The Tree of Peace is just across the street from

Nativity Church, Bethlehem

Father X, a Palestinian priest who needs to remain anonymous because he does not want any further problems with the occupying power, Israel,  told me (Joe) recently that Palestinians are not allowed to drive in Israel in cars with Israeli (yellow) license plates. Nor can they drive their own vehicles with Palestinian plates into Israel. These restrictions make it practically impossible for the priest to minister to Christians in Israel (a miniscule minority), where his pastoral services are sometimes needed due to the shortage of priests.

"During the weeks before Easter," he said, "we have the custom of visiting parishioners in their homes to read and reflect on the gospel. But the homes are scattered throughout the region, and so we need a car to get around. Travel by cab would be too expensive, and there might not be any cabs passing by outside a home after our study session."

Another restriction also hampers Father's church work: he has a multiple-entry permit to get into Israel, which must be renewed every three months, but he may stay only during the day, between 5 a.m. and 7 p.m.  Israel does not permit Palestinians with this permit to stay overnight in Israel. Since the bible meetings are held in the evening when people are at home, it is not possible for him to lead the meeting and then get out of Israel by 7 p.m.

"Until recently the Israeli police, seeing our priestly attire, made some exceptions to this rule for us clergy, but now they are enforcing it," he said. The city of Jaffa, next to Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean, is now without a regular pastor;  and because of all the restrictions other priests cannot go there to help. So the Catholics are going to Mass at the Greek Orthodox church – a boon to Christian unity which the enforcers of the travel restrictions probably did not intend.
 

The plaque below the tree says, "I am 500 years old. I was uprooted without my permission from my original site (Th. Khamis' land) in Bir Ona-Beit Jala, along with thousands of trees all over Palestine, to build the apartheid wall....

I am still alive."

The 500 year-old tree itself.

On October 27, 2007 the Associated Press reported that “Israel has rescinded some travel privileges for Arab Christian clergy traveling to and around the West Bank because of security concerns, an Interior Ministry spokesperson said.

"The decision means the religious leaders' visas will be good for one entry only, and not for repeat visits as in the past," spokeswoman Sabine Haddad said. "This means they will be required to coordinate each trip they make," she said. "According to a request by security officials, we restricted the visas of the clergy," Haddad said. "We are trying to find a solution to make it easier for them."

Palestinian clergy, hoping the solution will be coming soon, are raising their voices in protest of the new restrictions.

Seminarians from neighboring Jordan (across the famous river) who are studying in Israel or in Israeli-occupied Palestine are also experiencing this problem. They used to have multiple-entry visas to get into Israel, but now they have only single-entry visas. So, if they go home at Christmas to visit their families in Jordan, they must apply for a visa to return to the seminary west of the Jordan. "There is no guarantee that they will be granted the visa, and so they would be jeopardizing their career as seminarians in training," Father X pointed out.

Ordained Palestinian priests are also in similar trouble. Three are stuck in Jordan, not permitted by Israel to return to their ministry in Palestine.

Friends of mine, Arab Christians in Bethlehem, were disappointed in December when they did not receive a favorable reply from Israel to their request to be allowed to enter Israel to visit friends and relatives in Jerusalem. (Palestinians always need a permit to cross the wall or checkpoint to go into Israel.) A few of their fellow parishioners did receive the permit, which allows them to stay in Israel (even overnight) for up to one month.

Father X feels that this special favor for Christians, while he is not opposed to it, increases tensions between them and the Muslim majority in Palestine, who do not receive such consideration by Israel during their special time of Ramadan. During that time, Muslims over 45 may go to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, their holy place in Jerusalem, without a permit but may stay only during the day. If they are found in other places in Israel besides the Mosque, they will then spend the night in Israel – in jail.

"We Christians want to live in peace with Jews, Father X said. “In fact, we feel a special closeness to them. We understand their concern for security. But they are exercising too much pressure on us, and this leads to violent responses. They must reduce this pressure and respect our rights as a people in order for all of us to have peace.

"Everything is security, security, security. We Palestinians are not even allowed to use the main international airport near Tel Aviv; we must go to Jordan and fly from the Amman airport.

"And our travel within Palestine is very uncertain. We cannot plan on getting to a meeting in Ramallah, for instance, on time, since we have to pass a major checkpoint and there can be delays up to three hours.

