Excerpts

The Last Supper by Klaus Wivel Chapter 1 The West Bank and Gaza I gaze out over southern Jerusalem as the Catholic priest places the wafer on my tongue. Behind me Beit Jala covers the top of this steep hillside leading down to the Cremisan Valley. We stand among the old olive trees on the slope, two hundred meters below the town. The sun is about to set behind the hill on this late afternoon in October, 2012. We have driven here from Bethlehem in the West Bank, ten minutes to the west. The Catholic priest is at a small table covered by a white tablecloth in this no man's land between Israel and The Palestinian Authority. He has taken the small round piece of unleavened bread out of a gold cup and dipped it in sweet wine. My host, an influential man in Bethlehem, has invited me to receive Communion even though I am not a Catholic. I'm not even a believer, nor have I been baptized. Of course I know the liturgy, but I'm a stranger in a world that isn't mine, in a brotherhood where I don't belong. I follow my host out of courtesy, but I feel like an anthropologist who for the sake of research melts into a local tribe and takes part in their cultural rituals. Only once before have I received Communion. That happened about ten years ago in a small church in the flatlands of Nebraska. The church was half full of rich, aged, sullen Scandinavian immigrant farmers with rough large hands and leathery faces. Their children and grandchildren had long since moved away to cities. That was also a dying culture. I might just as well have been on another planet. Back then I felt like a blasphemer on the road to perdition, as if the church would collapse around me if I received the wafer. A circle of thirty people have gathered here on the hillside, half of them seniors, the other half young Western Christians, in the country to aid the Palestinian cause. It seems as though these two categories of people - those too old to seek asylum and the young idealists - are the only Christians here. More Palestinian Christians now live outside Palestine than within. Many more. About 7,000 Christians live in Beit Jala, the Palestinian town behind us.1 About 100,000 immigrants or descendents of the town's residents today live in Central- and South America and in the USA.2 In Latin America alone, Christian Palestinians make up approximately 85% of all Palestinian immigrants .3 I'm not standing here with my tongue sticking out to describe one more battle in the endless conflict over land and justice between two nations, even though this idyllic valley was a battlefield a little over ten years ago. Back then, Palestinian militias fired across the valley at Israeli civilians in the southernmost quarter of Israeli Jerusalem, and the Israeli military answered with heavy artillery that destroyed entire buildings. I'm here because of the Christian Palestinians assembled on the slope. I want to write about them while they still live here. Palestinian militias, not Christians, shot from the houses and yards of this primarily Christian town. At that time some of the citizens of Beit Jala sent a message to Yasser Arafat, the president of the Authority, pleading with him to stop the militias.4 Other townsfolk simply emigrated, following the hundreds of thousands of other Christian Palestinians throughout the years. The numbers speak for themselves. In 1922, 10% of the population in what then was officially known as Palestine were Christians. Today, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of Christians on the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) is 40,000, out of a Palestinian population of 2 million. Two per cent. And that percentage is dwindling. Because of this, a sense of panic among Christian Palestinians has been steadily growing. Many of them talk about how the old churches - for example, The Church of Nativity in Bethlehem and The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem - soon will be tourist attractions only, ruins of a 2000-year-old vanished civilization kept open for visitors, their congregations on the brink of extinction One of the reasons for this is easy to understand. Christians have immigrated to countries where they can live under better conditions. Gradually, as their numbers have increased in places such as South American cities, it has become practicable for new Palestinian Christian immigrants to integrate. But the why cannot be ascribed to a single reason. Significant events include the Ottoman Empire's attempt to recruit non-Muslims for their army in 1909; the establishment of Israel and the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948; The Six Days War and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967; the Palestinian rebellion, The First Intifada, from 1987 to 1993; The Second Intifada from 2000 to 2005. Each uprising or war has proven more damaging to Christians than to Muslims or Jews. In addition, the Christians who have stayed behind make up a dwindling part of the population. The birth rate among Muslims has been much higher than that of Christians. No population in the world has grown as rapidly as that of the Palestinians - 30% from 1998 to 2008.5 The average age on the West Bank is twenty-one.6 What is causing the Christians to leave this land in which they have lived for two thousand years? That question concerns not only the Palestinian areas, but several Muslim countries as well. Our Western habit of referring to this region as Muslim has always been looked on as an insult by the Christians living there. Christianity was Middle Eastern not only before it spread throughout the rest of the world, but several centuries before Islam even existed. Several colonial powers have ruled this region, and the Christians have always found ways to adapt. That has changed now. Christians are leaving the West Bank in droves. Leaving the land that has been Christian since Jesus was taken down from the cross. The old Western prejudice about the