The centuries-old Christian presence in the West Bank is under threat

I grew up little than a mile from Shepherds’ Field successful Beit Sahour successful the occupied West Bank – the hillside where, according to the Gospel of Luke, the quality of Jesus’s commencement was archetypal proclaimed. For my family, these were not distant biblical landscapes. They were the backdrop of our regular lives: The olive groves we played in, the terraces we tended, the onshore wherever our religion and individuality were rooted.

Today, for the archetypal clip successful my life, I felt fearfulness that the assemblage that raised maine whitethorn not survive.

In caller weeks, a caller amerciable Israeli colony outpost has been established connected the borderline of Beit Sahour. Caravans and operation instrumentality person appeared connected a tract the municipality had hoped to usage for a children’s hospital, taste centre, and nationalist spaces – projects supported by planetary donors and meant to fortify a Christian assemblage that has endured for centuries. Instead, those plans are present suspended, and the families who unrecorded adjacent are bracing for uncertainty, rising tension, and the existent anticipation of further displacement.

Others person documented the ineligible and governmental ramifications of these settlements. My interest is much idiosyncratic and much urgent: What is happening contiguous threatens the precise continuity of Christian beingness successful the Bethlehem country – not abstractly, but concretely.

Beit Sahour is 1 of the past majority-Christian towns successful the West Bank. Our families are Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical. We worship together, wed crossed traditions, and stock a practice that traces backmost to the earliest centuries of the Christian story. But similar galore Palestinian communities, we are moving retired of onshore – and with it, retired of time.

Due to decades of confiscation, the separation wall, and colony expansion, lone a tiny fraction of our municipality remains accessible for Palestinian construction. Youth who privation to physique homes often cannot. Parents interest astir their children’s future. Families who privation to enactment rooted successful their ancestral onshore look barriers that marque leaving look similar the lone viable path.

That is however communities disappear. Not due to the fact that they halt believing, but due to the fact that the conditions required for them to flourish are steadily stripped distant by the Israeli subject concern of their land.

For galore Christians astir the satellite – particularly successful the United States – this concern creates existent confusion. I perceive it often: “We enactment Israel due to the fact that we attraction astir the Jewish people. We don’t privation to spot them harmed, displaced, oregon endangered ever again. So what bash we bash erstwhile Palestinian Christians accidental they are suffering too?”

This is simply a sincere question, shaped by conscience and by history. And yet it reveals a achy misunderstanding – the thought that supporting Jewish information requires tolerating the dispossession of others, oregon that acknowledging Palestinian suffering threatens the information of Jews.

It does not. It ne'er has.

The aspiration for Jewish information is morganatic and profoundly important – particularly aft centuries of anti-Semitism, culminating successful the horrors of the Holocaust. No idiosyncratic of religion should ever beryllium indifferent to the vulnerability of Jewish communities.

But affirming Jewish information does not necessitate soundlessness erstwhile Palestinian Christian and Muslim families suffer their land, look escalating violence, oregon spot their aboriginal shrinking. Safety for 1 radical cannot beryllium built connected the insecurity of another. There is nary motivation model – Christian, Jewish, oregon secular – that asks america to take betwixt the dignity of 1 kid and the dignity of another.

If anything, the profoundly biblical information is that justness is indivisible. When we diminish 1 community’s rights to support another, some are yet harmed.

And yet, excessively often, galore churches successful the West stay soundless erstwhile Palestinian Christians rise their voices. Every December, American congregations sing astir Bethlehem without acknowledging that galore families successful the Bethlehem country are struggling to enactment connected their land. Pilgrims sojourn Shepherds’ Field without asking what is happening to the radical who person cared for it crossed generations.

This soundlessness is not intentional malice. In galore cases, it stems from fearfulness of appearing partisan, oregon from the mistaken content that speaking astir Palestinian suffering undermines enactment for Jewish safety.

But soundlessness has consequences. It sends an unspoken connection that immoderate lives substance less. It weakens the motivation credibility of the Church. And it leaves communities similar excavation – Christian families who person lived successful Bethlehem’s hills much than 2,000 years – feeling abandoned by the precise planetary assemblage they beryllium to.

What is happening successful Beit Sahour is not simply a governmental conflict. It is simply a question of quality dignity and the aboriginal of a Christian witnesser successful the spot wherever the Christian communicative began. If the Christian assemblage successful Bethlehem’s territory disappears, the nonaccomplishment volition not lone beryllium Palestinian. It volition beryllium a nonaccomplishment for the planetary Church and for anyone who cares astir the continuity of the gospel’s birthplace.

I grew up little than a mile from these fields. I cognize what is astatine stake. And I judge that American Christians tin clasp 2 truths astatine the aforesaid time: That the Jewish radical merit safety, and that Palestinian Christian communities merit to unrecorded connected their onshore without fear.

This is not a prime betwixt peoples. It is simply a prime betwixt justness and indifference.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.