NEWS____ Holy Land_________________________________
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A favored few
Dr. As-Sarraj placed a considerable burden of blame on Yasser Arafat. He explained:

He had a chance to create a democracy based on the rule of law, but he failed. We fear we will become a replica of all the other Arab countries—extensions of the tribal system. The president is the father, he divides and rules just as the British used to do.

Israeli contributions
The PNA, however, is not framing its policies in isolation. Israel, too, has undermined Palestinian aspirations for democracy. The offices of the Jenin-based Farah TV station, Al-Quds Educational TV, and the popular Voice of Palestine have all been shelled by Israeli artillery.

Less spectacular than a missile attack, but arguably more damaging, is Israel’s two-tiered legal system. Khaled Ameyreh, a Palestinian journalist based near Hebron, drew my attention to the case of Nahum Korman, a Jewish settler who was convicted for the murder of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy. His sentence was six months’ community service and a fine of 70,000 shekels ($17,500). In a distorted mirror-image, a 17 year-old Palestinian girl was convicted on the same day for attempting to stab a Jewish settler. She was sentenced to six-and-a-half-years’ imprisonment. “It’s two legal systems for two people,” said Ameyreh; “apartheid in its ugliest form.”

Under this unequal system, Palestinian petitions opposing the construction or expansion of Jewish settlements are usually rejected. Explaining its decision to permit expansion of Ma’ale Adumim, a Jewish settlement in occupied East Jerusalem, the Israeli High Court explained: “some good for the residents of neighboring (Palestinian villages) might spring from the economic and cultural development.” Since Jewish settlers generally do their utmost to remain separated from their impoverished Palestinian neighbors—not only in terms of culture but even in economic activities—the court’s logic is questionable.

But it is the infighting among their own people that most alarms responsible Palestinians. After the initial reinforcement of national unity that came with the latest outbreak of the intifada, the lack of concrete success began to exacerbate existing divisions among the Palestinian people. The PNA establishment is now threatened on several fronts. Its patronage of social inequality, dividing the “haves” (many of them members of the so-called “Oslo classes” with their flashy cars and plush villas) from the “have-nots” (the 53 percent of Palestinian people currently languishing below the poverty line) is a rich source of resentment in itself. It is intensified by the animosity of certain populous clans toward families that dominate the PNA hierarchy.

On October 8, Palestinian police shot dead three demonstrators marching in support of Osama bin Laden near the Islamic University in Gaza City. In the aftermath, four police posts were torched as angry protesters targeted the PNA: “We tell all those corrupt members of the Palestinian Authority,” the rioters declared, “your turn to be punished is approaching.” One of the dead was Haitham Abu Shamaleh, a 19-year-old member of a clan that is 7,000 strong. His family swore vengeance, and refused to accept the gestures of condolences offered by the PNA. “If the Authority fails to enforce the laws,” warned Fayez Abu Shamaleh, the family patriarch, “the clans will.”

The same demonstration was heavily influenced by the strongest internal opposition to Arafat’s rule, the militant Hamas party. The popularity of Hamas is derived less from its extreme tactics than from its effective social and welfare activities, which serve to underscore the ineptitude of the ruling faction. It is Hamas, for example, that runs the university that was at the heart of the Gaza demonstration.

Hamas is only one of many organizations that challenge the PNA’s authority. There are also the hardline Islamists of Islamic Jihad and the secular Marxists of PFLP—groups which disagree on many points, but share a determination not to accept any compromise with Israel. There is the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), which favors a dual-state formula. Both the PFLP and the DFLP endorse militant tactics, as do factions within Arafat’s own Fatah party. Other smaller or local organizations, such as Tanzim and the Al-Aqsa Brigades, carry out activities for which, in the blurred world of Palestinian politics, it is uncertain where the ultimate responsibility lies. If peace with Israel is to be achieved, Arafat (or his successor) will need to extract a consensus from these disparate and antagonistic forces. That may be as stiff a challenge as reaching agreement with the Israelis.

