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"The plight of Christian Arabs remaining in the PA is, in part, attributable to the adoption of Muslim religious law in the PA Constitution. Israel, by contrast, safeguards the religious freedom and holy places of its Christian (and Muslim) citizens."
Justus Reid Weiner reports for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (thanks to Andrew Bostom):
* The Christian population of the areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) has sharply declined in recent decades, as tens of thousands have abandoned their holy sites and ancestral properties to live abroad. Those who remain comprise a beleaguered and dwindling minority. In sharp contrast, Israel's Christian community has prospered and grown by at least 270 percent since the founding of the state.* While Israel understands that the construction of the security barrier inconveniences some of the Christian communities living in its vicinity, Israel has shown sensitivity to Christian interests in planning the route of the barrier.
* The plight of Christian Arabs remaining in the PA is, in part, attributable to the adoption of Muslim religious law in the PA Constitution. Israel, by contrast, safeguards the religious freedom and holy places of its Christian (and Muslim) citizens. Indeed, in recent years Israel has been responsible for restoring many of the churches and monasteries under its jurisdiction.
* The growing strength of Islamic fundamentalism within the Palestinian national movement poses problems for Christians, who fear they will be deemed opponents of Islam and thereby risk becoming targets for Muslim extremists. This is exacerbated by the fact that Hamas holds substantial power and seeks to impose its radical Islamist identity on the entire population within the PA-controlled territories.
Who Threatens Christians in the Holy Land?
Palestinian Christians have a higher rate of emigration compared to Palestinian Muslims and the Christian population of the West Bank and Gaza has plunged from about 20 percent after World War II to less than 1.7 percent now.1 Tens of thousands have abandoned their holy sites and ancestral properties to live abroad.2
Some senior Christian clerics claim that the dramatic rise in Christian emigration from PA-controlled territories is a result of the Israeli "occupation."3 However, in-depth research demonstrates that the precipitous decline in the Christian population is primarily a result of social, economic, and religious discrimination and persecution within Palestinian society in the West Bank and Gaza.
In a July 3, 2006, article, "Who Harms Holy Land Christians?," syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak, a long-time critic of Israel, paraphrased a letter from Michael H. Sellers, an Anglican priest in Jerusalem, to U.S. Congressmen Michael McCaul (R-TX) and Joseph Crowley (D-NY), who were circulating a draft resolution blaming the Christian decline on the discriminatory practices of the Palestinian Authority.4 Sellers insisted that "the real problem [behind the Christian Arab exodus] is the Israeli occupation - especially its new security wall."
Yet two-thirds of the Christian Arabs had already departed between 1948 and 1967, when Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt the Gaza Strip, prior to the "occupation" and decades before construction began on the security barrier to protect Israel's population from waves of deadly suicide bombers. During the same period, hundreds of thousands of Christians were leaving other Muslim-ruled countries in the Middle East, Asia, and North Africa. Every one of the more than twenty Muslim states in the Middle East has a declining Christian population. In fact, Israel is the only state in the region in which the Christian Arab population has grown in real terms - from approximately 34,000 in 1948 to nearly 130,000 in 2005.5
Read it all.
Posted by Robert at December 7, 2006 12:48 PM
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This is interesting. I was actually one of those people who blamed the disappearance of the Christian population on the Zionist state.
Someone elsewhere had recommended that Israel bring in Christian Arabs from Iraq and settle them on the West Bank, or even bring them in to Israel proper. This would help her maintain her free and democratic identity in the face of an exploding Muslim population. I don't think Christians would mind Israel being a Jewish state as long as she had a secular government.
Posted by: pneumatikon![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 7, 2006 1:15 PM
Some of those "Palestinian" Arabs -- a great many -- harbored even abroad what may be called islamochristian sentiments. That is, having internalized in the Middle East, as insecure dhimmis, the the Islamic view of things, having believed that their shared ethnic identity (as they saw it) of "Arabness" or "Uruba" required their acceptance, and even promotion, of Islamic views, for "Arabness" and "Islam" were regarded as nearly identical, and attacks on "Islam" might be regarded as attacks on "Arabness," those Arabic-speaking but Christian "Palestinians" settled in all kinds of places. One wonders how many of them have managed to begin to recognize that they would never have lasted under the Muslim regimes that would inevitably replace Israel, have begun to see, as the Maronites did quite clearly in 1948 (see the statements of Yoakim Moubarac, Bishop of Beirut), and as some Copts have managed to do, that the Christians need a strong Israel to help shore up the position of other non-Muslims in the Middle East. One wonders, that is, how many of the seemingly incurable anti-Israel "Palestinians" who for so long identified with that cause, continuing to tell themselves, as no doubt Hanan Ashrawi and Naim Ateek do (in the latter case, one wonders if he is a real Christian at all, or merely one in name only, with the Islam in his "islamochristianity" dominating), that Israel and the Zionists remain the enemy, even as Muslim attacks on "Palestinian" Christians become ever bolder and more vicious.
