George Habash, a Palestinian Christian Jihadist

By: Helmi Junaidi

The texts are there. I invented nothing. The Jewish State of Israel is considered legally racist by the United Nations. (Alain Menargues, vice-director of Radio France International)

George Habash was born on August 2, 1926 in Lydda, Palestine. He was from a wealthy Christian family. They live among Muslims Palestinian who were very tolerant and inclusive, all people from different religions can live peacefully for centuries. The condition was changed completely after the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli war in 1948. Habash family was expelled by the racist Zionist army, who didn’t want Arab nation, both Muslims and Christians lived in Palestine. Almost all Palestinian Christians expelled by the Zionists Jews from their homeland. This insular attitude of the Jews, who were always anti-pluralism, arouse resistance from Habash.

After seeing the suffering of his people, both Muslim and Christian, Habash formed an armed resistance that aimed to fight the racist Zionists and freed Palestine, to restore peace and tolerance once again just as before 1948.

Habash was a doctor. When he studied in Beirut he met Wadi Haddad who is also a Christian. They then set up ANM (Arab Nationalist Movement) in 1951. After the end of the 1967 war, many Arabs disappointed with the leadership of Nasser. Habash also felt the need for reform. He disband ANM and formed the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). In its heyday, the PFLP was the second-largest PLO faction after al-Fatah led by Arafat.

He was strongly against the Zionists and any peace efforts. Throughout his life he opposed Yasser Arafat that he considered more moderate. Becauce of his radical stance against the Zionists, even his Muslim comrades often criticize Habash. Together with his loyal friend Wadi Haddad, he spearheaded an armed struggle against the racist Zionists and it sponsors, especially the US, which at the time was also a racist country, oppressing black people in the country, which to the extent killed Martin Luther King Jr., a black rights activist.

Until the 1960s, the situation in the US was not much different from South Africa, especially in Southern states. There was no pluralism there. Blacks prohibited attending white schools and everything was segregated, including public bus, restaurants, university cafeteria, airport etc. Even worshipping God in segregrated church, something impossible to happen in the Islamic world. Racist country in its truest meaning, just like in South Africa under Pieter Botha. You may read that in biography of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

Until 1990s, after the cold war, hundreds of black church burned down in the United States. Investigations to capture the arsonists always ended in failure because many law enforcement and government official sympathizing with the culprits. Even organizations such as The Institute on Religion and Democracy, a conservative watchdog group based in Washington, DC. openly supported black church burning.

From the PFLP emerged a splinter group DFLP, a more militant faction led by Nayef Hawatmeh. Hawatmeh is also a Palestinian Christian. However, Habash PFLP was more popular because its more persistent struggle against the Zionist. During Habash leadership PFLP was known as one of most dangerous Palestinian armed resistance because their very militant stance against the Zionists. In their struggle PFLP also often formed a coalition with armed fighters from Latin America, such as the Sandinistas.

Since the 1980s, Habash health began to deteriorate, and his influence at PLFP began to wane. In the 1990s PFLP also began to lose influence to Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In 2000 Habash position as Secretary General was eventually replaced by Abu Ali Mustafa. Although PFLP influence now dratically reduced, Habash remains popular among many Palestinians who appreciate his revolutionary ideology, his strong principle, and his lifestyle that reflects the attitude of the intelligentsia. In Palestinian elections in 2000 PFLP still managed to grab 4.2% vote. The Iranian government also support PFLP, an organization that founded and led by Palestinian Christians.

However, for his arch-enemy Israel and America, Habash certainly very unpopular. Foth both countries he was one of the most lethal terrorists of the 20th century. A title currently given to various Islamic organizations. And do you know what is one of the main goals of those Islamic organizations? Not different from Habash, to liberate the land of Palestine from racists Zionist and their sponsors, to restore Palestine to the age of tolerance and peace as it was before the founding of the Zionist state of Israel, where Muslims and Christians and Jews in Palestine co-existed in peace and harmony for centuries. And we know that the founding of Israel have destroyed the atmosphere of peace and tolerance in Palestine. The turmoil in the Middle East is still going on until now.

