Bishops briefed on Palestinian
issues
By MARGOT PATTERSON
NCR Staff Atlanta
Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah articulated the pain
and frustration of the beleaguered Christian community in the Holy Land in an
address he delivered here to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Sabbah told the conference that the last eight months in the
Mideast have been marked by swelling waves of violence that include
the shelling of Christian towns and villages. Normal life is
impossible, Sabbah reported. Lack of jobs for Christians as for all
Palestinians makes providing food a hard matter. The patriarch said the
conflict is having a grave effect on schooling, a primary pastoral mission of
his diocese.
Accorded the title of patriarch, as are other bishops of dioceses
founded by an apostle, Sabbah was one of a panel of three speakers on the
Mideast. It included the Clinton administrations former special envoy to
the region, Dennis Ross, and Jesuit Fr. Drew Christiansen, adviser on
international affairs to the bishops conference and former director of
the conferences Office of International Justice and Peace.
Decrying violence as an unacceptable means of resolving conflict,
the patriarch told his audience that while violence on the Palestinian side
expresses itself in stone throwing, gun shooting, mortar fire and suicide
bombings, it takes other forms on the Israeli side: the sealing of Palestinian
towns and villages, the plowing under of agricultural fields, the cutting down
of olive groves, the bulldozing of houses, the indiscriminate shelling and
bombing of civilians, the protection of settlers who themselves use
violence.
Unfortunately, Sabbah said, the voices of Christian Palestinians
go unheard in the United States, where U.S. politicians and the media look only
at the manifestations of the conflict in the Mideast rather than its cause:
Israels continuing occupation of Palestinian land.
To treat Christian Palestinians as a purely religious
community without any legitimate national aspirations or distinct culture
dehumanizes them, Sabbah said. He said that Christian Palestinians see
themselves as part of the Palestinian people. He called upon the church in the
United States to redefine the conflict in more accurate terms, to insist on
compliance with United Nations resolutions, to collaborate with Jewish
communities for a new shared vision of security for Israel and justice for the
Palestinians, and to advocate for the future of Jerusalem.
About 170,000 Christians live in Israel and the occupied
territories, of whom 70,000 are Catholics. Sabbah expanded on the difficulties
faced by the Christian community there in an interview NCR held with the
patriarch and Christiansen.
Freedom of movement is very restricted. There are no more
jobs, Sabbah said. We are living in the most difficult time in the
history of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The church and other
organizations are giving much aid, but the help is very limited, and we wonder
how the people are surviving.
Thirty-five thousand of the 50,000 Christians living in the West
Bank reside in three towns, Bethlehem, Beit-Jala, and Beit-Sahour, which are
shelled heavily by the Israelis on a routine basis.
Early on it was done in response to provocation. Now the
Israelis have become more blatant in [pursuing] a strategy of general
deterrence. That means they just fire at will against the civilian
population, said Christiansen. Its a collective punishment.
Its also a direct attack on civilians in defiance of international
law.
By March, the shelling had caused 1,000 people to emigrate from
Beit-Sahour. Emigration figures on the other Christian towns are not available.
Christians account for approximately 2 percent of the population in Israel and
the occupied territories.
The church feels -- and so does the Holy See -- that there
should be a living Christian community in the land of Jesus, said
Christiansen, who addressed the bishops conference on the Holy Sees
position toward the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
Pope John Paul II has for years appealed to United Nations
Resolutions 242, 338, 194 as guiding principles for settling the conflict and
is placing increasing emphasis on international law. On that point, the pontiff
differed with the position of the Clinton administration, which minimized
Israeli violations of international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids
the annexation of captured territory and settlement of population on occupied
territory.
Instead, Israel has continued to build new settlements since the
1993 Oslo accords that set the framework for peace talks. Indeed, the Barak
government built settlements at three times the rate previous Israeli
governments had.
Sabbah spoke of the enormous reservoir of mistrust among
Palestinians. Rooted in years of Israeli annexations, confiscations and
settlement-building, it burst forth in the intifada, he said. Intifada
is an Arabic word used for an uprising.