There are also geopolitical divisions. The Gaza Strip and the West Bank are divided by their unequal economies, distinct dialects, and cultural animosities forged by their pre-1967 experiences under separate regimes—Nasser’s Egypt and King Hussein’s Jordan, respectively. Gaza’s 1.2 million inhabitants (half of whom are under 12 years old) are crammed into what Dr. As-Sarraj described as “open-air prisons,” so that the region can accommodate the 6,000 Jewish settlers who control 42 percent of its land. The poverty-stricken streets of Gaza are full of horse-carts—cheaper to run than the cars that are more common in the West Bank. Heavy Jordanian investment in the West Bank helped to establish a better system of infrastructure there, and the economy is more advanced. Among the people of Gaza, accusations about the alleged snobbery of West Bank Palestinians are common. According to sociologist Khalil Shiqaqi, Gazan refugees from the Gaza Strip are treated in the West Bank as “third-class citizens.”

But at least the animosity between residents of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is ordinarily eased by an effective geographical buffer: hundreds of miles of the Negev desert. A more alarming form of discord is found in the growing number of accusations that certain Palestinian individuals or families are working in collaboration with the Israeli government. Such charges can divide villages and even families. Last November, Allan Bani Odeh was implicated in the Israeli killing of his cousin, Ibrahim Bani Odeh. The combination of family and national betrayal incited public outrage, which led to the execution of Allan Bani Odeh in front of an audience of 5,000. It was collaboration, too, that allegedly sparked the Hasin-Jouref feud mentioned above.

Solidarity or discord?
For the Christian community, also, the effects of factionalism have taken their toll—perhaps an inevitable development in a region so fraught with religious tensions. Christians have paid a heavy price in the intifada, particularly in enclaves like Bethlehem and Beit Jala. Their association with the “Christian West,” which is widely perceived as hostile to Palestinian aspirations, marks them out in the minds of some Islamists as a potential Fifth Column. When two Hamas activists were killed in Bethlehem in July, a rumor swept through the city that they had been betrayed by Christians. The current international crisis only adds to the opportunities available to those who are eager to foment religious divisions. One Palestinian priest, Father Majdi as-Syriani, referring to possible Muslim attacks in the wake of the US air strikes on Afghanistan, commented that “we do not have a strong rule of law here and there are ignorant people who could use it against us.”

The intifada was ignited by Islamic concerns, unleashed on the Haram ash-Sharif, or Temple Mount. That site is more sacred to Jews and Muslims than to Christians, since Christ’s prophecy that “not a single stone here will be left on another” was borne out by Titus in the year 70 AD. At its outset, the intifada assumed a religious dimension and was widely perceived as a war between Muslims and Jews. The reciprocal desecration of holy sites like Joseph’s Tomb (sacred to Jews) and mosques in Galilee; the quotations from the Qu’ran and Torah, ennciated by Jewish settlers and Muslim militants; the posters of Palestinian “martyrs” (a designation that causes discomfort among Christian theologians)—contributed to the perception of a religious conflict from which Christians were excluded.

But the Christians were involved. Christians lost their homes in towns like Beit Sahour, where 400 Christians were forced to flee in the first three months of the intifada. Christians regularly joined in demonstrations in towns where they made up a significant proportion of the populations, such as Ramallah and Bethlehem. Many Israelis and pro-Israeli groups like the International Christian Embassy (ICEJ) believe that the involvement of Christians was orchestrated by Muslims eager to attract the sympathy of the “Christian West.” Referring to the heavily besieged town of Beit Jala, David Parsons, spokesman for the ICEJ, insisted that “the local residents have been begging for” Israeli intervention. Palestinians are publicly skeptical of such views. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem insists that, “As Palestinians, Muslims and Christians have had very good relations for fifteen hundred years. The Israeli conflict did its best to make conflict between the Christians and Muslims, but it didn’t succeed.”

But the relationship between Christian and Muslim Palestinians may now be much more complicated. On a visit to Beit Jala in the summer, I asked some Christian residents whether they approved of Tanzim snipers using the rooftops of their neighborhood to target the Israeli settlement of Gilo. “It is stupid,” said ‘Tag,’ a young student, “because it brings suffering on the people here. Most of them aren’t even from Beit Jala. They’re Muslims; a lot of them refugees from outside.” But the militants are not all Muslims. Toine Van Teeffelen, a lecturer at Bethlehem University, tells the story:

A Christian Tanzim went to Beit Jala. Before he started shooting, he crossed himself. An inhabitant in a house nearby saw the crossing and, assuming that the Tanzim was a Muslim, thought that the man was mocking the Christians. She shouted at him from the window and, after the Tanzim told her that he was a Christian too, she shouted back: “Muslim or Christian, go immediately away from here!”

