This year Israel decided, for security reasons, not to issue permits allowing people from Gaza to enter the West Bank in order to observe Christmas, although it later relented. The initial story is here, and it remains relevant despite Israel’s reversing course:
Catholic leaders in Israel and the West Bank on Saturday condemned a decision by Israeli authorities to bar Christians in the Gaza Strip from visiting Bethlehem for Christmas.
A spokesperson for Israel’s military liaison to the Palestinians said earlier this month Gaza residents will receive permits to travel abroad for Christmas, but for security reasons will be prevented from entering Israel or the West Bank. The army later appeared to backtrack, saying a final decision had yet to be made.
The Catholic leaders in Israel and the West Bank were ignoring the security concerns of the Israeli government. The Israelis always in the past allowed Gazan Christians into Israel to observe Christmas in Bethlehem; it was not out of wanton cruelty that Israel at first decided to refuse to provide Gazan Christians with permits to enter Israel and the West Bank. Israel was not eager to deny Christians those permits, but it had to worry first about security issues. Would the Gazan Christians return to Gaza, after the Christmas observances, as they were obliged to? In past years, some remained, illegally, in the West Bank. They were hard to locate; they simply disappeared into Area A, where Israel’s security writ does not run. How many of them, living among so many Muslims, may want to prove themselves to be true Palestinians, by aiding and abetting anti-Israel acts, including terrorism?
There was also the worry that some of those “Christians” may in fact be Muslims, obtaining travel permits under false pretenses, and their ultimate aims in remaining in Israel or the West Bank unclear but, naturally, their outstaying their permitted presence was worrisome for Israel. Why did the Catholic clergy in Israel and West Bank not treat those worries as legitimate? Had they failed to notice the nearly one thousand rockets lobbed into Israel in the last few months by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad from Gaza? Had they not heard about Hezbollah’s dozens of terror tunnels that snake underground from Lebanon into the Galilee? Or does the security of Israel not matter to these clergy, who readily identify with their fellow – Muslim — Palestinians? Perhaps these clergymen need to be reminded of one of their own, Archbishop Hilarion Capucci, who smuggled weapons to terrorists of the PLO. As a religious leader, the archbishop could travel across the Lebanese-Israeli border without being subject to inspection. On August 8, 1974, Archbishop Capucci was stopped in Jerusalem while he was trying to drive to Nazareth. Inside his car, the authorities said, was a cache of weapons: four Kalashnikov rifles, two pistols, 220 pounds of dynamite and several detonators. Surely that history of the gun-running abetter of terrorism Archbishop Capucci ought to make Catholic clergy in Israel more hesitant about interfering with Israel’s security needs – ought to, but hasn’t.
Some 1,000 Christians live in Gaza alongside 2 million Muslims, and their numbers are steadily declining.
Why are the numbers of Christians in Gaza “steadily declining”? This needs to be clearly understood. It is because, in a Muslim sea, the Christians feel permanently insecure. They are often on the receiving end of Muslim hostility, expressed in a thousand ways by their Muslim neighbors who know that they themselves are the “best of peoples” while the Christians are, like other Unbelievers, the “most vile of created beings.” Many things make life difficult for those Christians. Their children are taught from schoolbooks that contain denunciations of Unbelievers. They cannot repair their churches without the approval of the Muslim authorities. They cannot sound the church bells if it interferes with the call of the muezzin. Christian women are required at the Islamic University, of Gaza, and in many workplaces and neighborhoods, to wear the hijab; some have been attacked for not doing so. The societal pressure to convert to Islam is constant. Many Christians, as a result, have simply decided to leave Gaza permanently – hence that steady decline in Christian numbers.
In a letter to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Catholic leaders protested the rejection of the travel permit requests.
Just as it is permitted for nations from all over the world to enter Bethlehem to celebrate Christmas, it is also the right of Christians from Gaza to celebrate the birth of Jesus the messiah in the place of his birth,” they were quoted saying by the Haaretz daily.
“We call on Israeli authorities to allow, without further delay, Christians from Gaza to go to Bethlehem to celebrate the holiday,” the church leaders added.
The Catholic clergy in Israel and the West Bank have chosen to ignore Israel’s legitimate security needs. Israel was not blocking Christians from Gaza out of spite. The decision was based on well-founded worries about past experiences, that once admitted for the Christmas observance in Bethlehem, some of these Gazan Christians – including Gazans who only claim to be Christians — will simply disappear from view in Israel and the West Bank.
Of some 950 requests from Gaza Christians to travel abroad, only 100 have been approved, according to the newspaper, with those granted permission allowed to travel to Jordan via the Allenby border crossing.
“After consultations with all security agencies in Israel, it was decided that this year for Christmas exit permits to [go] abroad through the Allenby crossing will be issued for Gaza Christians,” COGAT said in a response.
“Concerning exit permits to Israel and Judea and Samaria, a final decision on the matter has not been made,” it added, using the biblical names for the West Bank.
“Judea” and “Samaria” are not just the “Biblical names” for the West Bank; they are the toponyms have been used for more than two millennia, all over the Western world; they were good enough for Jesus; it is the place name “West Bank” that was made up by the Jordanians after the 1949 war and applied by them in order to efface the Jewish connection with that land, much as the Romans attempted to do when they renamed Judea as “Palestine” and Jerusalem as “Aelia Capitolina.”