New Israeli restrictions on foreign church visitors could affect international funding for private schools in Palestine. Out of about 56 schools in the Bethlehem region, Father X explained, 36 are private, mainly church-run. "If the principal is from Germany, for example, and is not allowed to return after a visit to his country, people there will have less confidence in how the school is being run. They like to know the person responsible."

Father X attributes emigration, and the desire of many Palestinians to emigrate, to four factors:

•  high unemployment in Palestine

•  few educational opportunities

•  no health insurance

•  no stability in terms of the future

"We are suffering a lot," he said in conclusion. "If the Israelis seek peace, they must be peaceful toward us." We reminisced about Pope Paul VI's point: "If you want peace, work for justice."

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The Jordanian pastor of a Latin (Roman) Catholic parish in the West Bank is distressed because, due to the new Israeli restrictions on visas, he is now unable to visit his mother in Jordan who is gravely ill. Again, the problem of a single-entry visa: if he went to visit his mother, he would have to apply in Jordan to the Israeli government for a new entry visa. His return to his parish in Palestine could take weeks or months (or may not be permitted at all), which would severely affect the life of the parish.

He gave me a document which is circulating in official Church circles here and which represents the grievances of the clergy as expressed to the Israeli government. The paper, entitled "Restrictions by Israel on Clergy Threaten Future of the Church," notes that the decision by the Israeli Ministry of Interior to limit visas to one entry "entails grave consequences: the different areas of the Latin Patriarchate (Roman Catholic diocese) of Jerusalem, which includes Palestine, Israel, and Jordan, will be disconnected, as Jordanian clergy will not be allowed to move between Jordan and Israel/Palestine."

The consequences will be that by July 2008 "the Catholic Church will lose most of its clergy, the majority of them being Jordanian." In addition, the seminary will be closed and many parishes will be without a priest.

Another problem is the increase in security checks by Israel. When the security checking was introduced around four years ago, the Church was assured that "it would be carried out only for the first application for a visa. Therefore, it would not be repeated when applying for the visa extension. But soon we discovered that these assurances were not implemented....

"Our personnel are treated as untrusted persons.... We cannot interfere in the policy of a country, but we cannot accept being treated as terrorists. No need to spend months every time to check their files."

Tensions between the churches and the Israeli government have been growing for some years. On May 7, 2004, fifty leaders of evangelical and mainline Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox churches and church-related organizations in the U.S., including National Council of Churches General Secretary Bob Edgar, delivered a letter to President Bush asking for a full understanding of "the crisis in the Holy Land confronting Christian Palestinians, Christian institutions, and those who wish to visit the birthplace of Christianity," according to NCC News (http://www.ncccusa.org/news/04holylandchristians.html).

The letter addressed the church leaders' concerns specifically regarding the effects of the separation barrier being constructed by Israel, taxation issues that may force some church institutions to close due to the removal of their longstanding tax-exempt status, and "the denial and delay of visas, by Israel, for clergy and church personnel result[ing] in understaffed seminaries, churches, hospitals, education and other institutions."

One signer, Brother Robert Schieler, Provincial for the De La Salle Christian Brothers who administer Bethlehem University, emphasized the destructive effects of the separation barrier on Christian and Palestinian populations: "Even if the barrier is intended for security, it has had the very real effects of separating students and faculty from their classrooms, families from one another, farmers from their fields, and Christian worshippers from their churches."

In the letter to President Bush, the church leaders observed, "We find it difficult to be assured by your description on April 14 of the barrier as 'temporary' in light of Israel's plans to extend the barrier far beyond the 1967 Green Line, encompassing on the Israeli side those large West Bank settlements that you implied would remain part of Israel."

Speaking of Bethlehem particularly, Bro. Schieler noted, "The barrier and checkpoints are now cutting off Christians in Bethlehem from Jerusalem just a few miles away. I wonder if U.S. Christians who visit Bethlehem as tourists know that many of their Christian brothers and sisters who live and work and worship where Jesus was born are not able to travel just a few miles to Jerusalem to where Jesus died and was risen. Unfortunately, most American Christians remain woefully uninformed about what is happening in the very land where Jesus walked."