That Christian gunman was not an isolated example; there are other Christians among the Palestinian militants. The founder of the PFLP, George Habash, is a Christian. And the central line of division in Beit Jala is not so much a matter of Christians versus Muslims as it is local residents versus the militants who have come into the town to fight. Still the Christians in Beit Jala, as elsewhere in the Palestinian territories, are in an awkward dilemma. Robert McCarthy, of the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Fund, sums up their predicament: “They are pressured by the Israelis because they are Palestinians and they are pressured by the Muslims because they are Christians.”

One people, united
There are still many examples of Palestinian unity. At the recent Arab Summit in Doha, Arafat (who is married to a Christian) took a delegation of Christian as well as Muslim leaders, which included the Episcopalian bishop, a Greek Orthodox archimandrite, and the Catholic Father Majdi as-Syriani. And it is difficult to find anyone more vocally supportive of Christian-Muslim solidarity than Father Ra’ed Abusahlia, chancellor of the Latin Patriarchate, who tells us:

Yes, Christians are a small community in the Holy Land and in the Arab world, but we are not afraid, because we are not a separate or a strange body but an integral part of our countries’ geography, history, and people. We will never behave as strangers in our homeland. We learned centuries ago to be with others and we will not have any problem to deal with everybody.

These views are reinforced by Father Hanna Mansour, a pastor in Nablus, who insists: “We live in harmony with the Muslim community here. The current intifada has reflected Palestinian unity to the world. We live together under the Israeli tank fire, as human beings, as one people.”

Many Palestinian Christians, resentful of reports about divisions within their community, blame outsiders for attempting to orchestrate ‘divide and rule’ policies. Toine van Teeffelen points out, “It has been a traditional weapon of occupiers here and elsewhere to impose artificial political divisions on a conquered population.” This perception that outsiders have fomented division is strongly felt and frequently expressed. As the Palestinian Christians observe, tribalism is not necessarily a self-inflicted problem for a community.

However, the most decisive evidence of unity is not speech but action. An impressive recent show of inter-religious solidarity was by the Solidarity Convoy for Peace, organized in Bethlehem and attended by approximately 1,000 demonstrators. Commenting on the event, Father Ra’ed Abusahlia said:

The participation of all the Church leaders, including some Moslem sheikhs, was really great and very positive. I was very touched to see the sheikh sitting nearby the bishops at the altar inside the St. Catherine Church, and to hear him speaking from that same altar about the Muslim-Christian brotherhood and mutual respect, since we are the same people facing the same destiny of suffering and having the same aspiration for liberation.

The Israeli writer Israel Shamir, described the “wondrous sight” of “the Solidarity Convoy led by bishops and clergy of all denominations, Catholics, Orthodox, and Muslim, carrying crosses and banners,” who “broke the strangling ring of Israeli blockade.” Commenting on this show of unity between “Christians and Muslims alike,” he stated that “there is no dispute between these intertwined communities.”

As Shamir rightly noted, the Solidarity Convoy reinforced the ties not only between Palestinian Christians and Muslims, but also among Christians of different denominations. According to Father Drew Christiansen, a counsellor for international affairs at the US Catholic Conference who has considerable experience with the Palestinian Christians, “the political crisis has created an ecumenical Palestinian Christian identity and stimulated united public witness on the part of the churches of the Holy Land.” Christian leaders have united to sign joint statements such as the Memorandum on Jerusalem, which called for a separate statute for the Holy City, and more recently a statement about the Israeli incursions in the Bethlehem area. Typically, these statements are signed not only by the three Christian Patriarchs of the Holy Land—Latin Catholic, Greek, and Armenian Orthodox—but also by the Franciscan Custos and the leaders of the smaller Coptic, Ethiopian, Maronite, Armenian Catholic, Greek Catholic, Syrian Orthodox, Episcopalian, and Lutheran communities.

This catalogue of Christian bodies is indicative as much of the diversity as of the unity of these Christians. Although they are sporadically united by a common threat, they are equally liable to fragment over comparatively trivial issues such as the designation of an emergency exit in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre during the time of the Pope’s visit last year. (Despite two years of negotiations, they were unable to reach an agreement on that question!) There is also discord within individual denominations. The Greek Orthodox community, for example, has recently been struck by accusations of pedophilia and homosexuality in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (made public by a Christian academic in the Jerusalem Times), land sales to the Israeli government, and ethnic prejudice within the hierarchy.

