With President Obama now at a safe distance, the takeover of Palestinian lands continues as before.
It is tragic to think that only four years ago in Cairo Obama had spoken of Palestinian statelessness as ‘intolerable’. On this visit he spoke only of settlement construction being ‘unconstructive’.
Clearly the US is not going to stand in the way of Netanyahu’s program of annexation and ethnic cleansing. How ironic for Bethlehem’s Christians that a new ‘via dolorosa’ should appear during Easter week.
Father Dave
Bethlehem today
source: www.worldbulletin.net…
Israel to build settlements on Palestinian lands in Bethlehem
A military order has been issued by Israeli authorities in the occupied West Bank for the illegal confiscation of Palestinian lands and orchards, leaving dozens of families without their main source of livelihood and without the ability to build homes.
A military order has been issued by Israeli authorities in the occupied West Bank for the illegal confiscation of Palestinian lands in the Khirbit Ed-Deer area, west of Nahhalin village, in the Bethlehem District, in order to build 70 units for Jewish settlers and public buildings, the Palestine News Network (PNN) had reported.
PNN quoted the deputy head of the Nahhalin village council Jamal Najajra stating that the lands in question are dozens of Dunams, located near the Beit Illit illegal settlement which is built on lands that belong to the residents of Husan, Nahhalin and Wad Fokeen, and are planted with olive trees.
Najajra added that Israel intends to build 70 units for Jewish settlers in addition to a number of public buildings.
He said that the new planned constructions are meant to connect the Beit Illit settlement with the Gavot settlement by illegally confiscating Palestinians orchards, leaving dozens of families without their main source of livelihood and without the ability to build homes.
Najajra added that the village council has contacted attorney Ghayyath Nasser so that the necessary appeals in Israeli courts can be filed.
Najajra also said that this is not the first time Israel has decided to annex Palestinian lands in the area. Israel previously confiscated lands in the Al-Jamjoum area, the Salem Valley, and Ein Fares where Israel dumps waste-water coming from the Beitar Illit settlement, PNN reports.
Filed under Uncategorized by on Mar 28th, 2013. Comment. 
This recently-published video is a compilation of images of Bethlehem – the ‘little town’ that was the birthplace of Jesus.
Today as then, Bethlehem is a city under occupation. Jesus was only born there because the occupying power (Rome) ordered Mary and Joseph to travel there in order to complete a census. The current occupying power (Israel) is not so intent on increasing the population of Bethlehem but seems more interested in sealing it off from the rest of the world!
Father Dave
If you can’t view the video, click here
Filed under map of israel and palestine by on Mar 11th, 2013. 1 Comment.
Indeed the occupation of the ‘Little Town of Bethelem’ is an indictment against the Western church. Why is it that most Western Christians treat the suffering of our sisters and brothers in Bethlehem with such callous indifference? Father Dave
source: www.huffingtonpost.com……
Christmas in Bethlehem: Image and Reality, 2012
by Philip Farah
Co-founder, Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace
If you have a miniature manger in your home today, or if you’ve heard a piece of music in the mall with “Bethlehem” in it, I — as a Palestinian Christian in whose life Bethlehem has played a big role — have a favor to ask you: Please go to your computer and do a search using these words: “Bethlehem Christmas wall.” Check out some of the articles and the images. If your curiosity is piqued, go a bit further and check out the images for “al Masara village,” or “al Walaja village,” two tiny villages near Bethlehem. I think this is an important exercise for anyone who has formed a mental image of the Little Town of Bethlehem during this holiday season.
Today, Bethlehem and the surrounding areas still have some of the holiest churches of Christianity, and they still vibrate with the prayers and celebrations of Palestinian Christians. But the Palestinians of Bethlehem, Christians and Muslims alike, are a people besieged. For Bethlehem today is surrounded by a host of physical barriers, including several miles of a concrete wall that is over 20 feet high, built by the Israeli occupation authorities.
This wall — deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004 — separates the Palestinians of the Bethlehem area from huge swaths of their land. Much of that land has been taken from them to build Jewish-only settlements that are also illegal under international law. These Jewish settlements surround the Palestinian communities of the Bethlehem area, hemming them into a limited geographic area, like a tiny Bantustan, isolating them from occupied East Jerusalem, the economic, cultural, and spiritual heart of Palestinian life. Just this week, the Israeli government announced that it had approved plans for new construction in the nascent settlement of Givat Hamatos, which lies between East Jerusalem and Bethlehem, a move swiftly condemned by European diplomats as a “game changer” that could end the possibility of creating a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
I was born and raised in East Jerusalem. For many years before I emigrated to the U.S., I accompanied my father, a devout Christian, on his annual walk from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Back in the late 1930s, he made a vow to make the five-mile journey by foot every New Year’s Eve. If I were to do the same thing today, I would be confronted by a wall that’s higher than, and as ugly as, the Berlin Wall, just a few minutes after departing. For the people of Bethlehem, the wall is far worse, because few of them are allowed beyond it to visit their holy sites in occupied East Jerusalem.
