Pope is arriving at a time when Christians are leaving
JERUSALEM — When Pope Benedict XVI comes to the Holy Land next week, he will greet a community of believers whose numbers are gradually eroding.
Dwarfed by Jewish and Muslim populations, young Christians are increasingly leaving to seek their futures elsewhere, especially those in the Palestinian territories and East Jerusalem. Christians say they are treated with suspicion by both Jews and Muslims and feel caught in an increasingly polarized conflict between them.
"It became a Muslim cause and a Jewish cause, so Christians, we have nothing to do," said Zakaria Mishriki, a 32-year-old Christian storekeeper in Jerusalem's Old City who has cousins in several U.S. states and Canada.
The last decade has also seen rising Islamic sentiment in Palestinian society, which has increased pressure on Christians, said Mishriki, whose shop offers wooden nativity scenes and crucifixes.
Meanwhile, Jewish Israelis do not differentiate between Muslims and Christians and consider all Palestinians a threat, added Mishriki, who was born to a Catholic family and now considers himself Protestant.
The Holy Land's Christians mainly consist of Greek Catholics, Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox, with smaller contingents of Armenians, Assyrians and a smattering of other sects.
While their numbers have risen slightly since the period when Israel was founded, the growth rate has fallen far behind those for Jews and Muslims in the country.
There were around 140,000 Arab Christians in the Holy Land in 1945, according to Palestinian sociologist Bernard Sabella. Today, there are around 160,000, compared to 7.4 million people who live in Israel and 3.8 million in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The Christian population inside Israel has actually tripled since the country was founded in 1948, thanks to the relative stability and prosperity of Israelis overall, said Sabella, while noting Arabs still suffer discrimination in government employment and budgets.
But in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where Palestinians are subject to an Israeli military occupation, the Christian community continues to hemorrhage people, he said.
"The Christian community is described most often as middle class, looking for the advancement of children and young people," he said. But because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and restrictive Israeli policies, he said, "People get to be 25 or 30, and they start thinking, 'Why should I stay?"'
Christians tend to be better educated and wealthier than their Muslim Arab neighbors, making it easier to leave.
Vatican officials have acknowledged the problem.
"Christians are a minority, and in a situation of difficulties, the minorities suffer always more," the Vatican's ambassador to the Holy Land, Monsignor Antonio Franco, told reporters this week.
During his Mideast visit, the pope also will reach out to Muslims and Jews. Many Muslims are upset over comments by the pope in 2006 seen as critical of their religion, while Israel and the Vatican have been at odds over whether Pius XII, the pope who reigned during World War II, did enough to try to stop the Holocaust.
The most beleaguered Christian outpost in the Holy Land can be found in the Gaza Strip, where some 3,800 Christians live among 1.4 million Muslims. Christians there weathered the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas, which ravaged the densely populated coastal territory.
Abdallah Jahshan, a 32-year-old Gaza Catholic, said he hoped the pope would somehow help bring a solution.
"We hope his visit will promote the peace in the area, and work to make peace between us and the Israeli people," he said.
Guy Inbar, an Israeli military spokesman, said Wednesday that Israel will allow some Gaza Catholics to enter the country so they can pray with their pope. He said it was unclear how many would be granted the rare permits into Israel.
While relations with the Muslim majority have traditionally been good, a Christian school has been attacked twice by unknown assailants, and in October 2007 a local Christian activist was murdered. His killers have not been found.
In the West Bank town of Bethlehem where Jesus was born, Christians say they still feel deep ties even though Muslims now make up two-thirds of the population.
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