the beginning. The first ones were of Jewish background, as was Jesus. I am not sure whether any of their descendants remained after Rome was done with the Jews in AD 135. However, there are Palestinians who appear to trace their origins to those beginning days. Interestingly, some of these seem to have maintained the same non-violent way of life all along that our Lord demonstrated during his time on earth. Just the same, their life has never been that easy. There was persecution from the Jews, then from Rome. When Rome adopted Christianity as the state religion in the 4^th century, the new Christians began to come and assert their authority in these lands, building churches at holy sites and controlling access. Then, in the 7^th century, the Muslims came. There was not always persecution during Muslim times. Much of the time the two faiths lived a peaceful coexistence. When the Crusaders surfaced from the 11^th to 13 centuries, things did not always go well for local Christians either. The European invaders really respected no one. Since they were especially after the Muslims, and understood to be Christians, there was sometimes negative fallout for the local Christians from their Muslim neighbours because of Crusader action. Subsequently, things went back more to the status quo under the ongoing Muslim domination until the first half of the 20th century. Clashes with newly arriving Jews began to occur.

Then, there was what the Palestinians call ‘the Catastrophe,’ the Naqba. In many instances the Jewish terrorists who spread through the countryside in anticipation of the formation of the Jewish state and immediately after, in their campaign to force the Palestinians out to make way for Jewish settlers, did not discriminate between Muslim and Christian occupants of the land. Thus, Christians and Muslims equally suffered everything from being massacred in some instances to having their homes destroyed in many cases. If their homes were left standing, they were still forced out, or ran in fear. Some 450-500 villages of 900 or more were ‘depopulated’ in these ways by the end of 1948, creating some 750,000 refugees, most in neighbouring Lebanon and Jordan. When Israel drove Jordan and Egypt out of the West Bank and Gaza respectively, a further 460,00 souls were made refugees. To be sure, a minority of these were Christian, but the same fate befell them as their majority Muslim compatriots, not to mention the much smaller Druze and Samaritan minorities.

Presently, the Christian population in Palestine is unfortunately declining. It is not, as some would like to have you believe, because of persecution by Muslims. It is more because of oppression from the Israelis. So, whereas in the past we talked of a Jewish Diaspora, now we have a large Palestinian Diaspora. In fact, there are many more Palestinians abroad than in the Middle East. According to the UN, in 2010 there were nearly 790,000 refugees in the West Bank, over a million in Gaza and close to 2.9 million in surrounding Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. This does not include the hundreds of thousands living abroad. And, just as with many of those displaced Jews who yearned for their ‘promised land,’ many of these Palestinians would love to return home. Indeed, at one time they were promised they could do so. Many still clutch the keys to their homes. However, that promise is going on 70 years old and there is no sign of it being fulfilled any time soon. Nor have they ever been compensated for their losses.

One source [Sabeel 2011, Contemporary Way of the Cross] states that 9% of Arabs in Israel are Christian, making up only 2% of the overall population of the country. Most of these are Orthodox, members of the Melkite Church. Melkite refers to ‘royal’ and indicates that this church remained loyal to the Byzantine Monarch when there was a split in the church. A sizeable portion are either Roman Catholic, Lutheran or Anglican. In Israel itself, there is also a small faction of Christians, some of whom are Messianic Jews.

There is a division amongst the Christians in terms of their understanding of the place of the Jews in God’s plan, just as there is in The West. However, here it is basically only a small portion of Messianic Jews who subscribe to the Zionist understanding, contrary to the large numbers who do so in The west. The majority of Christians, especially the Palestinians, only see Zionism as a source of trauma and oppression. They have difficulty understanding how the Church in The West can swallow the Zionist narrative and abandon them to the mercy of the Israeli forces, government, courts and bureaucracy.  So, what, fellow believers in The West, is our response?