The images that you’ll see from my suggested web search are the reality of Bethlehem today. In your search, you might also see images of Palestinians involved in a non-violent struggle against the demeaning and pauperizing conditions of Israel’s 45-year-old military occupation and colonization of their land. The leaders of the non-violent Palestinian resistance against the wall in the villages of Masara and Walaja will often mention Gandhi and Martin Luther King in their discourse. These two leaders practiced very confrontational resistance, not the passive resistance that is associated with Jesus. But Gandhi and MLK never preached hatred against their oppressors, and today, the people of Bethlehem, Masara and Walaja welcome Israeli Jews who stand shoulder to shoulder with them in opposing the injustices of the occupation.
The reality of Bethlehem today has a great deal more to do with the message of the man that Christians refer to as the “Prince of Peace” than the Disney-like images of Bethlehem we see in our shopping malls. Jesus actually lived under an oppressive Roman occupation of his country. He identified the most with the poor and oppressed, and he preached equality between Jews — his own people, Samaritans and Gentiles. During this Christmas season, spare a thought and a prayer for Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians, who continue to struggle against injustice and oppression in the name of freedom, equality, and peace.
This story provides a lovely balance to the usual news of tragedy, racism and violence that (sadly) dominates this blog.
The positive light it sheds on San Francisco also provides an encouraging balance to the depressing news that came through earlier this month – that California has made criticism of the government of Israel illegal, at least in its Universities!
No wonder San Francisco is my favourite place on the US West Coast!
Father Dave
From here to Palestine
by Zahir Janmohamed
Oct. 16, 2012
source: www.sfbg.com…
Of the many things I adore about San Francisco, one of them is that the word “Palestine” is not treated like Voldermort’s name, the one that dare not be uttered. You can say you are Palestinian here and no one will freak out. San Franciscans, most of them at least, will not tell you — as Newt Gringrich did — that your culture is invented, or that your identity (or your struggle) is not a valued part of the tapestry of this city.
I am not used to this. I spent the past nine years living in Washington DC, where I became accustomed to meeting Arab shop owners who dodged questions about their country of origin. Some feared a backlash from customers. Others worried about government harassment and eavesdropping. One Yemeni shopkeeper near the Pentagon even went as far as creating to-go boxes with Americans flags imprinted on them, the words “we are proud of you” under each flag. Unfortunately, it’s like this now in many cities in the US, where to be Arab, Iranian or South Asian is to abdicate your ethnic identity, to pretend it’s just not there.
That’s not exactly true in San Francisco. This city isn’t perfect and it has its own ugly past and current struggles with racial integration — but San Francisco at least tries to inculcate its motto on all who are lucky enough to live here: just be who you are. You can fly a Palestinian flag outside your business and chances are you may even attract more customers because of it. And if you show up to work wearing a red, white and blue covered hijab or turban in the city, people may very well laugh at you.
Last week I walked through the Mission district interviewing Palestinian American business owners. On Mission Street, I saw my friend Ashraf sitting on a bar stool at the café he opened two years ago. The San Francisco born Palestinian-American, whose parents were born outside of Jerusalem, wore an SF Giants baseball cap and adjusted it often during our meeting, revealing a full head of hair already graying at the age of 34.
Ashraf remembers car trips with his parents to the Samiramis Grocery just down Mission Street. Samir Khoury, a Palestinian Christian from Ramallah who came to San Francisco in 1953, opened the iconic grocery store in 1972. For the longest time it was the only place where Ashraf’s family could buy zaatar or rent Egyptian movies. It always had everything we had back home, Ashraf says.
Ashraf points out that within a small radius of his cafe, there are a now number of Palestinian owned businesses, including Philz Coffee and Bi-Rite Creamery.
“But no one really knows these are Palestinian owned businesses,” Ashraf says. “And even if they found out, no one would really care.”
I tell Ashraf about a sandwich shop I used to visit in Washington DC where the owner insisted on telling everyone that he was Jordanian. One day the owner pulled me aside and confessed he was really Palestinian from Bethlehem but told people he was Jordanian because he thought it “sounded better.”
When Ashraf hears this he laughs. “It’s not like that here,” he says. “In San Francisco you don’t have to play that act.”
Zahir Janmohamed is a San Francisco writer and former Congressional aide
Filed under Israel and Palestine, israel and palestine articles by on Oct 19th, 2012. Comment.
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