Habash and all his Christian countrymen in Palestine were very supportive of Muslims struggle againts Zionist. Edward Said, PLO spokeswoman Hanan Asrawi and Suha Tawil Arafat's wife, all of them are Christians. Arafat's wife is a Christian, something very impossible to happen in Israel. Is it possible for an Israeli Prime Minister to have a Palestinian Christian wife? Impossibe. He would never be elected by the Israelis.

Support to the PFLP drastically reduced primarily because of the number of Palestinian Christians shrunk drastically since 1948. Many Christian youths who study abroad were forbidden to return home and their citizenship were revoked. They are also subjected to intimidation and discrimination and eventually they are forced to imigrate to other countries. In the 1930s, about 20% of Palestinians were Christians, now only 1.6%. Before 1948 Christian Arabs formed a majority in Jerusalem, over 51%, now only 2%. Reduced drastically. So, before the founding of Israel, Jerusalem was de facto dominated by Christian Arabs. Moreover, in education, social and economic Palestinian Christians are better off than the Muslims. Therefore, the Jews usually prefer to confiscate lands and houses belong to Palestinian Christians because they are bigger and more comfortable. The Jews also often seized church lands to build Jewish settlements. You may read Jonathan Cook, “Israel's Purging of Palestinian Christian” and Donald Wagner “Palestinian Christian: A Historic Community at Risk?” Donald Wagner's writings is opened with the death of Johnny Thaljiya, a 17 years old Palestinian Christian teenager, he was shot by an Israeli soldier shortly after he went home from Mass at the church. (See both article after the last paragraph of this article, or you may googling those article yourself).

Due to ignorance of the majority of Christians in America and Europe who didn’t know anything about the Middle East, they instead support the racist zionist of Israel, supporting the slaughter of their fellow Christians in Palestine. Most Christians in Indonesia also support Israel who slaughter their own Christian brethrens, because of their ignorance, too. Due to lack of information and swallowing every false propaganda on TV and other mass media. As a result, Palestinian Christians are now almost extinct, their number have been dwindling drastically. Although their community has been drastically reduced, all church leaders in Palestine remains strongly support the struggle of PLO, Hamas, PFLP and other Palestinian organizations. Many Palestinian Christian clergies openly pray for Hamas fighters, although obviously they are Muslims. This is certainly makes Israeli government and the fundamentalist American angry to the Palestinian church leaders. Jewish controlled media in United States often slandered them with various charges, among other they said that Michel Sabbah, Patriarch of Jerusalem, was an Islamic Patriarch.

Of course, do not expect that Patriarch of Jerusalem’s support to Palestinian fighters would be aired on CNN , FOX etc. They would only aired terrors by Muslims to their fellow Christians. Only fools would believe such propaganda. Why would Arafat terrorize his Christian wife Suha Tawil? They had happy family. Unfortunately, hundreds of millions of dumb people in Europe and America will nodding dutifully to those false propaganda.

George Habash died in Amman, Jordan, on January 26, 2008 at the age of 81 years. His funeral was held at a church in Amman. He died peacefully among Muslims who have loyally fought with him throughout his life. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, of course a Muslim, announced three days of mourning to honor him. Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, also mourning and said that Habash had fought for all his life defending Palestine. This certainly proves the greatness and inclusive attitude of Hamas, an organization that by Jewish and Americans media always said the opposite. The Palestinian people in the West Bank also went to the streets to participate in mourning his death and remembering his struggle. But, the racist Israeli government forbade Palestinians to hold a mourning ceremony.

That’s a short biography of George Habash and his struggle against the racists Zionist. It turns out that jihad is not only found among Palestinian Muslims, but also among Palestinian Christians, fighting side by side against the Zionists and their supporters, i.e. ignorant and dumb people in Europe and America who don't even know that there are Christian Arabs in Palestine.

One more thing, I'm sure that Ahmadiyah will never exist in Palestine, both among Muslims and Christians. And of course impossible during Indonesia revolution in 1945, during which our people, including the Bung Tomo, took arm struggle against the Netherlands army. You must know, Ahmadis in Indonesia, in 1945 were all hiding because they thought that arm struggle is forbiddenn (haram). They are all traitors to this country. You may ask the Ahmadis themselves about this. Peace-loving is fine, but it must not forbid fighting against foreign occupation. If Indonesian people in 1945 were all Ahmadis, certainly until now Indonesia is still ruled by the Netherlands. We must remember the motto our teachers had taught us at schools: We are a peace-loving nation, but we love freedom even more. Kita bangsa yang cinta damai, tapi lebih cinta kemerdekaan.

