Christians learn to stick together

At the dawn of the second millennium, the Christians of Jerusalem were massacred alongside the Muslims and Jews by Crusaders, called "the Westerners" by the native Arabs. On the eve of the third millennium, Palestinian Christians have joined their Muslim compatriots in resisting extinction by other "Westerners", Jewish settlers from Europe who are taking over the land where Christ was born.

"We Palestinians, Christians and Muslims, have always stuck together against outsiders," asserted Dr Usamah Khalidi, a Muslim academic.

"Christian concerns are the same as Muslim concerns; there is no division between the two," says Ms Hilary Rantisi of Sabeel, a Jerusalem-based group teaching liberation theology.

She says Israel has made Sabeel's mission very difficult by confining Christians to small islets of Palestinian territory so they cannot worship together or gather in ecumenical activities.

She chuckles when I remark that the only other Rantisi I had met is the spokesman of the Islamic Hamas movement, Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Both come originally from the mixed West Bank village of Rantis.

Today in Palestine there are only 150,000 Arabic-speaking Christians of indigenous stock. A few clans and communities go back to the time of the first church; 50,000 live in the West Bank and Gaza and 100,000 in Israel, mainly in the Galilee.

There are 3.8 million Palestinians at home and 4.2 million in the diaspora. Like Palestinian Muslims, the majority of Palestinian Christians, 250,000, dwell outside their homeland.

One-third of the Christian community joined the exodus during Israel's war of establishment in 1948, others were driven out in 1967 when Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza.

Since then, Palestinians of both communities, subjected to relentless Israeli administrative and economic pressures, have continued to emigrate, but since Christians are fewer, they are on the brink of disappearing altogether.

"The Christian community is dwindling also because of a low birth rate and intermarriage", says the Palestinian legislator, Dr Hanan Ashrawi. "The Israelis have systematically targeted Christians, the churches and church institutions.

"This is a shame because Palestine is the heart and home of Christianity. If the community disappears, we Christians will lose part of our authentic existence and history." The Israelis have targeted Christian personalities and institutions because they have played an important role in recent Palestinian history and given the small Christian minority much greater weight than that of mere numbers. Christians are active in education, commerce and politics.

Dr George Habash, a Greek Orthodox, and Mr Naif Hawatmi, a Protestant, founded two influential Palestinian political parties. Christians are well represented in the cabinet and legislature. Christian schools and institutes educate the young of both communities.

Last month 200 girls, the majority Muslim, graduated from YWCA courses in business, nursing and home economics. The YWCA hall in Jerusalem was packed with family members cheering on their daughters and wives. In the section where the graduates sat there was a sprinkling of Islamic head scarves, but in the seats reserved for guests many scarved heads nodded and bobbed.

The hijab no longer identifies educated Muslim girls in Jerusalem who cannot be distinguished from their Christian sisters.

Father Rafiq Khoury of the Latin Patriarchate says the "main challenge faced by Christians, Jews and Muslims" in the Holy Land is "defining themselves" ahead of building relations with one another. The Christians, he says, "are a small minority. Many Christians here . . . do not like to use that word `minority'," because of fears and suspicions.

"We are a small number . . . We have to accept this and accommodate ourselves as a small number . . . and find rich relations with the others."

The Christians, divided into 13 denominations, "should harmonise relations" among themselves first, he says. "We have suffered from each other, but here in the Holy Land nothing is static, there is movement, there is dialogue . . . I am a priest for more than 30 years and I can feel the difference . . . relations are much better than they were 30 years ago."

He mentions the synod which has been trying to improve relations amongst the six Catholic churches over the past four years. "There is a motto here in the Middle East which says, `We are Christians together or we will not be'."

Father Khoury says relations between Christians and Muslims are different than those between Christians and Jews. "We have lived with the Muslims for 13 centuries. Naturally, we learned to live together, though this is not always easy. We Christians participated in the formation of the Muslim-Arab culture, we have the same language, we have the same way of life.

"When you go to a mixed village, you cannot tell the difference between a Christian Palestinian and a Muslim Palestinian . . . If you go into a Christian house they offer you the coffee of hospitality, if you go into a Muslim house they offer you the same cup of coffee."

But relations between Palestinians and Israelis are much more difficult, he says. "We always had Jews in Palestine who spoke Arabic as we do . . . Israel was not founded by these Jews but by Jews who came from outside, mainly from Europe, with another experience of history, psychology and culture. There is a shock between the two cultures.

"And there is the political difficulty too. The Jewish people took our place and expelled us from our land so it is not easy to have relations with them. But nothing is static . . . should we make a real, just peace our relations will improve."

Ms Doris Salah, the director of the YWCA, does not believe peace will be achieved without serious external intervention. "If the Christian West is concerned about the Christian heritage in this land it must act," she says. "If Israel is left in charge of Jerusalem, it will be a disaster for Christian and Muslim Palestinians.

"Those living outside Jerusalem cannot even pray in the Holy Sepulchre or al-Aqsa mosque. There is no religious freedom."

The Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, Bishop Riah Abu al-Assal, agrees that "Christians of the Holy Land have been neglected by their Christian brothers. In the West, they are more interested in holy stones than living people."