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BETHLEHEM, West Bank --
Hani Hayek, an accountant who is the Christian mayor of the tiny
majority-Christian Palestinian village of Beit Sahour, was angry
last week as he drove me along the Israeli security wall. "They
are taking our communal lands," he said, pointing to the massive
Israeli settlement of Har Homa. "They don't want us to live
here. They want us to leave."
Har Homa, dwarfing
nearby dwellings of Beit Sahour, seemed larger than when I saw
it at Holy Week a year ago. It is. The Israeli government has
steadily enlarged settlements on the occupied West Bank, and I
could see both the construction at Har Homa and road building
for a dual transportation system for Israelis and Palestinians.
Jimmy Carter raised
hackles by titling his book about the Palestinian question
"Peace Not Apartheid." But Palestinians allege this is worse
than the former South African racial separation. Nearing the
40th anniversary of the Israeli military occupation of the West
Bank, the territory has been so fragmented that a genuine
Palestinian state and a "two-state solution" seem increasingly
difficult.
The security wall has
led to virtual elimination of suicide bombings and short-term
peace. But life is hard for Palestinians, whose deaths because
of conflict increased 272 percent in 2006 while Israeli
casualties declined. In a minor incident last week of the type
that goes unnoticed internationally, Israel Defense Forces (IDF)
troopers killed a Palestinian man accused of illegally entering
a firing zone while collecting metal scraps to sell.
The Britain-based
organization Save the Children estimates that half the children
in the occupied territories are psychologically traumatized.
Palestinians argue that
things have gotten worse because of pervasive feelings of
hopelessness. Students at Bethlehem University (run by the
Catholic Brothers of De La Salle, with an enrollment that is 70
percent Muslim) sounded more pessimistic and radicalized than a
year ago. Ahmad al Issa, a fourth-year journalism student, was
held for a year in an Israeli prison on charges of throwing
stones at Israeli troops. Now he has bought into the libel that
Jewish employees at the World Trade Center were warned in
advance of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The U.S.-backed boycott
following the election victory of the extremist group Hamas in
early 2006 has made the Palestinian Authority destitute,
crippling government services.
Deprived of help from
the authority, with the economy in a shambles, city governments
are bankrupt. Bethlehem's mayor, Victor Batarseh, has a special
problem because tourists and pilgrims no longer stay overnight
in the city of Christ's birth. Out of money and credit, he is
ready to lay off the city's 165 staffers.
Batarseh, a U.S. citizen
who practiced thoracic surgery in Sacramento, is pinned down in
Bethlehem. A Christian and political independent who calls
himself a private-enterprise democrat, Batarseh is on the
Israeli blacklist because he contributed to the Popular Front
for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the State
Department has designated a terrorist organization. Denied
permits for Jerusalem, the mayor must drive to Amman, Jordan, to
get to meetings in Europe.
Contact with the PFLP is
not a requirement for being holed up by the Israel Defense
Forces. Bethlehem University students cannot get to Jerusalem, a
few minutes' drive away, unless they sneak in illegally. The
students from the separated Gaza enclave have to take classes
from Bethlehem via the Internet.
Republican Rep. Chris
Smith of New Jersey was at the university the same day I was,
and faculty members could hardly believe a real live member of
Congress was there. Smith later was given a tour of Jerusalem to
see with his own eyes that the separation barrier in most places
is a big, ugly and intimidating wall, not merely a fence.
Smith, an active
Catholic layman, was drawn here because of the rapid emigration
of the Holy Land's Christian minority. They leave more quickly
than Muslims because contacts on the outside make them more
mobile. Peter Corlano, a Catholic member of the Bethlehem
University faculty, told Smith and me: "We live the same life as
Muslims. We are Palestinians."
Concerned by the
disappearance of Christians in the land of Christianity's
birthplace, Smith could also become (as I did) concerned by the
plight of all Palestinians. If so, he will find precious little
company in Congress.
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