ICC Note:

“By now, the threat facing Christianity in its birthplace is depressingly clear. Christians represented 30 percent of British Mandate Palestine in 1948, while today in Israel and the Palestinian Territories they’re 1.25 percent,” reports the National Catholic Reporter.

By John L Allen Jr

8/4/2011 Israel/Palestinian Territories (National Catholic Reporter) – By now, the threat facing Christianity in its birthplace is depressingly clear. Christians represented 30 percent of British Mandate Palestine in 1948, while today in Israel and the Palestinian Territories they’re 1.25 percent. The Catholic patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, warns that the Holy Land risks becoming a “spiritual Disneyland” — full of glittering rides and attractions, but empty of its indigenous Christian population.

That decline is part of a Christian exodus all across the Middle East, the reasons for which are well-known:

* Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which affects Arab Christians as much as Arab Muslims;
* Lack of economic opportunity;
* Rising Islamic fundamentalism;
* Christians in the area tend to be better-educated and more affluent, and thus stand a better chance of getting out. As one observer says, in the Middle East frustrated Christians emigrate physically, while frustrated Muslims emigrate ideologically.

…

Palestinian Christians insisted that the factors fueling their exodus — political discrimination, lack of employment, restrictions on freedom of movement — are fundamentally the result of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Access to holy sites is one difficulty. Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have different residency cards, and movement back and forth requires a permit that’s hard to obtain. Christians in Bethlehem often cannot cross the roughly six miles to Jerusalem to worship at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Residency policies also divide families. Reportedly, there are some 200 Christian families split between the West Bank and Jerusalem.

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Yet some Christians are ambivalent, wondering if the Arab Spring will deliver on those heady promises.

“I look at it with great hope, but also great worry and fear,” Makhlouf said. “The future is not clear. … What’s next? Is it the Muslim Brotherhood? More Islamic regimes?”

U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick said he recently returned from Gaza, where the elderly voiced worries. “They’re afraid of Hamas, and they’re afraid of the Arab Spring,” he said.

Conservative British Member of Parliament Tony Baldry said he recently visited Egypt, where he met Coptic and Catholic leaders who “are not optimistic.” Christians, he said, worry that “by next year, the Muslim Brotherhood will be in control of the military.”

There’s much to applaud in the Arab Spring, but it’s also naive, as Baldry put it, “to think that every change is necessarily for the better.”

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