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Palestinian Christians caught between growing Islamic movements and inept Palestinian Authority

Nov 29, 2020 12:00 pm By Samir A. Zedan 10 Comments

The Palestinian Authority’s recent decision to restore security coordination with Israel, which was suspended since last May, did not stem from its concern for the Israeli security, nor from its desire to live up to the responsibilities entrusted in it since its establishment in 1994.

Mahmoud Abbas, known for his hesitation and inability to make historical decisions, has become more aware than ever that the Palestinian Authority would not survive for long without Israel’s help, which controls all the economic components of the Palestinian Authority and provides for the daily needs of the Palestinians. (In fact, Israel recently promised to provide the Palestinians with the COVID-19 vaccine.)

And to make things more complicated for Abbas, the vast majority of the Arab countries that subsidized the PA have abandoned the Palestinian Authority’s aspirations for statehood and decided to normalize diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.

Abbas realized that he could not survive the new regional reality. He ran back to Israel just like the prodigal son.

Meanwhile, the Christian people living inside the Palestinian areas face a dilemma via-a-vis their sense that they lack personal security and safety.

A major taboo among Christians living under the control of the Palestinian Authority has been always the internal debate over whether or not they should reach out to the State of Israel for citizenship in exchange for their full allegiance, a step that was taken by another minority — the Druze — who live in Northern Israel, after the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.

Previously, the search for an identity among Christians who live in Israel and who were registered as Arabs led a group of people to initiate a legal battle at Israeli courts, which culminated with Israel recognizing them as Arameans rather than Arabs. They strongly argued that Arabism had been imposed on them when Muslim Arabs invaded Jerusalem in the seventh century, a fact not many can easily deny.

Nowadays, many of these Christians are staunch members of Jewish parties, such as the Likud party (of the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) and Yisrael Beiteinu, a secular nationalist political party. The number of Christian teenagers who voluntarily serve in the IDF is steadily rising.

Intriguingly, the same search for a new identity emerged among the Christians of Judea and Samaria, who live under the Palestinian Authority. There is a growing sense among the Palestinian Christians of the need to remedy what some believe to have been a broken alliance with Israel. Increasingly, they believe that it is their only option to survive the threats of the growing Islamic radicalisation in the Palestinian areas.

And to make them feel more adamant about the need for such an alliance, regular attacks against Christians were carried out by members of the Fatah movement (which always claimed to be a secular movement). During an attack on a Christian town near Ramallah two years ago, Fatah militants threatened Christian civilians and demanded that they pay jizya (a tax paid by non-Muslim populations to their Muslim rulers).

Furthermore, in the Bethlehem area, Christians have been subject to serious incidents of violence and constant violations of their rights that go back as far as October 2000, when the Camp David peace negotiations failed after the Palestinians vehemently refused to accept any proposal.

Another example of such savagery was seen last year, when a Christian woman was killed in an unjustified raid by the Palestinian police on her house in the town of Beit Jala near Bethlehem. The raid was a vivid example of the brutality and belligerent behaviour that only could be practiced against helpless people such as the Christian residents.

The policeman who was charged over the incident (after pressure exerted by Jordan, since the woman was also a Jordanian citizen) was released from detention while the legal case was being deliberately delayed in court, due to the fact that he is the nephew of the governor of Bethlehem, a prominent member of Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement.

Such corruption and threats that the family of the deceased woman received in order to pressure them to drop the case against the policeman made the Christians feel more intimidated and concerned for their own personal security and safety.

This is the video in which the daughter of the deceased Christian is pleading for King Abdullah to intervene. The night this video went online, the policeman got arrested, but only to be released a few months later.

Here is a video in which this ISIS follower tried to kill Christians in Beit Jala. Watch after 01:00 and how the victim stands up later and makes the sign of the Greek Orthodox cross, thanking God for saving his life.

During the Intifada that broke out in October 2000, Beit Jala, a largely Christian town near Bethlehem, was subject to an abhorrent cases of rape, torture and murder by al-Aqsa Brigades militants, such as in the case of two Christian teenagers. This crime was confirmed to the writer by an ex-member of the Al-Aqsa Brigades. He succeeded in escaping to a European country after his release from Israeli prisons into Gaza, as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal.

Furthermore, during the fall of 2000, Fatah militants destroyed the crosses inside the Greek Orthodox cemetery in Beit Jala while they used it as a site from which they were shooting at the Jewish residential neighborhood of Gilo, south of Jerusalem. As for financial extortion by Al Aqsa militants, it was reported to have been practiced against many Christian business people and landlords, some of whom got killed by Fatah militants for refusing to submit to such blackmail.

In December 2017, when President Trump announced the transfer of the US embassy to Jerusalem, a Palestinian Muslim was taken into custody after he rammed his 18-wheeler truck into several vehicles in Beit Jala, injuring at least seven people and damaging at least 22 vehicles.

