Meet the poor in Christ’s birthplace

Christians were a majority in Bethlehem for almost two millennia. Now poverty and intolerance are driving them out, says Fr Mark Elvins

19 March 2010

Fr Elvins with Olga Hazboun

The greatest providence to humanity is surely that Almighty God should chose to become man. The place of this wonder of wonders was not any of the cities of classical antiquity but five and a half miles south of Jerusalem, at the little town of Bethlehem. Here David was anointed king by the prophet Samuel (I Samuel 16) and here the Son of God was born of David's line. The infant Christ was proclaimed by a chorus of angels over the Bethlehem hills to simple shepherds, who were the first to come and worship.

This first place of Christian worship is at the very centre of Bethlehem, a crude stable cut into the recesses of the local rocky terrain, but now enclosed in the great Byzantine Church of the Nativity. In the year 326 the first Christian emperor, Constantine, began the building of this the oldest church in Christendom; his mother, the Empress St Helena, continued the work. During the Samaritan revolt in 529 the church was largely destroyed but was to be rebuilt on Constantine's foundations by the Emperor Justinian, since when it has been a place of continuous Christian worship. Another possible disaster was narrowly averted at the time of the Persian conquest in 614, when Persian soldiers came to sack the church, but seeing a glorious mosaic of the magi dressed in Persian court dress convinced them that the church should be spared. Thus today at the heart of Bethlehem is the most historic monument to Christianity in the world.

In 634 Bethlehem surrendered to the Arabs but some time before 1099, when the Crusaders arrived, the population embraced Christianity, for at the sight of this Christian host the citizens opened their gates in welcome. From that time onwards Bethlehem remained a Christian city and in 1948 Christians still made up 70 per cent of the population. When I first visited Bethlehem in 1969 it was a substantially Christian city, where the visitor would find its citizens decked out in colourful local national dress.

Then something happened to change the situation dramatically. Whereas in 1960 20 per cent of the population in the Holy Land was Christian, today the number has dropped to nearly 1.4 per cent. But the largest number of Christians that remain are still to be found in Bethlehem and its surrounding villages Beit Sahour and Beit Jalla. But what has caused the massive depopulation of Christians from the Holy Land?

Between 1948 and 1982 there have been five Arab-Israeli wars (1948-49,1956, the 1967 Six Day War, 1973-74 and 1982), which have caused a massive migration of Muslim Palestinians into the once mainly Christian region of Bethlehem. Inevitably this has produced many tensions as the Christians found that for the first time in over 1,000 years they were now outnumbered by Muslims.

In 1964 Paul VI made the first visit to the Holy Land since St Peter, when the massive reduction in the Christian population became alarmingly apparent. Professor Bernard Sabella, as a former Catholic member of the Palestinian parliament and a one-time sociology professor at the Catholic University at Bethlehem, said last March at the International Conference held in Rome that the exodus of Christians "is related to the global market". Thus if a young Christian Palestinian can find work in the US or Dubai, he will go. But there are more insidious reasons for the depletion of the Christian Palestinian population. Archbishop Sleiman has observed that while economic and political problems are a major reason for the the Christian exodus, many in Palestine leave in fear and discrimination.

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales has issued a press release after the recent gathering of the episcopal conferences in support of the Holy Land, meeting in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. In this press release is an invitation to pilgrims to meet "the living Christian communities" in the Holy Land.

After nearly three weeks in Bethlehem I have met a number of this living Christian community, including 20 families enduring desperate poverty, hardship and discrimination. The bishops ask for justice and security for all, but here there is a hidden element that has so far escaped any major publicity, even with the visit of Pope Benedict XVI. The situation is often simplified as deadlock between Palestine and Israel with the illegal seizure of Palestinian territory and the ongoing acts of cross-border terrorism. Thus visiting dignitaries plead for peace and an end to violence, and rightly so.

However, in this the Christian population is simply lumped together with the rest of Muslim Palestine. Many wealthy Christians have left and those that remain are often poor and lack an effective voice for apart from the seizure of Palestinian territory there is a consistent seizure of Christian land by unscrupulous means. Some Christian merchants have been forced out of business and there are complaints of discrimination. One merchant I visited complained that he had not earned anything since October and many young men cannot find employment.

A Muslim journalist, Khaled Abu Tuameh, writing in May last year had the courage to speak out against this treatment of Christians in the Holy Land. Those that leave are certainly often economic migrants, but the reasons for leaving are more complex. Unlike in Britain, where poverty is often caused by social inadequacy, here in Palestine the poor are often bright and intelligent, but many cannot afford their university fees in order to gain a qualification. Sadly, the gaining of such qualification can be a passport out of Palestine, to find employment elsewhere.

The money I have raised has already helped several students, but a good number, thank God, wish to remain at all cost, but then if they find opportunities closed to them because they are Christian who can blame them for leaving? There is an urgent need for Muslim-Christian dialogue but so far there is no forum. This is the nub of the problem - peace is an obvious necessity but friendship and understanding between Muslim and Christian in Palestine are vital if the Holy Father's plea to retain a Christian presence in the Holy Land is to be effective.

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Of the 20 poor Christian homes I have visited so far one of the most pitiful is that of Professor Samir Attic. He taught chemistry at Indiana University in California and upon his return suffered a breakdown. He has lived for 20 years in abject poverty without a cooker, a WC, a wash hand basin, and with no heating or hot water. After my first visit some friends had bought him an electric fire and I hope to be able to purchase a cooker and provide him with hot water. Another tragic case of poverty is the family of Adel Sayeh, who with his wife and three children has no bath, no heating, a leaking roof, no means of washing and precious little food to feed his family.

Again the problem is not having the opportunity of employment. Before the establishment of a Palestinian State there is a need to safeguard the Christian population, for without a common understanding their position could worsen. But if a forum for Christian-Muslim dialogue was established it would be shown that the Christian element could contribute something of a moderating influence over fundamentalism, and help provide a more peaceful and democratic character to the state of Palestine.

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