Thursday, March 01, 2018

Israel and the Christian Churches

Three days ago,  Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site where it is believed Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected and a major place of pilgrimage for Christians,  closed its doors to worshippers and tourists. More than a quarter of Israel’s nearly 4 million visitors each year are Christian pilgrims. Admittance to the Holy Seoulchre has resumed  after reaching a temporary compromise with the Jerusalem authorities. Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic  Church leaders had accused Israel of launching a “systematic and unprecedented attack against Christians in the Holy Land”.

Christians now comprise 10 per cent of the large Palestinian minority in Israel – or about 2 per cent of Israel’s total population. No Catholic custodian or Greek patriarch has dared to take such a decisive and bold stance in solidarity with these Palestine’s Christians. The Christian community is overwhelmingly Palestinian, while the churches leaders speaking on their behalf are overwhelmingly foreign.  Palestinian Christians were long ago abandoned by their churches, which preferred to avoid a serious clash with Israel that would harm their larger interests.

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate and the Papacy in the Vatican are vast enterprises that are as concerned with their commercial viability and influence on the global stage.  The Holy Sepulchre was really about protecting the churches’ profits from real-estate and investment deals for the Israeli Jerusalem city council had the temperity of intending to tax the hotels and other places of non-worship owned by the Christian chrches which previously were exempt. The churches have downgraded their charitable works and diversified into other, more clearly commercial ventures, such as shops, offices and restaurants. Pilgrimage hostels were redeveloped into well-appointed and profitable hotels. Much of the money was then siphoned off to the mother countries rather then reinvested in strengthening local Palestinian communities. Given the churches’ vast land holdings, the Jerusalem municipality hoped to collect more than $180m in back taxes.


 Aleef Sabbagh, a Palestinian member of the Orthodox Central Council that for many months has been trying to oust their Greek overlord, Patriarch Theophilos III, called the protest a “charade”. He noted that local Christians had long demanded the closure of the Holy Sepulchre to protest Israeli policies but had always been overruled by church leaders. The church did not shut during the second intifada, when Palestinians were being killed in large numbers, nor during Israel’s repeated attacks on Gaza.
Chiefly the Greek Orthodox Patriarch has been leasing at knockdown prices to private Israeli developers and settler groups. The Greek Orthodox Church has been cashing in its holdings in Jerusalem, Israel and the West Bank, selling long-term leases, and in some cases the title deeds, on these lands to private Israeli developers and settler organisations. According to the Orthodox Central Council, real estate deals over the past decade may have earned the Greek Patriarchate more than $100m. Most local Christians are wondering where all that money went. Their communities certainly haven’t seen it.
Israel was squarely behind the transactions when the church was selling lands on which Palestinian families lived. Settlers, rather than the churches, did the dirty work of carrying out evictions. But then the churches got greedier still. They started selling future leases on lands in West Jerusalem that had housed Israeli Jews since the 1950s. The investors are now preparing to evict these Jews from their homes too, so that the prime real-estate locations can be redeveloped more profitably. The Israeli government was enthusiastic about the evictions of Palestinian Christians, but has drawn a thick red line at the eviction of Jews. That provided the impetus for the new legislation to let Israel seize lands and properties leased by the churches.
The latest efforts to financially “squeeze” the churches were designed to intensify the intimidation, stoking their debts to further weaken their standing. It would also have risked fuelling the sell-off of more Church land – to Israel – to pay off existing debts and avoid incurring future ones. Palestinians living on those lands, especially in Jerusalem, would then have been at Israel’s mercy. Atallah Hanna, the only Palestinian archbishop in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, has  warned that Israel’s long-standing goal is to “empty” Jerusalem of its Palestinians.
Christian endowment land may be under threat now, but almost all properties in a similar endowment for Muslims – the Waqf – were seized by Israel at the Jewish state’s birth. Muslim communities lost these lands and properties – in effect, their welfare net – 70 years ago. Israel  has established a new classification of nationality in Israel – “Aramaean” – to replace Palestinian Christians’ existing, more inclusive “Arab” nationality. 
Taken From Here

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