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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
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href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-ethnic-cleansing-of-palestinian-christians-that-nobody-is-talking-about/">http://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-ethnic-cleansing-of-palestinian-christians-that-nobody-is-talking-about/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinian
Christians that Nobody is Talking about<br>
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<div class="reader-estimated-time">October 30, 2019<br>
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<p><strong>By <a
href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/ramzy-baroud"
title="Display all articles for Ramzy Baroud">Ramzy
Baroud</a></strong></p>
<p>Palestine’s Christian population is dwindling at an
alarming rate. The world’s most ancient Christian
community is moving elsewhere. And the reason for this
is Israel.</p>
<p>Christian leaders from Palestine and South Africa
sounded the alarm at a <a
href="http://holylandconference.co.za/"
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">conference</a> in
Johannesburg on October 15. Their gathering was titled:
“The Holy Land: A Palestinian Christian Perspective”.</p>
<p>One major issue that highlighted itself at the meetings
is the rapidly declining number of Palestinian
Christians in Palestine.</p>
<p>There are various estimates on how many Palestinian
Christians are still living in Palestine today, compared
with the period before 1948 when the state of Israel was
established atop Palestinian towns and villages.
Regardless of the source of the various studies, there
is a near consensus that the number of Christian
inhabitants of Palestine has dropped by nearly ten-fold
in the last 70 years.</p>
<p>A population census carried out by the Palestinian
Central Bureau of Statistics in 2017 <a
href="https://www.refworld.org/docid/49749cd12.html"
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">concluded</a>
that 47,000 Palestinian Christians are living in
Palestine – with reference to the Occupied West Bank,
East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Ninety-eight percent
of Palestine’s Christians live in the West Bank –
concentrated mostly in the cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem
and Jerusalem – while the remainder, a tiny Christian
community of merely 1,100 people, lives in the besieged
Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>The demographic crisis that had afflicted the Christian
community decades ago is now brewing.</p>
<p>For example, 70 years ago, Bethlehem, the birthplace of
Jesus Christ, was 86 percent Christian. The demographics
of the city, however, have fundamentally shifted,
especially after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank
in June 1967, and the construction of the illegal
Israeli apartheid wall, starting in 2002. Parts of the
wall were meant to cut off Bethlehem from Jerusalem and
to isolate the former from the rest of the West Bank.</p>
<p>“The Wall encircles Bethlehem by continuing south of
East Jerusalem in both the east and west,” the ‘Open
Bethlehem’ organization said, <a
href="https://www.openbethlehem.org/the-wall.html"
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">describing</a> the
devastating impact of the wall on the Palestinian city.
“With the land isolated by the Wall, annexed for
settlements, and closed under various pretexts, only 13%
of the Bethlehem district is available for Palestinian
use.”</p>
<p>Increasingly beleaguered, Palestinian Christians in
Bethlehem have been driven out from their historic city
in large numbers. According to the city’s mayor, <a
href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/world/bethlehems-declining-christian-population-casts-shadow-over-christmas"
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Vera Baboun</a>,
as of 2016, the Christian population of Bethlehem has
dropped to 12 percent, merely 11,000 people.</p>
<p>The most <a
href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/world/bethlehems-declining-christian-population-casts-shadow-over-christmas"
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">optimistic
estimates</a> place the overall number of Palestinian
Christians in the whole of Occupied Palestine at less
than two percent.</p>
<p>The correlation between the shrinking Christian
population in Palestine, and the Israeli occupation and
apartheid should be unmistakable, as it is evident to
Palestine’s Christian and Muslim community alike.</p>
<p>A study conducted by Dar al-Kalima University in the
West Bank town of Beit Jala and published in December
2017, <a
href="https://www.premier.org.uk/News/World/Israel-responsible-for-Christian-exodus-from-Palestine-study-finds"
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">interviewed</a> nearly
1,000 Palestinians, half of them Christian and the other
