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DECEMBER 1999, pages 115-117 Christian American Activism
About 200 representatives of American and Palestinian Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches met Oct. 2 with prominent Arab Americans and Middle East diplomats in a day-long national convention in Bethesda, Maryland. Their aim: to mobilize U. S. Christian support for the rapidly-diminishing Christian community in the Holy Land. The meeting was sponsored by the newly formed Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation, which gathered church leaders to consider what President Clinton called in a letter to the conference “special challenges for Christians in the Holy Land.” As descendants of the first Christians two millennia ago, Palestinian Christians consider themselves “the living stones” of their faith, said Albert Mokhiber, vice chairman of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. But today, they are a beleaguered community on the verge of extinction. “Thirty or 40 years from now, you may not have a Palestinian Christian community. We would not let a nearly extinct bird vanish from the skies, or a nearly extinct species of fish disappear from the seas. We can do no less than to seek to save ourselves.” In the words of Lutheran Bishop Munib Younan of Jerusalem, addressed to a largely American ecumenical audience: “You belong to us, and we belong to you. Our mission is yours, and yours is ours.” The Palestinian Christian community is in free fall because of the conditions its members face in an occupied land. Conference speakers observed that in 1920, 20 percent of Palestinians were Christians; today, less than 2 percent are. There are fewer than 8,000 Christians in Jerusalem, a city of more than a half a million people. Reasons for their departure include conditions which affect Palestinian Muslims and Christians alike:
Several panelists sketched the role of Palestinian Christians as what Jordan’s Ambassador to the United States Marwan Muasher called “a bridge of understanding and a force for justice in situations in the Middle East that need more of both.” Father Siryani noted that Christians have a unique role in constitution-building in a future Palestinian state. Among their tasks: ensuring that what he called “a weak rule of law” in areas now controlled by the Palestine Authority. The most persuasive call for support by churches in the United States and the West to Palestinian Christians came from Ambassador Muasher, himself a Christian, who noted that Jerusalem is not only a city of shrines, but of people. In the current final status talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the Jordanian envoy said, “the Church seems content with the position that Jerusalem should remain an open city for all faiths. This position is alarmingly insufficient. “Indeed, the issue of an open city for all faiths is not contested by either Palestinians or Israelis today,” Muasher continued. “Both agree on at least that much. By going no further, the Church seems to be ignoring the interests of the indigenous Arab Christian population while not furthering those of Christians around the world. For if Jerusalem loses its Christian population, the city loses an important element that has contributed to its image as a center of diversity and tolerance throughout the ages. The Christian world’s claim to a share in Jerusalem as a spiritual place central to the faith will be weakened, at best, if no members of the faith are residing there. “This is a fact that so far has eluded Christians and churches around the world. By supporting the continued presence of indigenous Christians in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, the Church would not only be supporting their cause, but the cause of Christians around the globe, and the cause of tolerance and peace…There is no better place to start than Jerusalem, to strive to keep it a symbol of faith for all, and I stress, all, Abrahamic faiths,” Ambassador Muasher concluded. The HCEF was formed less than a year ago under the leadership of Rateb Rabie, a Palestinian-American Christian, and Father Emil Salayta, a Jordanian priest serving in Palestine. In addition to informing American churches about the plight of Palestinians, the foundation supports employment, educational and health projects in Palestine and raises money throughout the U.S. to alleviate suffering there. During the day-long national conference at Bethesda’s Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart and evening banquet at the Omni-Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC, there were appeals, working groups and informal conversations aimed at marshaling support for the projects. Among the suggestions:
David Johnson, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, spent most of the 1990s in Jerusalem working with Palestinians. In a panel on the future of the holy city, he said Christians the world over must offer tangible help to provide reasons for Christians to stay, and not leave, Jerusalem. Churches, he said, can advocate equality of public services for Palestinians there—by financially supporting such institutions as the St. Augustine Hospital on the Mount of Olives, and offering legal and professional counseling services to those who need it. Others on the panel said U. S. churches should exert political pressure on Israel to provide public services to Palestinians comparable to those given Israelis in Jerusalem and Israeli-occupied or jointly administered areas. —Alan Heil
Looming final status talks on Jerusalem led the American Committee for Jerusalem to arrange a Washington, DC panel discussion on the subject. Discussants were a leading Palestinian sociologist, Dr. Salim Tamari, director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies and author of a new book on the subject, Jerusalem 1948, and a leading researcher on Jerusalem and its neighborhoods, and Dr. Jerome Segal from the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland (CISSM) and the founder of the Jewish Peace Lobby. Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) arranged for the Rayburn hearing room where the two described the current status of Jerusalem before some 70 congressional staffers and journalists on Oct. 22. Dilemmas facing the final status negotiations on the city are the mix of populations and the lack of an agreed legal basis for sharing the city. Dr. Segal suggested “disaggregating” the neighborhoods that remain rural in composition from the key urban areas of West Jerusalem, the Old City and East Jerusalem. Dr. Tamari emphasized practical problems faced by municipal government in dealing with the religious communities and providing services to a city that include two political capitals. He pointed out that many of the 190,000 Arabs presently living in East Jerusalem were in fact refugees from West Jerusalem villages and from villages presently in Israel. Many are within sight of their former homes. The discussion following the presentation on the Hill made clear that both speakers wanted the U.S. Congress to stay out of the Jerusalem question, but fear that this probably is not going to happen. Dr. Rashid Khalidi, president of the American Committee for Jerusalem, said that further conferences of this kind, aimed at educating the Hill on the subject of Jerusalem, were scheduled for early in the year 2000. —Eugene Bird
