“It’s crazy,” Munther Isaac, pastor of Christmas Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, told me. “It became a genocide with 1.7 million people displaced.”
Isaac was part of a small delegation of Palestinian Christians who came to Washington this week to pressure the Biden administration, U.S. lawmakers and religious leaders to support calls for a large-scale ceasefire. Six-day pause in hostilities between Israel and militant group Hamas is expected to conclude on Thursday, although negotiations with Hamas involving U.S., Israeli and Arab officials are ongoing. potentially extend the current truce. Israeli officials vow to continue their campaign against Hamas after the hostages are released, while the Biden administration appears try to hold on whatever next phase of the war Israel chooses to launch.
On Tuesday afternoon, the delegation visited the White House and delivered a letter to President Biden signed by leaders of Bethlehem’s Christian community, including the Protestant Isaac Denomination and its Orthodox, Armenian and Catholic counterparts. They also visited the Hill to meet with staff from the Senate and the House of Representatives.
“God has placed political leaders in a position of power so that they can bring justice, support those who suffer, and be instruments of God’s peace,” reads the letter, which I received from opportunity to see before being delivered. “We want a constant and comprehensive ceasefire. Enough death. Enough destruction. It is a moral obligation. There must be other ways. This is our call and our prayer this Christmas.
Palestinian Christians belong to the oldest Christian communities in the world, rooted in the historic cradle of Christianity. But their numbers are diminished, at least in proportion to those of their neighbors of other faiths, and they are represented with greater force in the Palestinian diaspora around the world. Palestinian Christians make up about 2 percent of the overall Palestinian population in the West Bank, concentrated mainly around Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and less than 1 percent of the population of Gaza.
This last community, small but important, is in the midst of a potential extinction event. There are approximately fewer than 1,000 Christians in Gaza, who live there without many problems despite the de facto takeover of the territory in 2007 by Hamas. But Israeli airstrikes have destroyed or damaged almost every home in the Gaza City community, while strike Gaza’s oldest active church, where some were sheltering. “The vast majority of the Christian community in Gaza is now homeless,” Isaac said.
This prompted perhaps a fifth of Gaza’s Christians who also held foreign passports to abandon the territory altogether. The others find themselves abandoned. “They are calling us saying, ‘Let’s leave, we either die or we leave,'” said Tamar Haddad, regional coordinator for the Lutheran World Federation who was also part of the visiting delegation.
Jack Sara, president of Bethlehem Bible College, pointed out that the plight of Palestinian Christians does not seem to be heard by many American evangelicals, who see muscular Jewish supremacy in the Holy Land as a path for their own messianic vision. Tennessee-based evangelical preacher Greg Locke, a vocal and often viral pro-Trump cleric, called on Israel to reduce Gaza to a “parking lot” shortly after the October 7 attack. More than 13,000 Palestinians were killed in the weeks that followed, including thousands of children.
THE ideology of Christian Zionism animated the agenda of the Trump administration and influences a large segment of Republican legislators, from the former vice president Mike Pence to current House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). Sara, a prominent Palestinian evangelical theologian, told me that their creed “is not the evangelical theology and its message of love for all humans, regardless of their backgrounds and ethnicity” in which he believes and practices .
Outside Gaza, delegation members described a growing climate of intimidation and hostility toward Palestinian Christians in the West Bank and Jerusalem, fueled by the actions of Jewish extremists emboldened by Israel’s far-right government. “We believe that extremist Jewish radicals want us to leave Jerusalem and that they are working there without any control,” Isaac said.
Members of the delegation condemned the actions of Hamas and deplored the killing of innocent civilians and the kidnapping of hostages. But they questioned Israel’s stated intention to wipe out an organization that is part of the Palestinian social fabric and seen as a standard-bearer of resistance to decades of Israeli occupation and military domination. “As horrible as October 7 was, things didn’t start there,” Isaac said. “And you can’t just start the story from there and, as such, give Israel the green light to do what it’s doing now, which goes way beyond that, that is, a campaign of revenge. »
Many leading foreign diplomats have stressed the underlying importance of reviving the long-stalled process and moribund process of the two-state solution. Most Palestinians are cynical of the plan, given the recklessness of their own political leaders and the West’s failure to stop Israel from further dividing the West Bank with settlements over the past two years. decades. Many Israeli politicians, including leading members of the current government, are also explicitly opposed to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
But any post-war solution will have to take into account the realities on the ground in Israel and the occupied territories. “One thing is clear: all my interlocutors in the Arab world have accepted the existence of Israel and want to engage in this matter,” wrote the top European diplomat Josep Borrell in a Financial Times editorial following a recent trip to the Middle East. “They recognize the immense opportunity presented by a peaceful neighborhood, cross-border cooperation and Israel’s potential role as a regional economic engine. But everyone agrees that Israeli-Arab cooperation depends on the resolution of the Palestinian question. »
In recent statements, President Biden also cited the need to forge a two-state solution as a priority for the region. But talking costs nothing. “America must prove to the Palestinians that they are serious about the two-state solution, because any American talk of a two-state solution seems meaningless, given the lack of action,” Isaac said. “No one held Israel responsible. »
In their letter to Biden, Palestinian clerics reiterated their call: “This land has been crying out for peace and justice for 75 years. It is time for justice to be served. It is time that everyone can live with dignity on this earth. Palestinian and Israeli children deserve to live, to hope and to dream.
When Isaac returns to Bethlehem at the end of the week for the start of the Advent season, he and his colleagues plan to set up a small nativity scene with stones and debris piled on top. “This is what Christmas means to us now: we see Jesus born among those who have lost everything, who are under the rubble,” Isaac said.