Yogyakarta, 25 Juli 2008

Palestinian Christians: An Historic Community at Risk?

by Don Wagner

On a moonlit December evening in BethlehemÕs Manger Square, seventeen-year-old Johnny Thaljiya was outside his cousin’s souvenir shop. He had just finished the evening mass at the historic Greek Orthodox Church of the Nativity where he served as an altar boy. Suddenly, Johnny let out a scream and grabbed his throat as he fell to his knees and collapsed. Family and friends rushed to his side and realized that Johnny had been shot through the throat by an Israeli sniper, not an unusual fate for young Palestinian men these days. Rushed to the hospital, it was too late to save him. Johnny died within an hour as the number of Palestinian deaths crept toward 800 over the previous 16 months of the al-Aqsa intifada.

Sadly, the international community has done nothing to protect Palestinian youths and other civilians from a fate like that of Johnny Thaljiya. A U.S. veto at the United Nations (UN) has blocked impartial international observers who would function as buffers between the Israeli army and the Palestinians. Today every Palestinian is at risk under this occupying army and increasingly every Israeli is at risk as the violence continues to escalate in the occupied Palestinian areas and inside Israel.

Often overlooked in this descent into war in the Holy Land is a community whose presence may not survive the next 25-30 years in Israel and Palestine: the dwindling Palestinian Christian community. Many Palestinian scholars believe that Palestinian Christians could disappear in the Holy Land within a generation if the present war and emigration patterns among Christians continue. It is ironic that as Palestinian Christianity celebrates its anniversary of 2,000 years in Palestine and Israel, the community is on the verge of extinction. Perhaps more troublesome is the fact that little is being done by the West or the international Christian churches. Most striking is the fact that the Middle East policies of the nation with the largest and most powerful Christian majority is underwriting the destruction of Palestinian Christianity through its uncritical support of Israel’s war machine.

The British Mandate and al Nakba:

The British census of 1922 placed the Christian Palestinian population in Jerusalem at just over 51 percent, the majority being of the well-educated mercantile class. Gradually, Zionist settlement increased the proportion of Jews in Palestine, but the Jewish presence in Jerusalem remained relatively small. However, the hostilities that followed the UN partition vote of 28 November 1947 had a devastating effect on the Palestinian population with between 725-775,000 refugees being expelled from their ancestral lands.

Historian Sami Hadawi estimated that over 50 percent of Jerusalem’s Christians were expelled from their West Jerusalem homes, the largest single numerical decline of Christians in Palestine in history. Hadawi’s study concluded that in Jerusalem a higher proportion of Palestinian Christians became refugees after 1949, a ratio of 37 percent of Christians to 17 percent of the Muslims. The higher ratio of Christians was due in part to the fact that the majority lived in the wealthier western Jerusalem districts seized by Israel during 1948-49. Further, approximately 34 percent of the lands seized by Israel were owned by Palestinian Christian churches, and they were simply taken by force with no compensation given to the previous owners.

Bethlehem University Sociologist Bernard Sabella reports that by 1966 Palestinian Christians had declined to 13 percent of the total Palestinian population in Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank, a significant decline from the 18-20 percent that had held until 1947. However, following the 1967 war and continuing until the signing of the Oslo Accords on 13 September 1993, the population decline was more dramatic. Sabella places the ratio of Palestinian Christians to Muslims at 2.1 percent in 1993. This decline was a direct reaction to the severity of the Israeli occupation and the lack of an economic, educational, vocational, and secure life in East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank.