Perhaps some of them will, far from the Middle East, in Belize or Brazil, in Chile or even in New Jersey or Michigan, begin to think things through for themselves, and begin to think that just may be Islam, Arab Islam, is their enemy, and that weakening Israel was not, and is not, a sensible thing for any Christians, even or especially Arab-speaking or even "Palestinian" Christians,to support. For what would the position of the remaining Arab Christians, and what would the Holy Land, be like, were Israel to be crushed, and Muslims to then take control of the area, as they certainly would, and with that control of all the Christian Holy Places, and with a feeling of triumphalism over the world's Christians that would be impossible to contain?
Posted by: Hugh at December 7, 2006 1:20 PM
Most likely has nothing to do with Islam. Right.
Posted by: TheOmegaMan at December 7, 2006 2:24 PM
"Someone elsewhere had recommended that Israel bring in Christian Arabs from Iraq and settle them on the West Bank..."
-- from a poster above
That someone was I, right here at Jihad Watch. And the idea makes sense. Put Arabic-speaking Christians who wish to remain in the Middle East, but have had their fill of Islam, the possiblitiy of settling wherever Muslim Arabs can be induced, or forced, to leave. There should be a stronger Christian presence in what is, for Christian Believers,the Holy Land. And if those Believers are not of the foolable type, but know what Islam is all about, so that they will not be of the kind likely to turn islamochristian, then the Israeli government might welcome their presence. But only in an exchange, whereby Muslim Arabs would leave, and could go to Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East. And why would some agree? They would agree because they would have made clear to them that Israel is there to stay, and the Christian claim too, is there to stay, and if they want a future for their own families, they will only find that future elsewhere. Besides, they might even have a shot, if they go to the Gulf or to Iraq, and sharing in that oil wealth, and there is no oil wealth under the Judean Desert.
Posted by: Hugh at December 7, 2006 3:52 PM
"Most likely has nothing to do with Islam. Right."
Posted by: TheOmegaMan
---------
Islam is always innocent. You must remember this. Never blame islam for anything. Ever.
Posted by: EliasAlucard at December 7, 2006 4:44 PM
Ironic, considering in a few weeks, the Christian world will turn once again to remember the birth of the Savior. This turn of events is not good.
Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at December 7, 2006 5:28 PM
I don't blame those Christians for leaving. They should all leave cesspoolia so that the toilet bowl nations become completely filled with the fecal matter they so richly deserve. These Christians (as well as Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and non-believers) should be the ones allowed to freely emigrate to the West-THESE are victims of oppression. Instead, the West stupidly allows the Islamaniacs to come in droves, with disasterous results. Absolutely senseless.
Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS at December 7, 2006 8:33 PM
Hugh,
You say,
"Besides, they [Moslem Arabs in Israel] might even have a shot, if they go to the Gulf or to Iraq, and sharing in that oil wealth, . . . . "
Sharing in the oil wealth not likely. the Moslem Arabs in Israel, dubbed "Palestinians" to justify their presence in Israel, are the pariahs of the Islamic world, especially of the Gulf and Saudi Arabs.
They are supported by the suicidal Europeans and the Moslem-sucking UN. It is hardly likely that if they go to oil-rich Islamic lands they will get to share in the oil-wealth.
Exchanging Islamic Arabs for Christian ones (not Arab-first Christian Arabs)is a great idea. We could use non-Arab-or Arabized Middle-East Christians here in the US also (in exchange for Islamic Arabs and other Moslems returned to Islamic lands).
Posted by: unicorns62000 at December 7, 2006 9:17 PM
Ofcourse that christians flee from muslims.Everyone else flee from muslims cos NO ONE AND LITTERALY NO ONE wants to live with muslims. Only muslims dont understand why?"O why, why o Allah they hate us?What have we done to them?We forgive them crusaders.We belive in the same prophets.We are the religion of peace...". Somethimes in all frustration and anger for those who was forced to abandon ancestral homes cos of islam, I found comfort in fact that these people at least will not live with muslims any more. And thats so mighty blessing in the last 14 centuries that words can speak. But for how long and where to flee. As one saying said:earth is too hard and heaven to high.
App.: My couisin recentli go to Nigeria on some work to do. He tells me that in Lagos there is wast majority of Lebaneese christians. No need to comment why and how they get there.
at December 8, 2006 2:48 AM
"Christians Flee Growing Islamic Fundamentalism in the Holy Land"
Well of course. Moslems make their lives miserable and dangerous. So of course they flee. Middle Eastern Christians go anywhere that they feel secure. But Moslems follow. Moslems are now present in lands that never had Moslems before. And they're breeding. And they're making the lives of non-Moslems increasingly miserable and dangerous.
Conclusions? Well, more non-Moslems will pack up and move. But to where? To the suburbs? To Antarctica? Sometime soon, there will be no alternative anywhere but to submit, pay the jizya or to resist. Running away will have been effectively removed as an option.
Posted by: Chatillon at December 8, 2006 2:57 PM
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