Ramallah: As Jewish colonists have recently escalated attacks on Christian and Muslim holy sites in the West Bank, Christian leaders have condemned Western silence over these transgressions.
The attacks, which regularly target Palestinian Muslims, seem to have spread to include Christians in the past couple of months with hateful graffiti being sprayed on church walls.
While Arab Christians in the Middle East usually get support and protection from fellow Christians in Western nations, Palestinian Christians say that Western nations are turning a blind eye to Jewish terrorism.
Historically, the world has witnessed Zionist terrorism that has been kept separate from the official record of the Israeli government.
“Western countries fully support Israel and their colonist projects on Palestinian land,” says Dimitri Diliani, President of the National Christian Coalition in the Holy Land. “These attacks prove Jewish colonists’ intolerance against anything that is not Jewish,” he told Gulf News.
Even though Western nations are Christian nations, Diliani says that Palestinian Christians do not see any special bond with them, especially as they ignore serious human rights violations by the Israeli state.
“Christian Palestinians belong to the Arab and Muslim culture and traditions, just as Christianity is integral to the Arab and Muslim culture, history and tradition,” he added. As for the attacks, Diliani says Israel does not discriminate between Christian and Muslim sites. “The non-Jew is “the other” which means all Palestinians,” he said.
Hanna Amira, who heads the Higher Presidential Committee for the Churches’ Affairs, believes that attacks on holy sites are aimed at forcing the Palestinians to abandon their land and move out of it. “The attacks on the holy sites have official and public aims including to place massive pressure on the staff of the churches and to secure the removal of Muslim and Christian Palestinians,” he said. “Israeli colonists want to send a message to the churches in the Holy Land that there will always be provocation and attacks,” he said. “The attitude of the world and the West is extremely suspicious. Western countries should review their policies to take into account the Jewish attacks against the churches.”
