04444
October 6, 2004

Talk of the town 

PC(USA) divestment decision sparks huge interest in Bethlehem

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE — Though most church pronouncements don’t filter down to the pews, one decision by the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly this summer made it: the vote to “initiate the process of phased selective divestment “ from U.S. companies who profit from Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.

      That decision even reached the pews in Bethlehem — THE Bethlehem — the West Bank city that Scripture says was the birthplace of Jesus.

      Divestment news was on television and radio. It was in the newspaper, both Israeli and Palestinian. It was the subject of talk between neighbors, both Christian and Muslim.

      The consensus: this is the first move by a U.S. church beyond pronouncement  to direct action in response to an increasingly desperate political situation.

      “Yes, it was big news here. Everybody was talking about it,” said Father Jamal Khader, a Catholic priest who is a chaplain at Bethlehem University on the edge of the city’s limits. “This is the first time in a long time that we’ve heard of anything concrete being done, not just opposing (the occupation) in words.”

        Khader should know. Everyday he walks past the 25-foot high concrete wall that is under construction now along the north side of Bethlehem, cutting off its 150,000 inhabitants from Jerusalem and swallowing up the empty fields that separate a heavily populated Christian section of the city from the nearby Jewish settlement of Gilo.

      The highly militarized wall runs adjacent to the location of Rachel’s Tomb, customarily reputed to be the burial place of the mother of Joseph, who, the Bible says, was buried along the road to Bethlehem. Sacred to both Jews and Muslims, the tiny tomb is now being annexed to Jerusalem. Formerly a mosque, the shrine is a Jewish holy site — surrounded by concrete bunkers, watchtowers and dozens of armed soldiers in camouflage.

      “Caterpillar’s bulldozers are out there working all day,” said Khader, referring to the U.S. heavy equipment company that’s the symbol of the occupation for Palestinians whose homes have been leveled and whose land has been swallowed up by the wall. Caterpillar is a possible focus of the PC(USA)’s divestment policy.

      “When I heard the mention of that name Caterpillar, I thought, ‘The Presbyterians are serious about this,’” Khader said.

      The Israeli government argues that the concrete wall — and miles of razor-wire fence — is a protective barrier, sealing out suicide bombers.

      But Palestinians — and the international human rights community — contend that the wall is more invasive than defensive, gobbling up Palestinian land far inside the “Green Line” border established after Israel’s victory in the 1967 war. It some areas it separates Palestinians from Palestinians and families from their fields, schools and relatives. Israel’s highest court has order parts of the wall rerouted to adhere more closely to the “Green Line.”

      “The future is bleak here,” said one Bethlehem businessman who asked not to be identified, citing the route of the barrier and the militarization of Rachel’s Tomb. “We complain, but who is going to listen? Its up and down here, like a see-saw.”

      He said that the Presbyterian action was in the news for a day or so, but there hasn’t been a follow up story since then. “It was good news, I thought,” he said.

      To Christians — a dwindling minority in the city known for Jesus’ birth — the divestment news evoked two reactions:

• It is reassuring to know that the western church hadn’t forgotten them;  and
• There is renewed respect from Muslim neighbors, who began questioning why the Islamic nations hadn’t undertaken a similar strategy — a conversation that hadn’t been so open before.

      “It’s a sign of hope for us,” said Father Majdi Siriyani, the pastor of a Catholic church in Beit Sahour, a small city burrowed into the hillsides next to Bethlehem and, according to local lore, the site of the shepherds’ fields where the angels announced Jesus’ birth.

      Although Siriyani called his congregation’s attention to the newspaper article on the divestment action from the pulpit, he didn’t really need to. People were already acquainted with Presbyterians through the church’s longtime ties to PC(USA) churches, including Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta.

      “These (PCUSA) people weren’t pilgrims just passing by. They came. They came back. They wrote. We talked … and after they came and saw, they went back and stood up for justice,” he said, adding that his parishioners understand that wasn’t easy to do, given the Bush administration’s almost unqualified support of Israel’s occupation.

      “The whole situation here is impossible for a human being to take,” Siriyani said, describing the four years since this Intifada (Palestinian uprising) began, leading to a protracted crackdown in the territories that has put entire cities under house arrest, prohibited workers from entering Israel and is economically strangling the civilian population.

      “People are being killed on a daily basis. Houses are being demolished. This evening it took me two and one-half hours to cross 15 miles from Ramallah to Bethlehem, with the checkpoints … Any sign of hope is, for us, hope,” said Siriyani, who is also a lawyer with the Catholic archdiocese in Jerusalem, and who has a permit to travel between there and Bethlehem.

      The Rev. Mitri Raheb, pastor of the Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem’s Old City, was in Richmond during the 216^th General Assembly and urged the PC(USA) to do more than issue another statement decrying the political situation in Israel/Palestine. When he returned home, he said, Al Quds — the largest Arabic-language newspaper in the region — had put the church’s action on its front page.

      That was a first.

      “It’s a disaster here,” he said. “People see the wall progressing around them every day. The north side is almost completed now, towards Jerusalem. I think they’ll start working then on other parts, to the west and the east, as well.”

      Raheb said his neighbors and his parishioners see the PC(USA)’s action as a practical response to the suffering of Palestinians. But for him, the hope lies not in this action alone, but in what it may signal — a less passive approach by U.S. churches to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

      “This is just the start, not the end,” he said. “No one can say this wall is good.”