Had the 18 percent of the 1922-47 period remained, the Palestinian Christians would have numbered close to 300,000 by the early 1990s. Inside Israel, the Palestinian Christians grew to approximately 160,000 by 1993, compared to a Muslim population of 650,000. However, by the turn of the century and the second intifada, the emigration patterns continued to the extent that Christians now number only an estimated 1.6 percent of the Palestinian population in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

If these rates continue over the next generation, Palestinian and western scholars observe that the indigenous Palestinian Christian population will be on the verge of extinction within a generation. Some call this the “museumification” of the indigenous Christians of Palestine and Israel, indicating that there will only be a small number of elderly Christians left to show churches to western tourists, but the churches will be empty, having no local community to worship and inhabit them.

Many Palestinian Christians are now stating, perhaps as an appeal to the conscience of the West, addressed especially to the people and the government of the United States, that Palestinian Christianity may die within a generation if a just peace is not implemented in Israel-Palestine soon. The fundamental crisis for Palestinian Christians is the same as that for all Palestinians—the occupation and the brutality of Israel’s measures against the entire Palestinian community. Until the United States implements policies with full accountability which will bring Israel into compliance with UN resolutions 242 and 338, all Palestinians and Israelis will continue to suffer insecurity, economic deprivation, and death from the inhumane status quo of occupation.

What Palestinian Christians Want:

Perhaps the most succinct and accurate articulation of the Palestinian Christian position is found in the Jerusalem Sabeel Document of 2000, produced by the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. Led by the Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, former Canon of St. Georges’ Anglican Cathedral in Jerusalem and Director of the Sabeel Center, this document summarizes what the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Christians accept as the basis for a just peace in the conflict. The document begins with a biblical and theological rationale for their position and then turns to the moral basis for their “Peace Principles.”

Once a moral framework has been articulated, the document outlines the legal and political framework for a just peace. Citing UN resolutions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Fourth Geneva Convention, this framework essentially reiterates the international consensus held by every nation with the sole exceptions of Israel and the United States.

These moral, legal, and political principles state the unambiguous basis for a just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Since 1948, it is estimated that approximately 50 peace proposals have been brought forth and all have failed. In some cases the United States, (often under pressure from Israel) has opposed the principles outlined in the Sabeel Document, despite the fact that the United States has been a signatory to these very principles.

Fortunately, most Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox church bodies in Europe, Canada, and the United States have now adopted official policy statements that are in complete accord with the Sabeel Principles.

The task now is to translate these national policies into active moral, spiritual, and even political advocacy by the clergy and laypersons. The mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic churches can make a significant difference in the near future if there is a concerted effort at education and organization, and there are some indications that the pendulum is swinging in that direction. The struggle for Palestinian rights remains a distant hope, but the official policies are now in place and the infrastructure for significant action is coming into view.

Don Wagner associate professor of Religion and Middle Eastern Studies, and executive director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at North Park University. The above text may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the author and to the Palestine Center. This Information Brief does not necessarily reflect the views of Palestine Center or The Jerusalem Fund.

This information first appeared in Information Brief No. 89, 12 March 2002.

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Israel's Purging of Palestinian Christians

by Jonathan Cook

There is an absurd scene in Palestinian writer Suad Amiry's recent book Sharon and My Mother-in-Law that is revealing about Israeli Jews' attitude to the two other monotheistic religions. In 1992, long before Israel turned Amiry's home city of Ramallah into a permanent ghetto behind checkpoints and walls, it was still possible for West Bank Palestinians to drive to Jerusalem and even into Israel – at least if they had the right permit.

On one occasion Amiry ventures out in her car to East Jerusalem, the half of the city that was Palestinian before the 1967 war and has since been engulfed by relentless illegal and state-organized Jewish settlement.

There she sees an elderly Jew collapsing out his car and on to the side of the road. She pulls over, realizes he is having a heart attack and bundles him into the back of her own car. Not able to speak Hebrew, she reassures him in English that she is taking him to the nearest hospital.

But as it starts to dawn on him that she is Palestinian, Amiry realizes the terrible problem her charitable act has created: his fear may prompt him to have another heart attack. "What if he had a fatal heart attack in the back seat of my car? Would the Israeli police ever believe I was just trying to help?" she wonders.

The Jewish man seeks to calm himself by asking Amiry if she is from Bethlehem, a Palestinian city known for being Christian. Unable to lie, she tells him she is from Ramallah. "You're Christian?" he asks more directly. "Muslim," she admits, to his utter horror. Only when they finally make it to the hospital does he relax enough to mumble in thanks: "There are good Palestinians after all."

