We Must Speak of the Situation in Bethlehem:
Israeli Government Increasing Difficulties for Christians and Muslims in Bethlehem
On Tuesday, 15 November 2005, the day that the Palestinians mark as their hopeful day of independence, the Israeli authorities increased the complexity and difficulty of travel to and from Bethlehem for pilgrims, tourists, priests, sisters, brothers and regular families.
The previously operating Israeli military checkpoint was replaced on 15 November with an international border transit terminal, requiring Christian pilgrims who wish to visit the Church of the Nativity where Jesus was born to disembark from their buses, carry their luggage and walk through passageways for “passport control” – while the Israeli Jewish pilgrims by-pass such additional scrutiny and delays and are promptly escorted to visit Rachel’s Tomb in the town of Bethlehem.
Beyond the additional difficulties and delays that the Israeli authorities have imposed as part of their continued military occupation of the town of Bethlehem, some of the Bethlehem University faculty members and students who live in Jerusalem have been turned back from entering Bethlehem while others have been permitted to enter Bethlehem after waiting anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes at the new international border transit terminal. Meanwhile, still in effect are the travel restrictions which do not allow children, women and men who are residents of Bethlehem – Christian and Muslim alike – to travel into Jerusalem to seek employment or to see family relatives or to visit the holy places of worship in Jerusalem.
Custody Official Urges Good Ties With Israelis
Vicar in Holy Land Asks Support for Christians
JERUSALEM, NOV. 18, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Good relations with the people of Israel must be encouraged, and Christians in this land must be supported, says the vicar of the Custody of the Holy Land.
Father Artemio Vitores made these statements to the Vatican missionary agency Fides on the occasion of the visit of the president of Israel, Moshe Katsav, to the Vatican on Thursday.
"Pope Benedict XVI is doing very well," said the Franciscan. "His actions speak clearly. Christians must continue to rediscover their roots in Judaism and build ever better relations with the Jews, our elder brothers."
Father Vitores continued: "President Katsav's visit to the Vatican is part of the framework of good relations between Israel and the Holy See. This theme will be fundamental.
"The climate of good relations is also felt in the Holy Land with increasing efforts to reach a better mutual understanding between Jews and Christians, which will bring reciprocal spiritual, social, as well as economic benefits, with a flow of pilgrimages."
"However," said Father Vitores, "we must speak of the situation in Bethlehem."
According to the vicar of the Custody, "the Israeli authorities increased control at Jerusalem border check points creating difficulties for the local people, the friars and pilgrims."
Less than 12%
"Help us keep Bethlehem, where Christians are ever fewer," the Franciscan said in a plea to world leaders and all Christians.
According to Father Vitores, Christians were the majority in 1965. "Today we are less than 12%."
"In recent years," he said, "impoverished by economic, social and religious difficulties, at least 3,000 Christians have left Bethlehem in search of better prospects. There is a danger that Christians may disappear from Bethlehem altogether.
The vicar of the Custody continued: "We Franciscans do our best but the situation is serious! We want all Christians, all believers to know that conditions here are getting worse every day.
"Bethlehem is where Christ was born, the place of the Incarnation, a fundamental mystery of our faith. Bethlehem is our heart, the heart of all Christians. Help us to save this holy place."
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Bethlehem’s Ordinary Residents Struggling to Be Faithful and Free
Edited version of an article by John Harris found on the blog: http://www.bethlehemghetto.blogspot.com/
"People are scared to come to Bethlehem because of the checkpoints and so on. And we need them to stay here. Most of them have lunch in Bethlehem and then go back to Israel," says Adel, one of the handful of tour guides who still make their living here in Bethlehem. This morning, he's seeing to the needs of a party of Indonesian Christians, who tumble into the Grotto of the Nativity in a small riot of awe-struck gasps and popping flashbulbs, excitedly crowding around a 14-pointed metallic star said to mark the spot on which Christ took his first earthly breaths. "We were a little scared to come here," one of them tells me. "The Israeli soldiers came on the bus and checked all our bags. But it's OK now. We feel safe."
This is the message that Bethlehem is desperate to send to the world. This month sees the launch of an initiative - Open Bethlehem, whose offices are located on the campus of Bethlehem University. Open Bethlehem is intended to help rescue this town, one of the many towns on the West Bank facing isolation and collapse. By spreading word of Bethlehem's surprising calm and the endlessly hospitable spirit that has made pilgrims welcome for centuries, the campaigners hope to encourage visitors to return. There is a particular urgency because Israel's infamous security barrier – separation wall – is near completion, while a ring of expanding Jewish settlements eats into Palestinian territory. According to Open Bethlehem's first briefing paper, "The cradle of biblical history is in peril. Today, it resembles a bleak prison town surrounded by a concrete wall." The unspoken question is this: why, given the place of Bethlehem in the Christian imagination, does the outside world seem so unconcerned?
