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Once again, a huge segment of the world is singing and reading about Bethlehem, that little town that sits silently in the holy land. Yes, at Christmas time millions celebrate events in this city, clueless as to the true reality of life there in 2022.
The idyllic scenes of the biblical Bethlehem bear little resemblance to life in this Palestinian city under occupation, encased in Israel’s concrete shackle, the wall that suffocates the urban area, severing it from its lands and people.
If outsiders think they know anything, they imagine Bethlehem is inside Israel. This applies to tour operators who continue to advertise Bethlehem not as a Palestinian city but as an Israeli one. Even the BBC referred to Bethlehem as being in Israel when covering US President Joe Biden’s visit earlier this year. Millions of foreigners travel to Bethlehem and Nazareth on Biblical Disneyland tours devoid of contact with, or even awareness of, the indigenous Palestinian Christians.
The reality is that, on the ground, the term “holy land” seems like a sick joke. More than ever, Israel claims to protect all faiths and guarantee freedom of religion while Palestinians, Christians and Muslims face endless Israeli access restrictions.
Palestinian Christians are often depicted as the victims of “Islamist extremism,” underplaying the catastrophic effect of the Israeli occupation on all Palestinian life, including Christians. Their suffering goes back to the start of the conflict, and Christmas for some still carries painful memories.
Take the Palestinian Christian village of Iqrit in northern Galilee near Akka inside Israel. Israeli tanks shelled the village, demolishing everything save the 200-year-old church. This was their Christmas present to the population back in 1951. The population of 490 were told to leave in November 1948 on the basis that they could return in two weeks. The Israeli Supreme Court even ruled in July 1951 that the forced expulsion was illegal but the village was demolished anyway. In 2003, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled against their return stating, unbelievably for a supposed judicial body, that this could not be allowed “due to the heavy consequences such a step would have on the political level.”
The story of Iqrit is an object lesson in the equal contempt Israel has displayed toward both Palestinian Christians and Muslims. This does not stop on religious days.
Take Palestinian Christians in Gaza — yes, there are Christians in Gaza, albeit only about 1,100 out of a population of 2 million. In the 1960s, their number was about 6,000. At Christmas, many Palestinian Christians in this open-air prison apply to Israel for so-called Christmas permits.
Israel, the occupying power, both for Gaza and Bethlehem, permits 500 to be issued out of 780 as a “goodwill gesture,” quite something given that Palestinians are simply trying to travel from one part of their country to another. Note also that the number is defined. This means whoever gets the permit in this seasonal lottery is defined by number not purely by security reasons. The process is largely arbitrary. Under the Oslo agreement, Gaza and the West Bank were meant to be part of one single territorial unit, not treated as two separate prisons, poles apart. Freedom of religion barely exists for them.
Many have been routinely rejected for this permit every year. Imagine that some family members receive the permit but others do not. A father in Jordan refused to go to Bethlehem because his daughter was not given a permit as well. Unsurprisingly, they wanted to travel together. Some choose to contest this in the Israeli Supreme Court but there hardly seems a point given the lack of success. The court is a tool of occupation.
For many Gazan Christians, the 45 miles to Bethlehem might as well be the other side of the world. It should be just a 90-minute drive. Israel objects to Gazans staying overnight in the West Bank.
The story of Palestinian Christians in Gaza is part of the broader Palestinian story of enforced exile, occupation and oppression.
Chris Doyle
Of course, the story of Palestinian Christians in Gaza is part of the broader Palestinian story of enforced exile, occupation and oppression, but above all, fragmentation. How can it be, as one Palestinian Christian pointed out to me, that, for example, four members of the same family are forced to live in different places — in Nazareth, Bethlehem and Gaza — and the only place they can meet is in Amman. Even while trying to get to Bethlehem from other West Bank cities, Palestinians have to confront Israeli military checkpoints and can be turned back.
Jordan has one of the highest numbers of Palestinian Christians. They too struggle to get Israeli permission to cross the Jordan River and travel to Jerusalem and the West Bank. They are cut off from their own country, people and traditions.
Anti-Arab racists will typically roll out their apologist lines for Israel, proclaiming that it is Hamas in Gaza that oppresses Palestinian Christians, and therefore, what Israel is doing there is nothing. There is a point to this, but regardless of what Hamas may or may not do, it does not justify Israel’s actions, denying access to those living under its occupation to holy sites, especially during religious festivals.
Israeli policy has always been to try to stir up sectarian tensions between Muslims and Jews. This is part of its classic policy of “divide et impera,” divide and conquer, a strategy first developed by Philip II of Macedon, and deployed by the likes of Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte. Israel has developed this into a fine art — doing this geographically, demographically and at a sectarian level.
Hamas has pushed a heavy policy of Islamification in the strip. It does, though, permit Christian worship and does not put obstacles in the way of visiting Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Its agenda does worry Palestinian Christians who fear a future Islamist state and have seen extremists elsewhere targeting Christians. But while acknowledging this fear, the near universal message is that the big fight for survival is over the occupation.
Many cite the number of Palestinian Christians leaving, but this is not so much a question of a desire to leave but more an issue of the struggle to stay. Jobs and economic opportunities are scarce. The inequities of the occupation constantly niggle and undermine people’s heartfelt desire to remain in their homeland.
• Chris Doyle is director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, in London. Twitter: @Doylech