The tribes divided
Such factionalism is not exclusively confined to the Palestinians. When I asked Dr. As-Sarraj if he believed that Israeli society contained tribal elements, he agreed. “They are tribal, in many ways,” he said, “they have a strong support network. But they have been modernized because most of them now come from the city.” Urbanization, however, does not preclude political polarization. Israelis are as divided over the peace process as they are over domestic issues such as the conflict between rabbinical influences and secularism. These differences in kind are complicated by multiple differences in degree. The left-wing forces in the Knesset, for example, are split between participation in the Sharon government (to which Shimon Peres is the most notable subscriber) and active opposition (a stance taken by, among others, former Labor ministers Shlomo Ben-Ami and Yossi Beilin).

Within and between the mainstream Israeli ideologies there lies a diversity of opinion that is reflected in the fact that nineteen different political parties are represented in the Knesset. Many of these parties attract allegiance according to ethnic backgrounds, forming quasi-tribal units. But even here the situation is complicated enough to defy easy characterization. Sephardic Jews from North Africa and the Middle East tend to support Sharon’s Likud or the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, but the Moroccans among them are represented by the Gesher party. Yisrael B’Aliya, founded by the former Russian dissident Natan Sharansky, has been strengthened in recent years by the influx of Russian immigrants, but so has Yisrael Beiteinu. And the Arab citizens of Israel have yet to establish a clear political identity; their parliamentary representation is divided among four small parties: the United Arab List, Balad, Hadash, and Ta-al.

This wide range of political parties is itself less remarkable than the multiplicity of ethnic backgrounds among Israeli Jews. One Jerusalem resident, of Yemeni origin, spoke to me in rapturous terms about the “miracle of modern Israel. The twelve tribes were dispersed thousands of years ago, and now they’re all flooding back.” Israel is diversified by Sephardim; Ashkenazim from Europe; Iraqi and Iranian Jews who trace their ancestry to the Babylonian captivity; Jews from Cochin who speak Malayam, are divided into three castes, and are forbidden from marrying or dining together outside their respective castes; the Musta’rabim, whose ancestors never left but lived among their Arab neighbors.

Like their neighbors, these groups sustain their own complicated internal divisions. Even among the Orthodox Jews, whose black and white suits imply uniformity of ideology as much as dress code, there are irreconcilable fault lines. Support for the anti-Zionist group, Neturei Karta, is focused in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim. Its members object to the establishment of a Jewish state and refuse to pay taxes, serve in the army, or speak Hebrew; its Rabbi Moshe Hirsh is Yasser Arafat’s Minister for Jewish Affairs. In contrast Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, founder and spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, opposes the existence a Palestinian state. In a sermon to mark the Passover feast last April, he condemned Arabs, insisting that, “It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them.”

The most complicated of all Israel’s “tribes” may be the 1 million Russian immigrants. For many of them, the motivation to emigrate to Israel was primarily the attractive prospect of leaving Russia rather than the opportunity to live in a Jewish society. In some cases, controversy has been aroused over the question of their Jewish identities. According to Daniel Rossing of the Melitz Interfaith Center, there are at least 25,000 Christian Russians who privately practice the faith of Saint Vladimir while in public they go through the rituals of Judaism.

“We had our suffering too”
The impetus for a renewal of peace negotiations, bolstered by world leaders ranging from Jordan’s King Abduallah to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush (who officially endorsed the concept of a Palestinian state in his UN speech in November) will not cause a magical unification of a fragmented people. Nor will aid packages do the trick—however necessary they will be to redress the Palestinian economy’s daily loss of approximately $11 million. The years of the Arab-Israeli conflict have often brought the worst out of both sides, expressed in brutal acts of vengeance, creating and magnifying animosities that will require more than money or diplomatic gestures to resolve.

Commenting on the psychological scars that the conflict has left, Dr. As-Sarraj told me that “people identify with the aggressor. People who have been imprisoned and tortured react with violence, and use the methods the Israelis used on them.” The Palestinian human-rights watchdog LAW suggested that the death of a prisoner in Nablus in February may have been caused by a particular form of torture known as Shabeh. That technique was learned by Palestinian executors from their own bitter experience under Israeli torture.

Now both Israelis and Palestinians are locked in a spiral of tribal revenge. “Every bloody message they send to us,” said Abu Baker Kassem, a militant from Rafah in the Gaza Strip, “we will send one back.”