half Muslim. One of the main goals of the research was
to understand the reason behind the depleting Christian
population in Palestine.</p>
<p>The study concluded that “the pressure of Israeli
occupation, ongoing constraints, discriminatory
policies, arbitrary arrests, confiscation of lands added
to the general sense of hopelessness among Palestinian
Christians,” who are finding themselves in “a despairing
situation where they can no longer perceive a future for
their offspring or for themselves”.</p>
<p>Unfounded claims that Palestinian Christians are
leaving because of religious tensions between them and
their Muslim brethren are, therefore, irrelevant.</p>
<p>Gaza is another case in point. Only 2 percent of
Palestine’s Christians <a
href="https://www.refworld.org/docid/49749cd12.html"
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">live</a> in
the impoverished and besieged Gaza Strip. When Israel
occupied Gaza along with the rest of historic Palestine
in 1967, an estimated 2,300 Christians lived in the
Strip. However, merely 1,100 Christians still live in
Gaza today. Years of occupation, horrific wars and an
unforgiving siege can do that to a community, whose
historical roots date back to two millennia.</p>
<p>Like Gaza’s Muslims, these Christians are cut off from
the rest of the world, including the holy sites in the
West Bank. Every year, Gaza’s Christians apply for
permits from the Israeli military to join Easter
services in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Last April, only
200 Christians <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/20/gaza-christians-wait-easter-travel-permits-jerusalem"
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">were granted
permits</a>, but on the condition that they must be 55
years of age or older and that they are not allowed to
visit Jerusalem.</p>
<p>The Israeli rights group, Gisha, <a
href="https://gisha.org/updates/9934" target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer">described</a> the Israeli
army decision as “a further violation of Palestinians’
fundamental rights to freedom of movement, religious
freedom and family life”, and, rightly, accused Israel
of attempting to “deepen the separation” between Gaza
and the West Bank.</p>
<p>Israel aims at doing more than that. Separating
Palestinian Christians from one another, and from their
holy sites (as is the case for Muslims, as well), the
Israeli government hopes to weaken the socio-cultural
and spiritual connections that give Palestinians their
collective identity.</p>
<p>Israel’s strategy is predicated on the idea that a
combination of factors – immense economic hardships,
permanent siege and apartheid, the severing of communal
and spiritual bonds – will eventually drive all
Christians out of their Palestinian homeland.</p>
<p>Israel is keen to present the ‘conflict’ in Palestine
as a religious one so that it could, in turn, brand
itself as a beleaguered Jewish state amid a massive
Muslim population in the Middle East. The continued
existence of Palestinian Christians does not factor
nicely into this Israeli agenda.</p>
<p>Sadly, however, Israel has succeeded in misrepresenting
the struggle in Palestine – from that of political and
human rights struggle against settler colonialism – into
a religious one. Equally disturbing, Israel’s most
ardent supporters in the United States and elsewhere are
devout Christians.</p>
<p>It must be understood that Palestinian Christians are
neither aliens nor bystanders in Palestine. They have
been victimized equally as their Muslim brethren. They
have also played a significant role in defining the
modern Palestinian identity, through their resistance,
spirituality, deep connection to the land, artistic
contributions and burgeoning scholarship.</p>
<p>Israel must not be allowed to ostracize the world’s
most ancient Christian community from their ancestral
land so that it may score a few points in its fierce
drive for racial supremacy.</p>
<p>Equally important, our understanding of the legendary
Palestinian ‘<em>soumoud’</em> – steadfastness – and
solidarity cannot be complete without fully appreciating
the centrality of Palestinian Christians to the modern
Palestinian narrative and identity.</p>
<p><i><span>– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and
editor of The Palestine Chronicle. His last book is
‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’, and his
forthcoming book is ‘These Chains Will Be Broken:
Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in
Israeli Prisons’. Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine
Studies from the University of Exeter and is a
non-resident research fellow at the Center for Islam
and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Zaim University in
Istanbul. His website is</span></i><a
href="http://www.ramzybaroud.net/"><i><span>
www.ramzybaroud.net</span></i></a><i><span>.</span></i></p>
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