I was reminded of that story as I made the journey to Bethlehem on Christmas Day. The small city that Amiry's Jewish heart attack victim so hoped she would hail from is today as much of an isolated enclave in the West Bank as other Palestinian cities – or at least it is for its Palestinian inhabitants.

For tourists and pilgrims, getting in or out of Bethlehem has been made reasonably straightforward, presumably to conceal from international visitors the realities of Palestinian life. I was even offered a festive chocolate Santa Claus by the Israeli soldiers who control access to the city where Jesus was supposedly born.

Seemingly oblivious to the distressing historical parallels, however, Israel forces foreigners to pass through a "border crossing" – a gap in the menacing grey concrete wall – that recalls the stark black and white images of the entrance to Auschwitz.

The gates of Auschwitz offered a duplicitous motto, "Arbeit macht frei" (Work makes you free), and so does Israel's gateway to Bethlehem. "Peace be with you" is written in English, Hebrew and Arabic on a colorful large notice covering part of the grey concrete. The people of Bethlehem have scrawled their own, more realistic assessments of the wall across much of its length.

Foreign visitors can leave, while Bethlehem's Palestinians are now sealed into their ghetto. As long as these Palestinian cities are not turned into death camps, the West appears ready to turn a blind eye. Mere concentration camps, it seems, are acceptable.

The West briefly indulged in a bout of soul-searching about the wall following the publication in July 2004 of the International Court of Justice's advisory opinion condemning its construction. Today the only mild rebukes come from Christian leaders around Christmas time. Britain's Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, was foremost among them this year.

Even those concerns, however, relate mainly to fears that the Holy Land's native Christians, once a significant proportion of the Palestinian population, are rapidly dwindling. There are no precise figures, but the Israeli media suggests that Christians, who once constituted as much as 15 per cent of the occupied territories' Palestinians, are now just 2 or 3 per cent. Most are to be found in the West Bank close to Jerusalem, in Bethlehem, Ramallah and neighboring villages.

A similar pattern can be discerned inside Israel too, where Christians have come to comprise an ever-smaller proportion of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. In 1948 they were nearly a quarter of that minority (itself 20 per cent of the total Israeli population), and today they are a mere 10 percent. Most are located in Nazareth and nearby villages in the Galilee.

Certainly, the continuing fall in the number of Christians in the Holy Land concerns Israel's leadership almost as keenly as the patriarchs and bishops who visit Bethlehem at Christmas – but for quite the opposite reason. Israel is happy to see Christians leave, at least of the indigenous Palestinian variety.

(More welcome are the crazed fundamentalist Christian Zionists from the United States who have been arriving to help engineer the departure of Palestinians, Muslims and Christians alike, in the belief that, once the Jews have dominion over the whole of the Holy Land, Armageddon and the "End Times" will draw closer.)

Of course, that is not Israel's official story. Its leaders have been quick to blame the exodus of Christians on the wider Palestinian society from which they are drawn, arguing that a growing Islamic extremism, and the election of Hamas to lead the Palestinian Authority, have put Christians under physical threat. This explanation neatly avoids mentioning that the proportion of Christians has been falling for decades.

According to Israel's argument, the decision by many Christians to leave the land where generations of their ancestors have been rooted is simply a reflection of the "clash of civilizations," in which a fanatical Islam is facing down the Judeo-Christian West. Palestinian Christians, like Jews, have found themselves caught on the wrong side of the Middle East's confrontation lines.

Here is how the Jerusalem Post, for example, characterized the fate of the Holy Land's non-Muslims in a Christmas editorial: "Muslim intolerance toward Christians and Jews is cut from exactly the same cloth. It is the same jihad." The Post concluded by arguing that only by confronting the jihadis would "the plight of persecuted Christians – and of the persecuted Jewish state – be ameliorated."

Similar sentiments were recently aired in an article by Aaron Klein of WorldNetDaily republished on Ynet, Israel's most popular website, that preposterously characterized a procession of families through Nazareth on Eid al-Adha, the most important Muslim festival, as a show of strength by militant Islam designed to intimidate local Christians.

