Palestinian Christians
The source is admittedly controversial however;
latif.blogspot.com
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.
Christianity dwindling in the land of its birth
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.
Ancient faiths locked in one land
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.
Christianity, to my mind, is the only religion truly born in the land of Eretz Israel/Greater Palestine. Islam was revealed in Medina, set among the Arabian wastes, and Judaism can lay a distant origin in Iraq. Of course with the controversiality of the issue and competing claims of all parties, I excuse myself, for now, from passing any judgement on the conflict. |
