A CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM DIVIDE CLOSES
By Danna Harman, The Christian Science Monitor, 4/23/02
christiansciencemonitor.com
BETHLEHEM, WEST BANK - The food in the besieged Church of the Nativity is
running out. The priests, nuns, monks, and friars trapped between Israeli
soldiers stationed in Manger Square and some 200 Palestinians gunmen hiding
inside the church have almost gone through their stocks of beans and
spaghetti - and are reportedly rationing pretzels and drinking well water...
"Before, our identity as a Christian minority within the Palestinian
community was threatened - so we held onto it tight. Today, what is being
threatened is our national identity as Palestinians, and that is the
important struggle," says Nuha Khoury, a Christian Palestinian professor at
Bethlehem University.
"Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon never heard of divide and rule," she
says sarcastically. "He started with an assault on Al Aqsa," she explains,
referring to Sharon's trip in September 2001 to the holy Muslim site in
Jerusalem which sparked the current intifada. "And now he is ending with
the Church of the Nativity. Nothing is sacred to him. We are all the same
to him. Palestinians. The enemy..."
Peter Qumri, the Christian Palestinian director of Bethlehem's general
hospital points at another aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that
is pushing the Christians here closer to their Muslim brothers.
"The support of the Christian right in the US for Israel has embarrassed us
and forced us to prove our identity and become even more nationalistic," he
says. Sitting in his office surrounded by a framed photograph of himself
kissing the pope's hand on one side and a giant poster of Arafat on the
other, Dr. Qumri says that "any Christian that comes to support Israel is
not a real Christian." |