The predicament becomes instantly clear when you enter Bethlehem, passing from the outer reaches of Israeli-controlled Jerusalem into territory administered by the Palestinian authority. First, you see the barrier, the 30 foot high concrete separation wall, grimly snaking from east to west. Then there is the inevitable checkpoint: 50 or so yards of sandbags, prefabs and breeze blocks, where, until 15 November 2005, Israeli soldiers check the documents of foreign visitors and those fortunate few Palestinians whose IDs allow them to travel north. Now, this “temporary” checkpoint is being dismantled and all non-Jewish persons are required to enter into the newly constructed international border crossing terminal for passport control and security clearance which is yet another half mile into the town of Bethlehem. Here, in this new terminal, which has in effect annexed more acres of land from Palestine to Israel, the incense-laden piety of the Church of the Nativity is replaced by a cold tension that is exponentially higher than the tension that existed prior to 15 November 2005 at the “temporary checkpoint.”
Rachel's Tomb is the burial place of the wife of Jacob, described in the book of Genesis. It's a Jewish holy site, where women come to pray for their children - though, in one of those unfortunate coincidences that so unsettle Middle Eastern politics, it adjoins a Muslim cemetery. Though well within the Palestinian territory enshrined in the 1993 Oslo accords, its sanctity ensured that it would form an enclave "under the security responsibility of Israel", with the proviso that the "free movement of Palestinians" on the main road that links Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Hebron would be guaranteed. Now all that is a memory: an austere concrete roadblock, draped with the Israeli flag, scythes the road in two. Meanwhile, work is proceeding on a fortified corridor that will ferry Israeli Jewish traffic to and from the tomb, and take its place in the 500-mile length of concrete, tarmac and wire that forms the Israeli separation barrier built on the land of the Palestinians.
What this means for the local residents is simple enough. Where once there was a teeming neighborhood, festooned with cafes and souvenir shops, there is now an arid “no man's land” where Israeli soldiers pace along the deserted store fronts; the few businesses that are left face imminent extinction. The grandly named Bethlehem Souvenir Centre, where displays of religious knick-knacks - vast wooden crucifixes, framed crowns of thorns, small phials of water allegedly from the River Jordan - stretch into the distance, was once busy and prosperous. Now it seems destined to fall into dereliction.
"Before, you could not cross the road here, there was so much traffic," says Khalil Jousef, a 41-year-old who has worked here for 12 years. He speaks in staccato sentences, brimming with an indignant refusal to accept what is happening just outside. "We used to have 32 workers here. Now, we have fewer than 12. But we want to survive. We want to stay. We want to live. Each one of us has three, or five, or maybe more kids. And where can we move? Tell me where?
"We are living in a prison," he says. "If you are surrounded by a wall, who will come to you? And where can we go? I have five children, and none of them have seen Jerusalem. I have tried to go: I told the soldiers, 'I want to take my children to see the Old City.' But I am not allowed."
Such is the tenor of just about every conversation I have here: rather than the stone-throwing, chaotic, nothing-left-to-lose cliché of Palestinian life, there's a recurrent sense of ordered, everyday lives rendered almost surreally impossible. Down the street from the souvenir shop, for example, are the offices and one-time family home of Bassem Khoury, an urbane 57-year-old architect, soon to be walled in by the road to the tomb. The lounge, whose bookshelves creak under the weight of Hemingway, DH Lawrence and George Bernard Shaw, suggests a life lived in elegant comfort; yet in the master bedroom, the walls are scarred with bullet holes. The lush garden is no longer in use because of the proximity of a commandeered tower block, from which Israeli soldiers yell abuse. Pointing out one particular feature, Khoury is moved to tears: a tree, within sight of a back window, from which he used to hang Christmas decorations each year, hacked down to an ugly stump by the military, lest anyone should climb it.
A few doors down is a large apartment building, home to three Palestinian families, in the midst of what now amounts to a construction site. We've been brought here by Leila Sansour, Open Bethlehem's chief executive (and director of the 2003 documentary Jeremy Hardy Vs The Israeli Army). For her, the scene in front of us is all too familiar: a Caterpillar digger scoops chunks out of the road, in preparation for the barrier's foundations, while three soldiers keep watch, and a red and black pick-up truck speeds up and down the street, slowing to a crawl whenever it passes anyone deemed worthy of attention.
The two men inside, dressed in baseball caps and sunglasses, seem to be neither policemen nor soldiers, though both are armed. They draw level with us, and begin asking a flurry of anxious questions: "Who are you? What are you doing here? Where are you from? Do you have papers? What are you taking pictures of?" When asked who they are, the man in the passenger seat can offer only that the two of them are "in charge". What of? "Well, we are in charge here."
Once he's seen our passports, they rumble on down the street, though it soon becomes obvious that suspicions have been aroused. Our plan was to visit one of the families, but each step in the direction of the entrance finds the men taking two towards us, stagily toying with their guns. We give up, and spend an hour sitting outside the deserted Christmas Tree cafe, watching the digger roar on, while the two men take their places outside a boarded-up jewellery shop.
Ariel Sharon, it should be noted, has claimed that the barrier has been built "with every effort to minimize the infringement on the daily life of the Palestinian population". Come and see – the reality is much different than Sharon’s claim!
