Kairos Palestine is a group of Christian Palestinian who comment upon the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Its latest report Palestinian Christians – Ongoing forcible displacement and dispossession… until when? focuses on what it characterises as Israel’s attempt to rid the Holy Land of Palestinian Christians. A Christian group might be expected to reference the Bible and its principles. This one is no exception. There is a commentary on the Jewish Scriptures in which the Jewish state is likened to the weak and wicked King Ahab robbing the Palestinian Naboth of his vineyard. At the conclusion of the report we are exhorted to promote disapproval and isolation of Israel.
Given the damning Biblical comparison at the start and the very serious nature of the final recommendations, one would expect the authors to be very careful in setting out evidence, considering that there may be more than one perspective and endeavouring to do justice to the facts.
Yet this report raises troubling questions about the commitment of its authors to the peace and justice they claim to stand for. Focusing only upon perceived Israeli crimes, blind to hindrances to peace emanating from the Palestinian territories, one is reminded of Jesus’ story of the man trying to remove a speck from someone’s eye whilst ignoring the log in his own.
Underpinning the skewed perspective of the authors is the assumption that Palestinians are the ‘indigenous inhabitants’ of the Holy Land, while Jews are not. Is this really true? Palestinians are a rich mix of families who have lived there for generations and much more recent economic migrants and asylum seekers from different parts of the Ottoman Empire who trace their ancestry back to, say, Armenia, Syria, Iraq or Egypt. One Bethlehemite told of his grandmother who arrived in Bethlehem after a forced march out of Armenia in 1912 at the hands of the Turks. That many Palestinians are, like him, relatively recent arrivals in the Holy Land, is a truth that Kairos ignores.
Likewise Israeli Jews are made up of some families who form part of the 3000 year continuous history of Jews in the Holy Land, together with others who moved from ancient communities in the Near and Middle East and North Africa and still others from the wider diaspora of Europe, the Americas and Far East. Far from being the alien interlopers of the ‘Palestinian narrative’, Jews played a key part in shaping and defining the region, and it is sad that the Kairos authors cannot acknowledge this.
Jerusalem itself was divided only in 1948. Jews were forced from East Jerusalem as Jordan illegally occupied Jerusalem. The 1948 Armistice Line was precisely that – an Armistice line. No international borders have ever been agreed. Talk of Israel illegally occupying Jerusalem is highly misleading, though useful to those wanting to expunge Jews from Jerusalem’s history.
From this faulty premise the Kairos document proceeds to turn the truth upon its head. Take the central claim that Israel wants to drive out Palestinians. Actually exactly the opposite is true. The Palestinian population in Jerusalem has actually grown. Jewish leaders consistently accepted the two state solution, and Palestinians could have had their own state in 1937, 1948, 2000 and 2008. That they have not is due to Arab leaders who cling onto the hope that one day Israel will disappear and a Palestinian state will occupy the land ‘from the River to the Sea’. It is disappointing when justice is not done to this fact.
Instead, the Kairos report completely ignores the real obstacle to peace, which is Arab rejection of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and the ensuing terror repeated encouragement of Palestinians to believe that one day they will have a state extending ‘from the River to the Sea. We can all read about and watch the ways in which Palestinian schools and state-sponsored media incited children and adults to Jew-hatred and encourage martyrdom and murder in the name of the Palestinian cause. Christian leaders living in the Territories cannot be unaware of this, yet they do not condemn it. Why not? Do they really think that God is concerned only with Israeli wrongdoing?
Instead the Authors again turn the truth on its head, misrepresenting Israeli defensive actions to defend their citizens from state-encouraged terrorist as aggressive measures intended ‘humiliate’ and ethnically cleanse Palestinians.
Israel’s security barrier was a direct response to a sustained Palestinian terror campaign in which hundreds of Israeli civilians were murdered as terrorists travelled unhindered into Israel towns. Kairos dubs it a ‘Wall of Annexation’ and bewails the time taken by Palestinians to pass through it.
Noone denies that it takes time to get through checkpoints and, human nature being what it is, there will be instances of deplorable behaviour by checkpoint staff. However the existential threat to Israeli citizens from Palestinian Jihadists is real and the Barrier and checkpoints spectacularly successful in preventing terror attacks as the Jihadists themselves admit. And one must not forget that the checkpoints are often dangerous places to work. Within the past 2 weeks pipe bombs, grenades, knives and guns, all destined for use against Israel and her Jewish citizens have been intercepted at checkpoints.