In protest, Christian residents of the town blocked a main road, demanding that Palestinian police provide them with proper protection. The driver, who fled the scene, was later captured by Israeli forces and turned over to Palestinian authorities as part of the signed agreements between the two sides. He was trying to kill as many Christians as possible, following in the footsteps of similar ISIS terrorist attacks that took place in Europe.

A few months later, the Palestinian Authority changed the charges from a possible terrorist attack to a traffic accident; the man was eventually released.

This video raises the Christians’ concerns regarding the incidents that took place near Ramallah and in Beit Jala.

In another incident that took place a few years ago, the Maronite church of St. Charbel in Bethlehem was set ablaze while it was still under construction. The parish priest, Father Yacoub, confirmed that the Palestinian Authority arrested all workers (including the Christian ones) for interrogation, which made him feel obligated to call later and inform the Palestinian police that the fire was due to an electrical malfunction. The amusing part of this claim is that electricity was not yet connected to the church as it was still under construction. He had to do so in order to secure the release of the innocent Christian workers.

As for the real wake-up call for the Christians, it came last July, when Turkey converted the Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Istanbul into a mosque. Scene of Palestinians cheering and lauding that decision became further evidence to the Christians that the political aspirations for Palestinian statehood will mean a further deterioration of their rights as Christians, as well as imminent danger to their churches and religious sites.

Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah welcomed Turkey’s decision (although the latter denied it later), which led to strong resentment among the Christian Palestinians due to the special Christian symbolism that the Church in Constantinople represents to them, as Greek Orthodox Christians make up the majority of Palestinian Christians.

Last summer, a Christian resident threatened to set himself on fire inside the municipality of Beit Jala because water was not being provided to his house, which was located in the rural area of Al Makhrour west of Bethlehem. Many Christians speculated that an officer in the Palestinian Water Authority refused to supply the area with water due to the presence of a pig farm owned by a local Christian farmer, since for the officer, breeding pigs in the land of Islam should not be tolerated.

The farmer was more convinced than ever that his survival and the continuous presence of Christians in this land heavily relies on Israel extending its hand to help the rapidly dwindling Christian community. The survival of his pigs relies on connecting that rural area to the Israeli water authority, Mekorot.

Samir A. Zedan is a former Senior Counter-Terrorism Analyst at the US Department of State, and a former Development Outreach and Communication specialist at USAID/Iraq. He also was a journalist with major media outlets with assignments in the Palestinian Areas, Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Europe.

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Filed Under: Israel, Muslim persecution of Christians, Palestinian Authority Tagged With: Mahmoud Abbas


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Comments

  1. Infidel says

    Nov 29, 2020 at 12:37 pm

    Why don’t Pali Christians abandon their Israel hatred and move there? Being ‘Arab’ hasn’t protected them from either Hamas nor Fatah, nor has it given them a better life. Or they could move to Syria or Lebanon

    Reply
    • gravenimage says

      Nov 30, 2020 at 12:03 am

      Not all Arab Christians hate Israel, Infidel.

      Reply
      • Lion heart says

        Nov 30, 2020 at 3:49 am

        Just to clarify one thing : Christians of the Middle East are not Arab

        Reply
        • Infidel says

          Nov 30, 2020 at 1:04 pm

          The Copts, Maronites and Assyrians are not. The ‘Palestinian’ Christians are

        • gravenimage says

          Nov 30, 2020 at 11:19 pm

          Yes–it depends on the group.

      • Infidel says

        Nov 30, 2020 at 1:02 pm

        The ‘Palestinian’ ones generally do: the ones that don’t are Israeli Christians

        Reply
  2. gravenimage says

    Nov 30, 2020 at 12:02 am

    Palestinian Christians caught between growing Islamic movements and inept Palestinian Authority
    ………………

    Unfortunately, the PA is worse than inept, and persecutes Christians itself, as does Hamas.

    Reply
  3. Linde Barrera says

    Nov 30, 2020 at 9:46 am

    Thank you for this very informative article.
    I plan to go to Israel and spend about a month there. I want to visit some of these places mentioned and talk with a few English speaking Muslims as well as Jews, Christians, Druze and others to understand why the PA is so “respected” when it seems to me that all the PA does is take money so Abbas can have a plane, have a fancy home/estate and have loads of money in his personal bank account.
    Very strange.

    Reply
    • John says

      Nov 30, 2020 at 1:01 pm

      Don’t expect the truth visiting West Bank. Christians there are like Jews in concentration camps and you are the Swedish Red Cross interviewing them and their living conditions.

      Reply
      • gravenimage says

        Nov 30, 2020 at 11:20 pm

        Grimly true, John.

        Reply

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