Nakba Day, May 15
by Vicki Johnson
In Arabic "al-nakba" means "the catastrophe". Nakba Day is observed
throughout the world on May 15 to remember the catastrophic crimes
committed against Palestinian Muslims and Palestinian Christians
during 1947-1949. Three-fourths of the Palestinian population was
ethnically cleansed by Zionists following the founding of Israel. Over
700,000 Palestinians became refugees by 1949, leaving only 150,000
Palestinians in their indigenous land. More than 500 Palestinian
villages were depopulated and completely destroyed. Massacres and
rapes were committed by the Zionists.
Today, Palestinians are the world's largest refugee group. Millions
of Palestinian refugees are scattered throughout the world, living in
refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and the Gaza
Strip.
About 10% (60,000) of the Palestinian refugees in 1948 were
Palestinian Christians. For centuries Palestinian Christians --
Anglican, Maronite Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Armenians,
Baptists, Copts and Assyrians -- lived cooperatively with Muslims,
Jews and Druze. The Nakba and subsequent Israel policies have
destroyed nearly all of the Palestinian Christian legacy. Before
1948 there were Palestinian Christian majorities in Bethlehem, Beit
Jala, Ramallah and Nazareth. The bigger concentration of Christians
were not in the West Bank or Gaza, but in Galilee, the coast (Haifa
and Jaffa) and Jerusalem. Most of the Palestinian Christians were
concentrated in areas that Israel cleansed from its Palestinian native
population.
In 1948 the Christian population was 80% of Bethlehem and 50% of
Jerusalem; today Palestinian Christians now comprise just 2% of
Jerusalem and 20% of Bethlehem. The huge decline in Palestinian
Christians since 1948 results from Israel policies. Bethlehem lies
inside the West Bank of Palestine, not Israel. Yet Israel has built a
25 foot high concrete wall encircling the Palestinian Christian
triangle of Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour (Shepherd’s Field),
cutting the Bethlehem community off from its spiritual lifeline to
Jerusalem. Bethlehem is
surrounded by 27 illegal settlements housing 73,000 Jews. The
settlements are connected by Jewish-only bypass roads. The Church of
the Nativity is now pockmarked with Israeli bullet holes.
Well-known Palestinian Christians who have written about their faith,
Palestinian suffering and exile, and their personal experiences during
the Nakba include Naim Ateek, Mitri Raheb and Elias Chacour, and the
late Edward Said, who held Columbia University's most prestigious
academic position.
Over the centuries Palestinian Christians have thought profoundly
about Christian theology. Mitri Raheb explains that contact between
the Middle Eastern churches and the Roman Catholic Church in the West
did not take place until the middle ages. Unlike in Europe, there
never existed in Palestine a monopolistic church claiming the sole
path to salvation. Christianity in Palestine from the beginning was
pluralistic and for 1400 years Palestinian Christians co-existed with
Islam and shared Arab culture. Many lessons can be learned from
Palestinian Christians about multicultural and multireligious society.
American and Israeli Zionists cite the Old Testament as a
justification for Israeli government policies of ethnic cleansing and
apartheid. Naim Ateek has explained how the Bible that is supposed to
bring justice and mercy is used as a weapon to oppress the
Palestinians. The greatest obstacle to peace today, he feels, are the
illegal Jewish settlements that were inspired in large part by Jewish
religious extremism. Interpreting Ephesians, Ateek says that
Palestinians wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against
principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of
this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Mitri Raheb
writes that Palestinians unjustly bear the sins of Europe -
Palestinians became the victims of the victims of the Holocaust.
The famous Palestinian (Muslim) poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote:
To a Jewish killer: If you had contemplated the victim’s face
And thought it through, you would have remembered your mother in the
Gas chamber, you would have been freed from the reason for the rifle
And you would have changed your mind: this is not the way
to find one’s identity again.
Nakba, the castrophe. But even in the face of grave hardships,
Palestinian culture survives and struggles for justice and human
rights. Naim Ateek has said "many of us feel that the ideal
resolution of the conflict lies not in the formation of two national
and sovereign states where nationalism could become negatively
competitive, but in one state that combines the two nationalities in
one system of equal democracy." Mitri Raheb asks that American money
not be spent to subsidize the Israeli occupation, but to create a just
peace in the region.