Should not a sense of justice prompt the Kairos authors at least to acknowledge the existential threat to Israel and her citizens? When they do not, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that as far as they are concerned, Israeli lives count for nothing.
However, the most flagrant violations of truth and justice in the Kairos document occur as they omit the foundational causes of Palestinian Christian suffering. It has been left to courageous Palestinians such as the journalist Khaled Abu Toameh to raise a prophetic voice to Palestinian rulers. And gradually other Palestinian Christians are risking their lives to draw the world’s attention to injustices Palestinians inflict upon each other.
All Palestinians suffer from the precarious economic system. But is Israel solely responsible for these, as this report would have us believe? Billions of aid dollars have been poured into Palestinian coffers over the decades. So why is Palestinian infrastructure still so dilapidated? Why must thousands of Palestinians still use Israeli hospitals (often for no charge) rather than new ones that the aid was intended to build? Where are the jobs that would mean Palestinians don’t have to pass through checkpoints to get coveted work in Israel?
Of course the answers lie in personal bank accounts swollen with cash intended to benefit ordinary Palestinians, and bribes to the mafia families who dominate economic life in the Territories. In the money spent on arms and terror infrastructure rather than education and state infrastructure, in the chaos and corruption that dominates Palestinian government. Palestinians demonstrating on the streets of the West Bank last autumn knew this, and it is unjust and untruthful for the Kairos report to ignore it just because it can’t be blamed on Israel.
Kairos’ silence about the effect of radical Islam – the principal problem for the minority Christian community in the Palestinian Territories – once again turns the truth on its head. Contrary to what many Palestinian Christians-particularly prominent clergy- say, the Islamist slogan ‘First the Saturday people then the Sunday people’ has become a sinister reality for Palestinian Christians living in the West Bank and Gaza.
Kairos maintains anonymity for those who contribute the anecdotes in its piece, citing fear of possible Israeli reprisals. But some of the Palestinians who have told the stories which follow to Anglican Friends of Israel are already living under threat or have suffered violence from fellow Palestinians, sometimes from their own families, for telling the truth.
As long ago as 2005 the American State Department reported that Palestinian Christians have property and land confiscated without effective intervention by the authorities. Christians report that this continues, with Christian families being offered derisory amounts of money by Muslim neighbours for houses or land, accompanied by thinly veiled threats. Examples before them convince Christian ‘vendors’ that those threats are not idle.
Anglican Friends of Israel learned some years ago about huge sums of protection money demanded from Christian businesses by mafia- style gangs with connections to terror groups. One Palestinian Christian described how two members of the family were murdered because they resisted paying armed gangs monthly protection money.
Neither are Churches exempt from criticism. AFI has received reports of Palestinian Christians dissatisfied with their leaders who have allegedly connived with local mafia to have Christian land and property confiscated.
There are widespread reports of Christian women being sexually harassed by non-Christian neighbours, for example when using public transport to get to Schools and colleges. There are even examples of Christian girls being photographed in compromising positions, then blackmailed into marrying Muslim men rather than facing the wrath of their parents. Shockingly, religion makes little difference in parental attitudes towards the murder of daughters deemed to have besmirched family honour.
Expression of Bible-based Christian faith is increasingly suppressed. The burning down of Bible Society and YMCA buildings in the West Bank and Gaza has been widely reported, as have the murders of prominent Christians such as Pastor Rami Ayyad, murdered in Gaza in 2007.
These are the real reasons why many Christians are leaving the Palestinian Territories for other parts of the world. Indeed one could argue that Israel appears to be the only place offering meaningful protection to Arab Christians, as evidenced by recent reports that several hundred Palestinian Christians have sought asylum in Israel, the only Middle Eastern state where Christian numbers are rising. Yet most Palestinian Christian leaders persist in denying that their community experiences any threats from non-Christian neighbours.
Given the threatening climate for the Christian minority in the Palestinian Authority it is understandable that Christians should be hesitant to air their grievances. But it is inexcusable for Christian leaders to attribute blame for Palestinian problems solely to the existence of Israel, as this document does, when the truth is far more complex and nuanced.
Anglican Friends of Israel believes that the Kairos report is dangerously misleading.
It turns the truth on its head and misrepresents both sides in the dispute. Christians have allowed misrepresentations such as this a free pass for too long. It is time for us to challenge anti-Israel myths such as those which underpin this paper, and to expose the principal causes of Christian suffering in the Palestinian Territories. The problems in the Middle East cannot be solved unless they are faced up to honestly and reports like this are part of the problem rather than the solution.