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Ironic that Ramallah, HQ of the PLO, was 90% Christian in many our lifetimes, but then Jews were allowed to live in Judea and Sumaria too, so I guess it's not that surprising. Change, without Hope.
Palestinian and other Arab Christians are... Seen by some as the epitome of what happens to minorities under Islamist rule when their shops are firebombed in Hamas-ruled Gaza, they are also continually used by the Western media to show how the Israeli security fence divides those in Bethlehem from Jerusalem. Even as their community shrinks, they seem to get more and more attention... There were roughly 150,000 Arab Christians in British mandatory Palestine in 1947, on the eve of Israel's 1948 War of Independence. Some 75,685 Christians fled the areas that became Israel, leaving 32,000 in Israel in 1949, mostly in Nazareth, some villages in the Galilee and in Haifa, Acre and Jaffa. Family reunification and repatriation programs brought their numbers to 39,000 by 1951. Most Christian refugees came from Jaffa, Haifa and West Jerusalem and almost all of them fled before Israel declared independence in May of 1948... Christians actually benefited demographically from the creation of Israel, rising from 1 in 7 of the Arab population to 1 in 3 by the 1950s. Rather than forming "many" of the refugees, they formed a small minority and fared much better than their Muslim counterparts. Most were middle class, educated and spoke foreign languages. Because of this, prominent Palestinian Christians, such as the families of Edward Said and John Sanunu (Ronald Reagan's Chief of Staff), easily assimilated in the West. Being overwhelmingly urban in 1947, 115,000 of them lived in towns and cities... Christian communities suffered most in the West Bank where Muslim refugees were cynically settled in their midst. Thus, Ramallah was 90% Christian before the war and contained only 5,000 inhabitants while Bethlehem was 80% Christian and had only 9,000 inhabitants. By 1967, there were 16,000 people in Bethlehem of whom only 6,400 were Christian and Ramallah is a large Muslim city today... Far from "strangling the life" out of Christian communities in the West Bank, where there are barely 50,000 Christians, the access to Israel and its economy, education and medical facilities helps them... The other side of the story of Palestinian Christians is that they have had a long and hallowed role in Arab nationalism. Mathilda Moghannem, a Protestant Palestinian feminist, declared in January of 1948 that "Christians will become Muslims to defeat Zionism." George Habash, founder and leader of the communist terrorist PFLP, was a Christian as was Yasser Arafat's wife. In the 1970s a Catholic Christian priest, Hilarion Carucci, was even convicted of running guns for the PLO. Palestinian Christians suffer periodic bouts of intimidation and harassment. Their churches are spray-painted with graffiti and while Christian women marry Muslim men and Palestinian law ensures their children must be raised Muslim, when a Christian man is rumoured to date a Muslim woman riots have ensued.Thanks SJackson.
Thanks for posting this. Bump.