REILLY HOLDERNORTH
Palestinian kindergarten students gather outside of Good Shepherd Catholic Church in the West Bank city of Jericho, on April 1, 2019. (DOMINIKA ZARZYCKA/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES)
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2023, pp. 57-58
Waging Peace
ON NOV. 16, the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University held a memorial lecture to honor the late Rev. Drew Christiansen, S.J., who died on April 6, 2022. As a frequent consultant to the Holy See and a member of the Catholic Peacebuilding Network’s steering committee, Fr. Christiansen worked to raise awareness about the challenges facing Christians living in the Middle East.
The evening’s lecturer, Sami El-Yousef, the chief executive officer of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, provided a thorough analysis of the human impact of the various Christian organizations in the Holy Land.
While governing authorities have changed regularly in the Holy Land over the past 100 years, El-Yousef described Christian institutions as an enduring and essential constant for the people of the region. He noted his own immediate family’s unique history of living under Ottoman, British, Jordanian and Israeli rule in Jerusalem. “Four generations born in the same city, and yet each generation has a birth certificate issued by a different governing authority,” he pointed out. “Despite this unstable situation, what has been a constant safety net in people’s lives has been the church.”
El-Yousef noted that churches—spanning from the Orthodox Church to Protestant denominations—provide a large number of critical services in the Holy Land, such as education and healthcare, despite the fact that Christians make up less than one percent of the population of Palestine, and less than two percent of the combined population of Israel and Palestine. He said that an estimated 37 percent of the population in Palestine is in some way reached by a church institution. “It should be stressed that the services provided are in all instances open to all sectors of society, with no discrimination in any way,” he noted.
In Palestine alone, there are 296 various church institutions that play an important role in fostering societal infrastructure, El-Yousef explained. Among those, 93 specialize in education (many of them being Catholic schools), 19 provide health services and 47 are social services such as orphanages and senior citizen care centers. Elsewhere in the Holy Land, he noted that churches provide assistance to migrants in Israel and refugees in Jordan. In many instances, churches are the only institutions offering quality and dignified social services to local populations, he said.
With limited resources, El-Yousef noted that many Christian institutions are under constant financial strain, especially as donors grow weary of maintaining old buildings and aging infrastructure. Given that they serve all of society—Muslims, Jews, Christians and others—he said it’s critical that generous individuals keep the good work of the churches viable.
A perhaps even harder task is keeping Christians in the Holy Land, he acknowledged. Many leave due to political instability, security concerns and financial strains, he noted. As their numbers dwindle, El-Yousef said it’s important for Christians not to move inward, but to be integrated members of the broader society.
Politically, he said the churches often rely on their allies outside of the Holy Land to push for change. Churches are weary of authorities targeting their essential humanitarian work in retaliation for their political activism, he said. “We must be reserved at times with local authorities, to avoid conflicts,” he explained. “That is when the international groups need to be more vocal.” He said fellow Christians must not “simply give up if a conflict like ours has become chronic.”
—Reilly Holder
