Related articles and links |  1 of 5

Weiner is scholar-in-residence at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and recently published Human Rights of Christians in Palestinian Society.

How has the situation for Christians in Palestinian society changed since the Oslo Accords in 1993?

Before the Oslo accords, which were intended to empower Palestinians to govern themselves, Israel was in control on a day-by-day basis in the West Bank and Gaza. People could walk the streets. The presence of soldiers and local police was sufficient that people felt secure in their houses, churches, and businesses. Sure, there was a background of knowing your place and knowing where to back off, but people lived normal lives. They worked. They taught. They studied. They conducted their family affairs.

Anarchy has taken over since 1994, when the Palestinian Authority moved in. Everyone suffers in anarchy, but the weak and those who can be targeted at little or no price suffer the worst. A lot of the attacks on Christians are not ideological. They're not intended for someone who's handing out Bibles or trying to live a Christian life or speaking to people about Jesus. People see the Christians as weak, as not having connections in the entourage first of Yasser Arafat and now of Abu Mazen, as not having the economic power they once had. If they're weak and anything goes, why not burn their cars, steal their land, harass the women? You can get away with it with the Christians.

If Abu Mazen has to pick between Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which together represent perhaps 30 percent of the Palestinian voters, or the maybe 1.5 percent of Christians, he doesn't have to hate Christians to make a choice in favor of Hamas. Hamas could someday challenge him. It is challenging him in Gaza right now.

Some argue that the territories are such a disaster that anything could happen to anybody—that the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad are all equal-opportunity human-rights violators. I don't think that's correct. I think it happens much more to Christians than to Muslims. And I think it happens most of all to Muslims who find Jesus and take upon themselves the death sentence of being an apostate. They're more in danger than anyone else.

The Palestinian Christians don't see any future there. If they're not sitting on their suitcases, they're already living in Berlin or Chile or Belize or Toronto or Detroit. A lot of these cities have more Arab Christians than the cities that they came from, like Bethlehem, Ramallah, Taibe, and others.

Why has this problem not attracted more attention?

I can think of two reasons. One is it doesn't suit the interests of the Palestinian Authority. The obvious question is, Why are they torturing people and tolerating executions?And why are the Christians leaving by the thousands every year—about 10,000 some years? [The P.A.] would like to continue to put forward the image that they are protecting Palestinian Christians, but during periods when they've controlled Bethlehem, Ramallah, and elsewhere, the Christians have left in unprecedented numbers. To the Christians leaders, many of whom haven't been terribly loyal to their flocks, there's a similar reason why this is not discussed. Intimidation is part of it. People who live in chaos, who never know who's going to be behind the next knock on the door, tend to hunker down. The Christian leaders would be putting themselves in danger if the wider world knew how few of them there were left.

Have they reached a point, though, where this tradeoff is no longer beneficial?

next page... |  1 of 5

January (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50