Church Siege Narrowed a Religious Divide
May 12, 2002

Los Angeles Times

By IAN URBINA and HANNA NASSER. Ian Urbina is associate editor at the Middle East Report. Hanna Nasser is the mayor of Bethlehem.

BETHLEHEM, West Bank -- The five-week standoff at the Church of the Nativity showed just how complicated a political role religion plays in Bethlehem. The siege, which ended Friday, worsened the religious fractures within the upper echelons of the Holy Quarters. But on the streets of Bethlehem, some interfaith bridges became stronger.

It was not the first time that the Church of the Nativity received a flood of unexpected guests. In June 1967, several hundred Palestinians took refuge in the church after the Israeli military entered the city. Most were Christian, none were armed and all returned home within days. But when several hundred Palestinians, Muslim and Christian, retreated to the church on April 2 in the face of the Israeli army, some of them were armed, and a violent deadlock ensued. Fighting broke out across the city. The clash heightened strains in what was once a functional but tenuous equilibrium among the resident clergy. Only after several centuries of disputes within Christendom did a 19th-century treaty divide authority over the site among the Armenian, Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox clerics who share jurisdiction today. At the start of the standoff, it was not the Palestinian gunmen but religious territoriality that held many of the clergymen hostage. Clerics did not want to leave the church for fear that they might compromise control over their portion of the shrine.

The latent political differences inside the church surfaced almost immediately, particularly between Armenian and Franciscan monks, after the Palestinian gunmen arrived. As food became scarce, the Franciscans disobeyed Israeli instructions not to share their rations with the Palestinians. A statement issued by a representative of the Franciscan order said that its clergymen would stay in the church to protect its sanctity and accused the Israelis of labeling the clerics "hostages" to build a case for storming the structure. The Armenians, on the other hand, barricaded themselves in their quarters and opted not to share their rations. When they abandoned the site, the Armenian monks said they had been held against their will, a claim undercut by the fact that the remaining Franciscan monks could go to and from the church without interference.

Christian churches have always served as places of refuge. In the Middle Ages, not even the king could remove criminals who took sanctuary in a church. Nonetheless, negotiators at the Church of the Nativity feared that the Israelis might either storm the site or irreparably damage it with sniper and tank fire. Gun battles and attempts by Israeli commandos to enter the church had already sparked two fires in the church's Greek Orthodox section.

The negotiators were also concerned about how the bodies of slain Muslims in the church would be treated. One of the Muslim Palestinians taking refuge was Khaled Syam, a 23-year-old policeman who was shot by a sniper while attempting to put out a fire near the church. Khaled's body was immediately taken to a grotto not far from the supposed site of the manger. Under Islamic custom, the body should have been interred by sundown, but Canon Andrew White, envoy for the archbishop of Canterbury, successfully pleaded against the burial, fearful that it would have allowed Islamists to declare the site a mosque once it housed the body of a martyr.

Outside the Holy Quarters, the siege in Bethlehem had a different effect on Muslim-Christian relations. Muslim and Christian Palestinians have always shared the goal of statehood, but their relationship has sometimes been strained. Two months ago, Christian Palestinians in the West Bank city of Beit Jala complained to international human rights organizations that Muslim Palestinians were deliberately using the rooftops of Christian homes from which to fire on neighboring Jerusalem.

For the last two years, tensions have run especially high in the city of Nazareth, where an Islamist group wants to construct a mosque adjacent to the Basilica of the Annunciation. According to Christian tradition, the basilica was where the angel Gabriel announced the impending birth of Jesus to Mary. The location is widely regarded as the third most important Christian site in the Holy Land. Despite reassurances from Islamist leaders that the mosque would not be a problem, the Vatican strongly objected to the construction plan, claiming that it would impede pilgrims' access to the basilica. As construction proceeded, Christian and Muslim Palestinians frequently clashed. The project was eventually halted.

Such religious infighting is certainly not unusual in the region. But the siege of Bethlehem further demonstrates that religion is not the only, or even the most important, divisive factor. As the fighting that began 18 months ago at the Al-Aqsa Mosque moved into the quarters of the Church of the Nativity, it became evident that the core conflict was rooted far more in land and politics than in religion. When tanks rolled into the West Bank, they did not discriminate between Muslims and Christians, nor did the Palestinians divide themselves along religious lines in resisting them. The Israeli aggression in the West Bank ended the altercations at the construction site of the Nazareth mosque. It also silenced the complaints of Christian residents in Beit Jala. The decision by the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, to join a Christian-organized protest against the Bethlehem siege was symbolic as well.

Interfaith efforts in the United States in reaction to the Bethlehem standoff showed there is no stark Muslim-Christian divide in this country. Some right-wing evangelical Christians backed Israeli actions. But many Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches played a pivotal role in grass-roots fund-raising for Palestinian relief efforts. Arab Christians in the U.S. mobilized major rallies, including one a month ago in San Francisco that drew more than 1,000 demonstrators. At the start of the Bethlehem conflict, there also was a sharp increase in the number of applications to join the Mennonite, Quaker and Catholic activists who make up the Christian Peacemaker Teams, self-described "aggressive pacifists" who stay in Palestinian homes in the hope of deterring Israeli demolition teams.

The siege at the Church of the Nativity has left scars on the city's 10-century-old facades. Tourists, who are the lifeblood of the municipal economy, will probably stay away for a while. Clerics will have to put aside their religious and political differences to repair the damage done to the Holy Quarters. For the rest of Bethlehem's residents, facing a damaged infrastructure and minimal food supplies, survival will continue to be the primary and shared concern.