For the past two decades, the Israeli military occupation force has sought to control the Palestinian people through a variety of security measures that have angered and demoralized the population and has left the local economy in tatters.
Hoping to cash in on the lucrative travel business during the Year 2000 celebrations, the Israel Tourist Office is targeting American Catholics with a campaign to bring them to the Holy Land, and specifically to Israel.
One of their advertising slogans is “Nobody belongs here more than you. “That phrase takes on an especially bitter connotation for the region’s indigenous Christian population, which has been dwindling rapidly since the 1967 Israeli capture and occupation of the West Bank (which includes Bethlehem, parts of Jerusalem and other sites revered by Christians worldwide).
For the past two decades, the Israeli military occupation force has sought to control the Palestinian people through a variety of security measures that have angered and demoralized the population and has left the local economy in tatters.
As a result, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled to other countries in search of lives free from oppression.
The exodus has had a particularly devastating impact on the Palestinian Christian community, which is relatively small in number compared to the Palestinian Muslim majority.
The West Bank town of Bir Zeit, for example, once boasted a population of more than 8,000 Christians. Today, barely 2,000 remain. In some towns, empty churches bear mute testimony to a Christian presence that has vanished altogether.
Many Palestinian Christians have come to the US Several thousand now live in Southern California and attend the Eastern-rite Catholic churches in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
But what about those Christians who remain in the Holy Land? How can we act in solidarity with the local Christian community so that Christianity will not vanish in the land of Jesus’ birth?
In January, an ecumenical group of Christians concerned over continuing Christian emigration from the Holy Land and poor economic conditions for those who remain founded the US based Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation.
Foundation President Rateb Rabie said that the new organization aims to help fund various social programs among Christians in the Holy Land. It will also seek to develop relationships among American and Palestinian individuals, families and churches.
Latin-rite Patriarch Michel Sabbah of Jerusalem is a member of the foundation’s advisory board.
