Muslims continue pushing Christians out of Bethlehem

Imagine the uproar this would cause in Western countries if it was the opposite? At any rate, will Christians mark this event as the "great nakba"?


"Muslims Continue Pushing Christians Out of Bethlehem," by Gil Ronen for Israel National News, September 12:

The Muslim Fatah-controlled authority in Judea and Samaria is encouraging a "sharp demographic shift" in Bethlehem, where the Christian population went from a 60 percent majority in 1990 to a 40 percent minority in 2000, to about 15 percent of the city's total population today.
And before the violent Islamic conquests circa 630s, Bethlehem was approximately 100% Christian.
It is estimated that, for the past seven years, more than one thousand Christians have been emigrating from the Bethlehem area annually and that only 10,000 to 13,000 Christians remain in the city. International human rights lawyer Justus Reid Weiner, who teaches at Hebrew University, told the Jerusalem Institute for Global Jewish Affairs that, under the PA-Fatah regime, Christian Arabs have been victims of frequent human rights abuses by Muslims.

"There are many examples of intimidation, beatings, land theft, firebombing of churches and other Christian institutions, denial of employment, economic boycotts, torture, kidnapping, forced marriage, sexual harassment, and extortion," he said. PA officials are directly responsible for many of the attacks, and some Muslims who have converted to Christianity have been murdered.


As people with "dhimmi" status, Christians living in Palestinian-controlled territories are not treated as the equals of Muslims. He says: "They are subjected to debilitating legal, political, cultural, and religious restrictions. This has become a critical problem for the Palestinian Christians in the West Bank and Gaza. Muslim groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad have built a culture of hatred upon the age-old foundations of Islamic society. Moreover, the PA has adopted Islamic law into its draft constitution."
In 2006, Hassan El-Masalmeh, a member of the Bethlehem City Council and local Hamas leader, publicly advocated implementing a discriminatory tax on non-Muslim residents. In late 2007 an evangelical pastor was forced to leave Ramallah under threats from Fatah gunmen, and soon after, his congregation dispersed.

"Tens of thousands of Palestinian Christians have left their ancestral homes and emigrated to North America, Central America, South America, Europe, and Australia. They flee to almost any country that will issue them a visa," Weiner said. "Neither the Palestinian Christian leaders nor the PA want to reveal accurate statistics. That would mean the extent of the emigration would become publicly known. They would then have to face questions about the reasons for this decline."

"It is currently estimated that the number of Christians living in Gaza totals only 1,500-3,000 amid 1.2 million Muslims. Probably less than fifty thousand Christians remain in all of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza together," he estimated. "Taybeh, a village located deep in the West Bank, is the only all-Christian village left in the PA. As a result of the perpetual violence, many residents of Taybeh have gone abroad and only 1,300 remain. The situation of these Christians has become grim."

Kidnapping of Christian Women
"Incidents of Muslim men ‘seducing' or kidnapping Christian girls have caused growing anxiety among the Christian population. In May 2004, a sixteen-year-old Christian girl from Bethlehem, who was a U.S. citizen, went missing for five days after being kidnapped by a 23 year-old Muslim. " The girl's family contacted the American Consulate in Jerusalem, and it was only thanks to their intervention that she was rescued and left with her family for the United States. The episode received virtually no international media coverage.

In another case, a Muslim family appeared uninvited on the doorstep of a wealthy Christian family in Judea and Samaria and demanded that the Christian family's daughter, known for her beauty, marry their son. Their son was already dressed up for his wedding, accompanied by the sheikh and fifteen Muslim men. To protect his family the Christian girl's father opened fire on the Muslim entourage, killing three and wounding ten. The girl's family immediately abandoned their home and fled abroad."

(...)

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/127592