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What will be the effects of displacing the Christian populations from towns like Bethlehem?

At present the "displacement" is happening rather slowly. As I wrote in my recent Newsweek piece, only about 1,500 of some 30,000 Christians in the Bethlehem area have left since the start of the al-Aqsa intifada, or about 5 percent. That's a significant number, but it doesn't yet seem to threaten the viability of the Christian community.

Still, if the erosion continues, it will raise questions about the fate of holy sites such as the Church of the Nativity and the St. Nikolas Grotto, and it would be a tremendous blow to the diversity of the Holy Land, which remains the vibrant hub of three of the world's great religions.

Population numbers in the Middle East are politically charged—whether it is Egypt or Lebanon or Israel/Palestine. As you have written about the declining numbers of Christians in Israel/Palestine, how do you get reliable numbers? What is the latest best estimate for the Christian population in the Occupied Territories?

The Christian Mayor of Bethlehem, Hannah Nasser, keeps pretty good tabs on the size of the Christian population in his area and in the Territories. There hasn't been a reliable census since, I believe, the mid-1990s, so one has to rely on the best estimates of church and political leaders in Palestine. Most agreed that we're talking about 50,000 to 60,000 Christians in the West Bank and perhaps a couple of thousand in Gaza.

Palestinian Christians stress how well Muslims and Christians have gotten along in Palestine for many centuries—in contrast to places like Lebanon and Egypt. If a Palestinian state does come into being, with Shari'ah law as part of the legal structure, can we expect that relative harmony to be maintained?

I very much doubt that Shari'ah law will be adopted by any Palestinian government. The vast majority of Palestinians are secular Muslims—as is the ruling Fatah party—and while fundamentalist Islam is gaining ground, I don't think its proponents will ever wield significant power in a future Palestinian state.

The real question is whether a Muslim-dominated secular government can be trusted to safeguard Christian rights. Based on their experience with the Palestinian Authority, many Christians appear worried.

When I read your description of the Abayat family, it felt like watching "The Sopranos"—all family values and gratuitous violence. Would you place this clan closer to an organized crime family or to a group of patriotic freedom fighters?

Mixed bag. Some of them were no doubt motivated to pick up guns out of anger at the Israeli occupation and out of stirrings of nationalist feeling. But it strikes me that most of them were opportunists and hoodlums who, because of rapidly changing political realities, suddenly found themselves empowered.

They went wild, not out of any sense of patriotism but because they were being paid or because law and order had broken down or because shooting Israelis and strutting around town with bandoliers of bullets made them heroic in many people's eyes.

Much of the Tanzim and Ta'amra violence depicted in your book seems not to be part of any well-planned strategy. Are their efforts as random and desultory as they seem from your account?

I never got the sense of any organized strategy from these guys, except to continuously demonstrate their violent opposition to the occupation by shooting at Israeli settlers and at army camps. There were occasionally well-planned crimes, such as the murder of the Israeli intelligence officer whose death I detail in the book. For the most part, however, the violence seemed opportunistic, sporadic, and not the product of any well thought out campaign.

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December 2003, Vol. 47, No. 12