Three Christian groups held a congressional luncheon briefing to focus on factors affecting the decline of the Christian population in the Holy Land Oct. 4 at the Senate Dirksen Building in Washington, DC. The American Committee on Jerusalem, Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding, and the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation sponsored the Jerusalem briefing, with National Association of Arab Americans President Khalil Jahshan moderating. “Israel’s position that Jerusalem is the united eternal capital of Israel is well known in Congress,” Jahshan said. “What isn’t known is the Palestinian position.” Jahshan, who is also ACJ vice president, said the speakers hoped to clarify that position. Bishop Mounib A. Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church based in Jerusalem, and Father Majdi Siryani, Ph.D., who is the legal adviser for the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, presented the Protestant and Catholic positions, respectively, and also discussed conditions causing Christian emigration from Jerusalem and the Holy Land. The Christian population of Jerusalem is approximately 8,000 today, down from 29,000 in 1944 and 27,000 in 1967. See p. 85 for the full text of Bishop Younan’s speech. Father Siryani said all the churches in the Holy Land hold the same views in regard to what he called the “ethnic cleansing” going on in Jerusalem. He described 23-year-old Palestinian Christian “Tanya” who, after living in Jerusalem all her life, in 1995 lost her right to live in the city of her birth. Then Father Siryani described “Vita,” who, he said, is “supposed to be Jewish, though she came to our church to validate her marriage.” Vita arrived in Jerusalem from Russia last year, speaks no language used in Israel, but was given all rights of Israeli citizenship and residence in Jerusalem. “Tanya says, ‘I lost my rights in Jerusalem and Vita found them,’” said Father Siryani. “This is ethnic cleansing and it’s been going on for three decades.” The final outcome of Israeli expulsions, settlements, closures and bulldozing is “two nations living together in the same city, hating each other and giving hell to each other on a daily basis.” Siryani explained. “This has made Jerusalem unlivable for Palestinians and also for Israelis, who have lost security because they hold back rights [for Palestinians].” The Catholic priest concluded: “Jerusalem is a symbol of national pride for us and the Israelis…Any attempt to give it exclusively to one state or one group has never worked in the past. The only solution is to share Jerusalem. The alternative is war and the sacrifice of victims for nothing.” Both Palestinian clerics and moderator Khalil Jahshan urged congressional aides, diplomats, and media representatives in the audience to oppose any attempts to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Jahshan emphasized that the United States, as the facilitator of the peace process, “should avoid any action that would predetermine the outcome of the final status negotiations before those negotiations conclude and agreement is reached between Israel and Palestine.” “There has been no open hearing on the peace process or no serious debate in Congress,” Jahshan pointed out. “Congress has prejudged the issue of Jerusalem instead of listening to all sides of the argument.” —Delinda C. Hanley
SIDEBAR
Philip Farah of Vienna, Virginia, is a former English teacher at the Lutheran School in Ramallah and at Birzeit University. He was born in Jerusalem, and delegates at the HCEF morning session will not soon forget his moving testimony of a Palestinian Christian family’s tortured past. Philip had thumbed back through his late father’s diary to prepare for the talk, and he passed a framed photo of his father around as he quoted from entries in the old book. It told of the flight of his family from Jerusalem, three days after the Deir Yassin massacre by Jews of Palestinians in 1948. The diary recalled the family’s return to Jerusalem a few years later, but of a second exodus in the 1967 conflict and of Philip’s detention without charges, interrogation and severe beating by Israeli authorities in the mid-1970s when he was a teacher in Ramallah. He noted that Palestinians continue to emigrate today because of the economic strangulation of the occupied territories and human rights violations detailed at the HCEF convention. But, Philip recalled: “Jerusalem also has had moments of tolerance—perhaps not as long-lasting as the periods of strife. I’d like to close with two of them, one very large and one very small: “When the Arab Sultan Saladin defeated the Crusaders and re-conquered Jersualem, he allowed Eastern Christians to live in and visit Jerusalem, and he invited the Jews back to their sacred city. Saladin was greeted across the Mediterranean ghettos as the new Cyrus, allowing the Jews back to the site of the Temple of Solomon.” “The smaller incident involved my father. When we came back to Jerusalem after the 1967 war, the first time he and I crossed over to the western Jewish side, we passed through the Jaffa Gate, which had been closed before the occupation. The pain and suffering we had experienced as refugees was still fresh in our minds. As my father went through the Gate, he extended his hand and kissed a small object on the side of the gate. I asked him what he was doing, and he explained that it was a mezuzah, a tiny scroll of the Torah that pious Jews place on the side of every door. I was astonished: ‘Why are you kissing their mezuzah after what they’ve done to us?’ He barely turned, and said: ‘We all worship the one God.’ I think he had the winning formula for Jerusalem.” —Alan Heil |
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