Dr. As-Sarraj explained this concept:

If you kill me, my family or my tribe is obliged to kill you. If you die naturally, they will kill your son, or his son. This could go on forever unless you come in public and offer an apology. Then my family are obliged by honor to forgive you and accept a small ransom. Only then will you be able to walk safely.

Unless the implications of this attitude are addressed, the world leaders who are currently united in the demand for peace talks will find all their efforts swiftly neutralized. Revenge is an epidemic in the Holy Land. The assassination of Rehavam Ze’evi was a retaliation by the PFLP for the assassination of their West Bank leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, in August.

And while the principle of “an eye for an eye” remains the dominant rule of action, it is rarely the appropriate eye that is targeted. The pattern of cyclical vengeance has an unstoppable tendency to absorb the innocent. Thus 23-year-old Rania Kharoufa from Beit Jala, torn in half by tank shrapnel outside a shop in Beit Jala, was one of more than 50 Palestinians killed in Israel’s recent “revenge” incursion into the West Bank. Like most of the victims she was not a militant, and it is extremely unlikely that she was involved in Ze’evi’s murder. Like many of the victims, she was a Christian.

Of all the different groups affected by the conflict, the Christian Palestinians have perhaps been most severely taxed. According to Brother Vincent Malham FSC, vice-chancellor of Bethlehem University, which is sponsored by the Vatican and the Latin Patriarchate, “every building on the campus except the library has been hit by gunfire, with evidence of at least 45 tank shells and hundreds of bullets found in the aftermath.” Brother Vincent was also “concerned that attacks on Christian institutions such as Bethlehem University, Holy Family Hospital, the Childrens’ Creche, St. Catherine’s Nativity Church, and on other important sites such as Husseini Hospital, the Paradise Hotel, and the Hodali Building will also continue and wreak incalculable damage—physical and psychological—to the city of Christ’s birth.”

When I visited Beit Jala, I spoke to the parish priest at St. Michael’s Greek Orthodox Church. He was studying the external walls of his church for bullet holes. “If there are one or two bullets,” he said, “I don’t worry. I say it is an accident. But if there are more—maybe 15 or 16—then I leave you to make up your mind.” That number has now been exceeded.

During the latest Israeli incursion into Beit Jala, the Christian victims included Rania Kharoufa, the young mother of two children; Johnny Thaljieh, a 19-year-old who was shot by a sniper in Manger Square, on the doorstep of the Church of the Nativity; and Mousa George Abu Eid, also 19, who was hit by a bullet inside his own home. Many more Muslims were on the casualty list, including Rihab Nufal, a pregnant woman who had been stopped at a checkpoint; and Mohammed Baraq’a, a deaf father of five who was shot in a refugee camp for “ignoring” a vocal command. At the emotional funerals of these latest “martyrs,” the various political factions—PFLP, Fatah, Tanzim—were visibly present: waving banners, distributing fliers, and brandishing handguns as they jockeyed for political advantage.

Perhaps, in spite of all the squabbling, the infighting, and the feuds, the recent events in Bethlehem—both the violence of the Israeli incursion and the peaceful witness of the Solidarity Convoy—finally sealed the unity that Israel Shamir and others found so noteworthy. A Lutheran living in Bethlehem described the atmosphere after the incursions: “The people of Bethlehem are going from funeral to funeral; the sounds of the calls to prayer from the mosques and the sad bells of mourning ringing from the churches fill the air.”

When I spoke to the Latin Patriarch several months ago, the Christian community had suffered plenty of material losses—houses and churches, particularly in Beit Jala and Bethlehem, had been devastated—but there had been few human casualties. Patriarch Michel Sabbah told me:

Whatever happens, we are winning. The Israelis bomb Beit Jala, and then, when the Muslims say, ‘What did you do for independence?’ we can say, ‘Look, we did this. We had our suffering too.’ I wish they bombed the churches instead of the houses. But we have lost no lives, so we will win.”

This is no longer the case. Christians have been killed, and their rate of emigration will doubtless be accelerated. They will certainly be able to face their Muslim compatriots now, and declare, “We had our suffering too.” In a world marked by tribalism, where loyalty is often measured in blood, the Palestinian Christians have played their part, and few Muslims will dispute their participation in the national cause. Whether there will be enough Christians still living in the Holy Land to assert their rightful status within a Palestinian state, however, is much less certain.