Israel restricts entry and exit from Gaza as a means of isolating and weakening its rulers, terror group Hamas, which is avowed to its destruction. Together with Egypt, it maintains a blockade of the territory since Hamas took over it from the Palestinian Authority in a bloody coup in 2007, to prevent it from importing weapons or the means to build them.
Since then, Hamas and Israel have fought three wars, and terror groups in the Strip have fired tens of thousands of rockets at Israeli cities and communities.
Israel has explained past travel bans as being due to Palestinians staying on illegally after receiving short-term permits to leave Gaza.
Once these Gazan Palestinians are in the West Bank for the celebration of Christmas, it has in the past proven hard to keep track of them, and to make sure that they return to Gaza. There is a past history of Palestinian Christians taking part in, or even leading, terrorist groups. Think of George Habash, the Christian head of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). It is also hard to make sure that all those seeking permits are indeed Christians, and that some are not Muslims who have assumed false identities. The security problem in monitoring these Gazans once they are in the West Bank, especially in Area A, which is completely under the control of the PA, should be obvious, but the Catholic clergy criticizing Israel for its security decision appeared disturbingly unconcerned.
In previous years, members of the community were allowed to visit their families in Israel and the West Bank and visit Christian holy cities such as Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Last year, 700 permits were issued.
Most of the West Bank is controlled by the Palestinian Authority and its Fatah movement, Hamas’s political rival.
In sum:
Israel has had in the past a real security problem concerning those Gazan Christians who were permitted to observe Christmas in Israel and the West Bank (in Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem). Some did not return to Gaza as agreed. Taking note of this, Israel has temporarily decided – though it may relent – not to issue permits for Gazan Christians to enter Israel or the West Bank at Christmas time.
The Catholic clergy in Israel and the West Bank, unembarrassed about their own history and, especially, about Archbishop Capucci, that gun-runner for the PLO, failed to acknowledge the seriousness of Israel’s internal security problem. Their palpable want of sympathy for the Jewish state and its people, their identification with the cause of the Muslim Palestinians, and their internalization of the Muslim worldview, deserve to be diagnosed – as reflecting their own insecurity in a Muslim sea – and deplored. Israel, under permanent siege from within as from without, has a perfect right to monitor, and regulate, the movements of those who likely do not wish Israel or its people well. Israel’s security services did in the end relent, and issued those permits for Gazans as they always have in the past. Israel’s security services doubtless know things that led them to issue such a ban in the first place. One would have to be most unfeeling to deny the tiny Jewish state the right to decide for itself the minimum conditions needed for its own security. The Catholic clergy in Israel and the West Bank have, alas, shown themselves to be just that.
Infidel says
Happy New Year, everyone!
Arab Christians are nothing like US Evangelical ones: they believe in the same Arab supremacy that Islam advocates, and so, they’re w/ them when it comes to Judeophobic screeds. The West should be wary of taking even them when it comes to accepting refugees
David says
Surely Arab Christians must know what their muslim ‘brothers’ really feel about them? Can they really be like innocent lambs waiting to be slaughtered, when the time comes?
gravenimage says
Sadly most Arab Christians are very cowed–they are a tiny persecuted minority that has been dhimmified for centuries.
mortimer says
The trouble with making a security prediction is simply ‘You never can tell’ whether or not an incident will occur.
There could be a problem with assumed or false identities. They should start this process about six weeks in advance (in November) by asking those who want to visit Bethlehem to submit their request so that security agents can vet them before the visit.
gravenimage says
Catholic Clergy in Israel and the West Bank Condemn Israel for its Security Concerns
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What, no murdered Israelis? Bad dhimmis!
More:
Catholic leaders in Israel and the West Bank on Saturday condemned a decision by Israeli authorities to bar Christians in the Gaza Strip from visiting Bethlehem for Christmas.
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There are only about 1200 Christians surviving in Gaza today, down from around 3000 just ten years ago. But I’m sure there are Jihadists who would take advantage of being able to travel to Israel in order to try and kill Jews.
J. Frost says
You forgot that Capucci wrote in his memoir “Three days after the occupation of Jerusalem, I was driving my car in the streets of Jerusalem, wearing my clerical clothes. An Israeli soldier approached and spat at me. I got out of the car and started beating him until he fell to the ground. I was then convinced that these invaders must be confronted with violence to beat their brutality. I decided to work hard to resist the occupation.”
gravenimage says
This is a Christian cleric? Odd he doesn’t seem to have any problem with Muslims slaughtering Christians.
Clive Delmonte says
Israel copes brilliantly with a very difficult security situation.
gravenimage says
Hear, hear!
Lightship Chaplain says
Who made the Pope and his sycophants God on earth anyhow?
As a Reformed believer, I see him as the “Chief” Antichrist (1 John 4: like the Apostle John originally coined the phrase) – they detract & confuse truth, rather than in support righteousness!
s says
The Communist Church of Rome no longer is Catholic… they are a group of Global Communist men whose mission is the complete destruction of Roman Catholicism….. it is a sad time … the god-pope is creating the 10 Global Sin Commandments.. the god-pope has altered prayers … the god-pope has gathered 9 like minded bishops to take over rewriting Catechisms to create Communist activists of children stealing thier innocence … soon one of faith will not be able to buy or sell…. and the children will have had the mark of the beast implanted within their thinking Obama and the god-pope’s “one”.