To my knowledge, not even the anniversary of the Nakba is recognized as popularly throughout the West Bank, Gaza and Israel as Land Day. The Nakba happened in 1948. Land Day is used to address the ongoing arbitrary confiscations of Palestinian property since that time, whether in Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza.

For Land Day, demonstrations are organized in cities, towns, villages, and refugee camps throughout all of historic Palestine. They are especially pertinent in areas where new confiscations are taking place. This year, the focus is on Jaffa, where 500 families have been issued eviction notices before the neighborhood is razed to make way for Jewish development. (Notice the grounds for eviction: that the residents “invaded the properties.” Many Jaffa residents are internally displaced persons who have been deprived once of their property, and were forced to take up residence in the homes of Palestinians who fled before them.)

Check out this interview with Father Shehadeh Shehadeh, an organizer of the original Land Day protest in 1976.

Unrelated to Land Day, I would also like to bring your attention to this article on the assassination of the four men in Bethlehem a few weeks ago. I am sorry that I did not take a picture of their martyr poster when I had the chance. It shows the four, who are from different political factions, all standing together with weapons raised. I find it ironic, considering the way that they died: unarmed, sitting in a car waiting for their food order. As if the poster, like so many others, is an attempt to bestow some meaning on their deaths, which are no more than cold-blooded murders for which no investigation will ever take place and no justice will ever be served.

They did not even have the chance to move. Their bullet-ridden bodies were still sitting upright when passersby pulled them from the car.

It was the moral equivalent of a team of Palestinians, disguised as Israelis, driving an Israeli car into Tel Aviv and gunning down four off-duty Israeli soldiers.

In keeping with tradition, Easter has yet again been cancelled in Palestine. Jesus of Nazareth somehow secured a permit to enter Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, provided he enter on a donkey.

Jesus applied in June of 2007 for a permit to enter Jerusalem on Palm Sunday 2008. The past two years of cancellations had made him determined to be prepared this year. Due to his inability to provide proof of his Jewish heritage, he was thus banned from entering Jerusalem for the past two years. And so it seemed as though this year would be different; Good Friday processions and the Sunday resurrection occurred as planned.

However, hours after the resurrection at dawn on Sunday, Jesus was fatally shot as he walked with his disciples toward a military checkpoint dividing Bethlehem from Jerusalem.

Chaim Sugarman reports from the ground that a new military order authorizing IDF troops to use lethal force against unarmed protesters was announced last week.

The IDF is prevented from using lethal force against groups of protesters that include Israelis and internationals. Unfortunately, as Jesus had been down in Hell since Friday, he was unaware of the new requirement to have a non-indigenous escort when approaching the Apartheid Wall if you want to stay alive.

Sugarman further reported that at a post resurrection/shooting Easter brunch to which he was privy, the disciples mentioned a plan in the works to move the Easter celebration altogether out of Palestine. “There are hardly any Christians left in Palestine. The only Christians able to celebrate in Jerusalem are from the US and Europe now- why keep making them come here?”

The disciples were referring to the mass exodus of Christians from Palestine. According to Dr. Bernard Sabella of Bethlehem University, 37% of Christian Palestinians fled in 1948 with the original refugees, and 20% of the remaining population emigrated between 1967-1994. Now, due to the hardship imposed by the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and especially the imposition of the Wall around Bethlehem, many more left between 2000 and 2004.

For more on Christians in Palestine.

For equally serious, more personal sidenotes from the past holy week:

• Unlike the children’s processions on Palm Sunday in many Palestinian areas in northern Israel, Bethlehem on that day was quiet but for the funeral tent in Manger Square of the four who were assassinated days before.
• The Bethlehem terminal through the wall to Jerusalem (and certainly not only this one) should have international observers. When I entered Bethlehem with family members on Palm Sunday, a female soldier was shouting over a loudspeaker in Hebrew, interspersed with seconds of blaring Nancy Ajram music. When we left, a male soldier was shouting at us in Hebrew, and three young women dressed up for church were standing and waiting for passage to pray in Jerusalem while a soldier, who had taken their purses, sat at a glass-enclosed desk ignoring them for over an hour.
• Judging from our company in the terminal to Bethlehem, the main purpose is to allow Palestinian workers through within working hours, and to return to their lives under military occupation at night. This provides Israel with very cheap labor, while Israeli citizens never have to see their living conditions. The same goes for nearly the entirety of the Wall in the north of the West Bank- passage is closed to all except for laborers, and there are many.
• The Bethlehem terminal through the wall has the distinct feel of a place you would hold cattle, complete with metal grate corridors and walkways above.

While I personally have experienced instances of ignorant comments made by Palestinian Christians about Palestinian Muslims and vice versa, my personal observation is that for the most part, feelings of enmity between the communities are dwarfed by the shared hardships faced under occupation. I highly recommend visiting Bethlehem if you are able (if you aren’t Arab, and Israel will let you in, first off), to experience the place and draw your own conclusions.

The land of Palestine is inhabited by a majority of Moslems who, like the Christians and the Jews, venerate many of the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament, and who also feel a special relationship with Bethlehem as the birthplace of the Prophet Jesus (or ‘Isa in Arabic). Of all the Christian saints, Moslems venerate especially Mary, the mother of Jesus, to whom a full sura (chapter 19) in the Koran is dedicated. Moreover, since the beginnings of Islam, Bethlehem was included in the Moslem pilgrimage route that followed the road from Jerusalem, with its Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, to Hebron, with the tombs of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their wives Sarah, Rebecca and Leah.

The Moslem-Christian living together in Palestine indeed goes back to the beginnings of Islam. Even though there have been periods of proselytizing and, at tragic moments of history, cases of oppression and discrimination, the general picture is one of a Moslem-Christian living together in daily peace, respect and cooperation. It is common to hear Palestinians saying that it does not matter whether one is Moslem or Christian; both believe in the same God, speak the same language and share the same Arabic culture.