region being Muslim is perhaps about to become true. * * * After receiving communion in the Cremisan Valley, my host takes me to the man who is perhaps Bethlehem's best-known clergyman internationally. He lives and works in the narrow alleyways of old Bethlehem. His full name is Mitri Bishara Mitri Konstantin Al-Raheb - Mitri Raheb for short. In the winter of 2012 he visited Germany to receive the prestigious German Media Prize for his humanitarian efforts. The prize was presented by the former German president, Roman Herzog. In May of the same year he participated in a hearing at the Danish Parliament. He has the ear of Europe. Christians haven't always been a minority in Bethlehem. In 1920 the small town had 3,000 Christian citizens, a majority, but this changed dramatically during the war in 1948. The stream of refugees from Israel, most of whom were Muslims, settled in the area. Today the population of Bethlehem is 25,000, but only 7,000 of them are Christians.7 Thus Christians are now a minority in what has to be considered one of the Christian world's most important settlements. The Christian birth rate of about 2.2 since 1960 should have resulted in a population of approximately 20,000 Christians, but most of them have left Bethlehem. 4,000 Christians left the Bethlehem area during The Second Intifada.8 I walk up to the first floor of the Evangelical Christmas Lutheran Church, built and established by Pastor Raheb. It looks empty, exquisite, renovated. He has also founded a health clinic and a college for "tomorrow's leaders," as he puts it, which look every bit as fashionable and lavish. He is clearly a man with a talent for fund raising. Mitri Raheb has a slightly aloof, sophisticated, and cool demeanor, perhaps the result of many years of theological study in Germany. He seems mildly irritated about being disturbed; obviously he is a busy man. Before I say a word, Raheb hands a newly-published report across the desk. The report, done by his own Diyar Consortium, concerns the Palestinian Christians.9 He leafs through the pages to a diagram which shows "Reasons for Emigration." "Only 0.3% of those questioned say that they have emigrated because of 'religious extremism'," he says. This is a startling result. Later I take time to study the diagram. The three most important reasons are Political Instability (19.7%), Worsening Economy (26.4%), and Lack of Freedom and Security (32.6%). The last number can be attributed to pressure from both Israelis and militant Islamists. But the Lutheran pastor's most surprising message, which he has traveled extensively to deliver, is that the Christians in the Arabic world are neither a "minority" nor "persecuted." I want to hear more about this, as it directly contradicts the many reports on the situation of Christians in the Middle East. "I am not persecuted because of my faith," he explains. "The Israelis are after us because we are Palestinians, not because we are Christians." He points out that the Christians on the West Bank can do whatever they please. They can build sports facilities, health clinics, whatever they like. Christians can do the same in Jordan and Syria - "At least until recently," he adds. No discrimination is taking place because of the Christian religion. "The situation is different in Egypt," he says. "Should you wish to build a church there, you must apply for permission fifty years in advance. It's not difficult to build churches in Israel. The problem is building houses, which Israeli settlers may and Palestinians may not. In this way, the Israelis resemble the Egyptians." I ask him what he means when he claims that Christians aren't a minority in the Middle East. It's obvious to everyone that the percentage of Christians in the population is shrinking. If, for example, the number of Christians grew according to their birthrate, three times as many of them would be living on the West Bank and in Gaza. One line on the graph, the Muslim line, shoots straight up, while the Christian line is flat because of massive emigration. In a few years it will be pointing down.10 "In Europe a minority is considered to be an ethnic group from the outside. But Christians and Muslims in the Middle East are from the same culture. In fact, Christians are the original people in the region. Most Muslims here are Christians who over the years have converted. I don't care for the term minority, because it can give Christians a minority complex". I ask Raheb, who has moved his chair away from his computer, if he feels that the Western world cares about the Palestinian Christians' situation. "I believe the West is completely indifferent," he says. "European opinion-makers use us for their own ends. We feed their hate of Muslims." Mitri Raheb is an example of a number of people I will meet, often among the local clergy or the Western emissaries promoting interfaith dialogue who look disappointed when asked about Christians' relationships with their Muslim neighbors. We are brothers, many of them say. The problem is Israel. The difference between Israel and the West Bank is striking. When you cross the border into the hills of Bethlehem and find yourself among the refugee camps, the tourist traps, the peace centers, and the wealthy districts, you leave the Israeli island and enter the Arab world. Immediately I sense a different mentality, a greater friendliness and hospitality and vanity, a lifestyle both richer and much poorer. I also sense a submissive attitude. It stems partly from the very long war with the Israelis that has brought Palestinians nothing but defeat and misery, partly because everything from love to politics in Palestinian society is more or less under strict administration. Civil rights are lacking in Arabian societies, here included, though Palestinians are restricted far less than many others. Excerpted from The Last Supper: The Plight of Christians in Arab Lands by Klaus Wivel All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.