Islam's green flags were "brandished," according to Klein, whose reporting transformed a local troupe of Scouts and their marching band into "Young Muslim men in battle gear" "beating drums." Nazareth's youngsters, meanwhile, were apparently the next generation of Qassam rocket engineers: "Muslim children launched firecrackers into the sky, occasionally misfiring, with the small explosives landing dangerously close to the crowds."

Such sensationalist misrepresentations of Palestinian life are now a staple of the local and American media. Support for Hamas, for example, is presented as proof of jihadism run amok in Palestinian society rather than as evidence of despair at Fatah's corruption and collaboration with Israel and ordinary Palestinians' determination to find leaders prepared to counter Israel's terminal cynicism with proper resistance.

The clash of civilizations thesis is usually ascribed to a clutch of American intellectuals, most notably Samuel Huntingdon, the title of whose book gave the idea popular currency, and the Orientalist academic Bernard Lewis. But alongside them have been the guiding lights of the neocon movement, a group of thinkers deeply embedded in the centers of American power who were recently described by Ynet as mainly comprising "Jews who share a love for Israel."

In fact, the idea of a clash of civilizations grew out of a worldview that was shaped by Israel's own interpretation of its experiences in the Middle East. An alliance between the neocons and Israeli leaders was cemented in the mid-1990s with the publication of a document called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." It offered a US foreign policy tailor-made to suit Israel's interests, including plans for an invasion of Iraq, authored by leading neocons and approved by the Israeli prime minister of the day, Binyamin Netanyahu.

When the neocons rose to power with George Bush's election to the White House, the birth of the bastard offspring of the clash of civilizations – the war on terror – was all but inevitable.

Paradoxically, this vision of our future, set out by American and Israeli Jews, is steeped in fundamentalist Christian religious symbolism, from the promotion of a civilized West's crusade against the Muslim hordes to the implication that the final confrontation between these civilizations (a nuclear attack on Iran?) may be the End Times itself – and thereby lead to the return of the Messiah.

If this clash is to be realized, it must be convincing at its most necessary confrontation line: the Middle East and more specifically the Holy Land. The clash of civilizations must be embodied in Israel's experience as a civilized, democratic state fighting for its very survival against its barbarian Muslim neighbors.

There is only one problem in selling this image to the West: the minority of Christian Palestinians who have happily lived under Muslim rule in the Holy Land for centuries. Today, in a way quite infuriating to Israel, these Christians confuse the picture by continuing to take a leading role in defining Palestinian nationalism and resistance to Israel's occupation. They prefer to side with the Muslim "fanatics" than with Israel, the Middle East's only outpost of Judeo-Christian "civilization."

The presence of Palestinian Christians reminds us that the supposed "clash of civilizations" in the Holy Land is not really a war of religions but a clash of nationalisms, between the natives and European colonial settlers.

Inside Israel, for example, Christians have been the backbone of the Communist party, the only non-Zionist party Israel allowed for several decades. Many of the Palestinian artists and intellectuals who are most critical of Israel are Christians, including the late novelist Emile Habibi; the writer Anton Shammas and film-makers Elia Suleiman and Hany Abu Assad (all now living in exile); and the journalist Antoine Shalhat (who, for reasons unknown, has been placed under a loose house arrest, unable to leave Israel).

The most notorious Palestinian nationalist politician inside Israel is Azmi Bishara, yet another Christian, who has been put on trial and is regularly abused by his colleagues in the Knesset.

Similarly, Christians have been at the core of the wider secular Palestinian national movement, helping to define its struggle. They range from exiled professors such as the late Edward Said to human rights activists in the occupied territories such as Raja Shehadeh. The founders of the most militant wings of the national movement, the Democratic and Popular Fronts for the Liberation of Palestine, were Nayif Hawatmeh and George Habash, both Christians.

This intimate involvement of Palestinian Christians in the Palestinian national struggle is one of the reasons why Israel has been so keen to find ways to encourage their departure – and then blame it on intimidation by, and violence from, Muslims.