Most Americans placed Bethlehem in Israel, when it is actually under occupation in the West Bank, and cut off from Jerusalem by the Wall.

Bethlehem, a town that has probably the oldest Christian presence in the world, is at risk of losing its Christian heritage as members of the community increasingly leave due to hardships posed by occupation and the construction of the Apartheid Wall.

The two surveys show that American perceptions of the town are wildly at odds with the perceptions of those who live there.

While the Christians of Bethlehem overwhelmingly (78%) blame the exodus of Christians from the town on Israel’s blockade, Americans are more likely (45.9%) to blame it on Islamic politics and are reluctant (7.4%) to blame Israel.

And while four out of ten Americans believe that the wall exists for Israel’s security, more than nine out of ten Bethlehemites believe it is part of a plan by Israel to confiscate Palestinian land.

The Zogby survey shows strong support for the town in the US, where 65.5% of the population want the UN to list it as a world heritage site. Americans are also strongly in favour (80.6%) of Bethlehem retaining a strong Christian presence.

Americans are also ambivalent about the Israeli wall, with 31.5% in favour of it, with another 31.6% opposed.

But more than two-thirds of Americans believe Bethlehem is unsafe to visit, while 80% of Bethlehemites consider their town safe for visitors.

While the US survey showed that Americans are sceptical about Muslims and Christians living contentedly alongside each other – only 17% thought they lived together in peaceful coexistence – the Palestinian survey showed they do: around 90% of Christians said they had Muslim friends, and vice-versa.

The Israeli government could well be shaken by the discovery that Americans’ tolerance of the wall would be strained by the discovery that it separates communities and families, cuts Bethlehem off from Jerusalem, and requires the seizure of privately-owned land.

US Christians, meanwhile, are likely to be shocked by the discovery that seven out of ten Christians in Bethlehem believe Israel treats the town’s Christian heritage with brutality or indifference.

The Bethlehem poll, which was carried out by the Palestinian Centre for research and Cultural Dialogue, shows on the other hand that more than two-thirds (73.3%) of Bethlehem’s Christians believe that the Palestinian Authority treats Christian heritage with respect. That result will surprise some who believe that the election of Hamas has strained Christian-Muslim relations in the town.

Leila Sansour, Open Bethlehem’s Chief Executive, says:

“Our US poll shows overwhelming support for Bethlehem’s Christian heritage, yet our survey of Bethlehem’s own citizens shows the city cannot retain this heritage and its Christian community while the wall remains.

“The choice is stark. Either the wall stays and Bethlehem ceases to be a Christian town. Or Bethlehem retains its Christian population – in which case the wall has to come down. The international community needs to wake up to what is happening and choose.”

For the full results of the survey, click here.

Come to think of it, hey May… there could be a whole other aspect of the marriage prospect issue in this. Actually there is, not just could be. When I meet Christian young people in the West Bank, it’s not unusual for them to be like ooo do you have a brother? Or, do you want to meet my brother? I’ve been told that for Christian Palestinian women in the West Bank, they by far end up marrying someone with an education level that is far less than theirs, because the educated guys all left. The leftovers had to drop out of school and work. The point is that finding a mate is kind of an obsessive topic for Christian young people as their choices become increasingly constricted with the outmigration.

To everybody celebrating Christmas today, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas from the Holy Land. As people celebrate the birth of Jesus and Bethlehem is mentioned in countless Nativity plays and sermons all over the world, too few will realize the suffering endured by this holiest of cities. Surrounded by the illegal Israeli settlements of Har Homa and Gilo, Bethlehem today lies captive to the abusive policies of the Israeli occupation. The main road linking Bethlehem to Jerusalem has been closed off to Palestinians (Christians and Muslims) for several years now, reserved exclusively for the use of Israelis. The settlements and the Apartheid wall have taken up large tracts of Bethlehem’s land. Beit Jala, a suburb of Bethlehem, had 22% of its land confiscated by Israel in 1967, and a further 45% will be lost for the construction of the wall. For Palestinians in the northern West Bank, it is almost impossible to reach Bethlehem, courtesy of another one of the occupation’s military rules that restricts the entry of civilians from the northern West Bank to its southern branch.

Recently, Western diplomats such as Tony Blair have promoted Bethlehem as a safe and secure city for foreign tourists, and there has been a noticeable increase in the number of tourists visiting for Christmas this year. The problem with all this is that the root cause of Bethlehem’s suffering is ignored. There is no mention of the occupation that has almost closed off Bethlehem to those living near it, nor of the wall and settlements that continue stealing the town’s land, water and resources. Just last week the Israeli government announced plans to construct a further 750 housing units in Har Homa. Needless to say, this will come at Bethlehem’s expense.

There is a sad trend amongst many evangelical Christians, particularly in the United States, to see Israel’s occupation as a necessary chapter in the lead up to the Second Coming. They forcefully refuse to recognize the rights of native Palestinians-including Palestinian Christians who suffer no less than their Muslim compatriots. In calls contrary to the fundamental humanism of Christianity, they use their considerable political clout to demand that no pressure be placed on Israel to end its illegal occupation and Apartheid policies, while supporting the further colonization of what remains of the West Bank. I find it perplexing that people who see themselves as the saviors of Christianity will today celebrate the birth of Jesus while contributing to the terrible suffering of the town where Christ was born.

This Christmas, I know a lot of Palestinian Christians will be wishing that their Christian brethren around the world will realize what they are going through, just like Palestinian Muslims wish their Muslim brethren would wake up to the reality of their suffering, and the suffering of two of the most important towns for Christians and Muslims alike-Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

Eid Mubarak & Merry Christmas