The legitimate expectations of Palestinians as well as of
the international community was that under the terms of Oslo the Palestinians
would take possession of captured land. Negotiations should have dealt largely
with technical details. Negotiations were not meant to substitute for
implementation of resolution 242, Christiansen said.
United Nations Resolution 242 provides that in return for peace
with the Israelis the Palestinians are to receive the land occupied by the
Israelis in 1967, but Israel has continued to create new conditions on the
ground since 1993 that have left Palestinians negotiating for much less land
than they initially expected, Christiansen said. These changed conditions
include not only new Israeli settlements but also bypass roads connecting
settlements that divide the West Bank. The inequitable allocation of water
resources, which the Israelis have controlled since 1967, is another sore
point.
Water flows freely to Israelis and is rationed to
Palestinians, Christiansen said. The Bethlehem area gets water
three days every three weeks. Pregnant women die. Infants die.
As the intermediary between Palestinians and Israelis, the United
States suffers from a credibility problem with many Palestinians, Christiansen
said. The United States is providing Israel with much of the arms the Israelis
are using against the Palestinians. And while the Palestinians have been
promised much by the United States, theyve been given very little. In
contrast the Israelis have been rewarded for every concession theyve
made, Christiansen said. Not since the first Bush administration in the early
1990s has there been a hold on aid to Israel.
Alternative views of the peace process were sometimes put forth by
the panelists speaking to the bishops conference. While Ross said a
mistake had been made in focusing on making peace from the top down rather than
building support for peace from the bottom up, he spoke of the historic
opportunity for peace that existed last year and put the blame for its loss
squarely on the shoulders of Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine
Liberation Organization. Arafat refused a bargain that was as good as the
Palestinians were ever going to get, Ross said. However, Sabbah said the
propositions put forward to the Palestinians were Israeli propositions that in
the end Arafat could not accept.
Just what Arafat was offered by the Barak government is a matter
of dispute among experts, Christensen said. The claim has been made that Arafat
was offered 95 percent of the occupied territories, but some cartographers say
it could be as low as 65 percent. When youre talking about by-pass
roads, its not just roads, its 150 meters on either side,
Christensen said.
We just dont know, Christiansen said. The
experts looking at the maps draw a lot of very different conclusions on how
much land would be under Palestinian control.
In reiterating a statement they made in November about the
necessity for a resumption of the peace talks in the Mideast, the bishops said
they were attempting to raise awareness of the deteriorating situation in the
Holy Land and to reaffirm solidarity with the church there.
We cannot tire of reminding our own Catholic community and
the wider world that the Christian presence is vital to the Holy Land, not as
an historic remnant but as a living community of faith, said Cardinal
Bernard Law, chairman of the bishops committee on international
policy.
Law said individual American Catholics can deepen their
involvement in the Middle East by educating themselves on the issues and
speaking out in their role as citizens and by offering material assistance to
those in need. Law said Americans have unmatched opportunities for interfaith
dialogue, which they can bring to people in the Holy Land.
Bishop Robert Carlson of the diocese of Sioux Falls, S.D., offered
an amendment to the Israeli-Palestinian resolution that called on U.S. dioceses
to partner with Catholic parishes in the Holy Land. His own diocese has a
sister parish in Zabbdeh in biblical Samaria on the West Bank where the annual
income is $800 a worker. Since the siege, peace and justice committees of
various parishes within the diocese have also been assisting the parish in
Zabbdeh.
During the Jubilee Year, a group of 135 people from the Sioux
Falls diocese went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and visited Zabbdeh.
Im not sure the press in this country accurately communicate the
issue. My perceptions before I went were different from after I went,
said Carlson, who said the American press tends to convey the issue as a
Jewish-Muslim issue or as Israelis defending themselves against terrorists.
Why should Catholics care if a tiny percentage of Christian
Palestinians disappear?
It would be awful if all those great places just became
museums, where Jesus was born. For me, it would be a disaster if there were no
Christians praying the faith, said Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of
Washington.
National Catholic Reporter, June 29,
2001
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