In truth, however, the fall in the number of Christians can be explained by two factors, neither of which is related to a clash of civilizations. The first is a lower rate of growth among the Christian population. According to the latest figures from Israel's Bureau of Census Statistics, the average Christian household in Israel contains 3.5 people compared to 5.2 in a Muslim household. Looked at another way, in 2005 33 percent of Christians were under the age of 19, compared to 55 percent of Muslims. In other words, the proportion of Christians in the Holy Land has been eroded over time by higher Muslim birth rates.

But a second factor is equally, if not more, important. Israel has established an oppressive rule for Palestinians both inside Israel and in the occupied territories that has been designed to encourage the most privileged Palestinians, which has meant disproportionately Christians, to leave.

This policy has been implemented with stealth for decades, but has been greatly accelerated in recent years with the erection of the wall and numerous checkpoints. The purpose has been to encourage the Palestinian elite and middle class to seek a better life in the West, turning their back on the Holy Land.

Palestinian Christians have had the means to escape for two reasons. First, they have traditionally enjoyed a higher standard of living, as city-based shopkeepers and business owners, rather than poor subsistence farmers in the countryside. And second, their connection to the global Churches has made it simpler for them to find sanctuary abroad, often beginning as trips for their children to study overseas.

Israel has turned Christian parents' financial ability and their children's increased opportunities to its own advantage, by making access to higher education difficult for Palestinians both inside Israel and in the occupied territories.

Inside Israel, for example, Palestinian citizens still find it much harder to attend university than Jewish citizens, and even more so to win places on the most coveted courses, such as medicine and engineering.

Instead, for many decades Israel's Christians and Muslims became members of the Communist party in the hope of receiving scholarships to attend universities in Eastern Europe. Christians were also able to exploit their ties to the Churches to help them head off to the West. Many of these overseas graduates, of course, never returned, especially knowing that they would be faced with an Israeli economy much of which is closed to non-Jews.

Something similar occurred in the occupied territories, where Palestinian universities have struggled under the occupation to offer a proper standard of education, particularly faced with severe restrictions on the movement of staff and students. Still today, it is not possible to study for a PhD in either the West Bank or Gaza, and Israel has blocked Palestinian students from attending its own universities. The only recourse for most who can afford it has been to head abroad. Again, many have chosen never to return.

But in the case of the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank, Israel found it even easier to close the door behind them. It established rules, in violation of international law, that stripped these Palestinians of their right to residency in the occupied territories during their absence. When they tried to return to their towns and villages, many found that they were allowed to stay only on temporary visas, including tourist visas, that they had to renew with the Israeli authorities every few months.

Nearly a year ago, Israel quietly took a decision to begin kicking these Palestinians out by refusing to issue new visas. Many of them are academics and business people who have been trying to rebuild Palestinian society after decades of damage inflicted by the occupying regime. A recent report by the most respected Palestinian university, Bir Zeit, near Ramallah, revealed that one department had lost 70 per cent of its staff because of Israel's refusal to renew visas.

Although there are no figures available, it can probably be safely assumed that a disproportionate number of Palestinians losing their residency rights are Christian. Certainly the effect of further damaging the education system in the occupied territories will be to increase the exodus of Palestine's next generation of leaders, including its Christians.

In addition, the economic strangulation of the Palestinians by the wall, the restrictions on movement and the international economic blockade of the Palestinian Authority are damaging the lives of all Palestinians with increasing severity. Privileged Palestinians, and that doubtless includes many Christians, are being encouraged to seek a rapid exit from the territories.

From Israel's point of view, the loss of Palestinian Christians is all to the good. It will be happier still if all of them leave, and Bethlehem and Nazareth pass into the effective custodianship of the international Churches.

Without Palestinian Christians confusing the picture, it will be much easier for Israel to persuade the West that the Jewish state is facing a monolithic enemy, fanatical Islam, and that the Palestinian national struggle is really both a cover for jihad and a distraction from the clash of civilizations against which Israel is the ultimate bulwark. Israel's hands will be freed.

Israelis like Amiry's heart attack victim may believe that Palestinian Christians are not really a threat to their or their state's existence, but be sure that Israel has every reason to continue persecuting and excluding Palestinian Christians as much, if not more, than it does Palestinian Muslims.

- End -

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Sunday, June 23, 2013