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Are These the Seeds of a Miracle?
Mostyn, Trevor

I was deeply moved last week as I watched the Pope waving and smiling at the noisy crowds of Palestinian refugees in the Deheisha camp near Bethlehem, looking completely at ease as the glass box of his Popemobile bobbed up and down on its way. Bethlehem and the camp are in an area fully controlled by the Palestinian Authority under the terms of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords. The chaos of the event in the crowded camp was a far cry from the Israeli arrangements for the Pope in the Old City of Jerusalem or in Israel itself. A day later almost theatrical order was imposed by the Israelis at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in West Jerusalem with its eternal flame and tidy, seated audience. Similar marshalling was evident for the Mass at the Mount of Beatitudes (called Korazim by the Israelis) in northern Israel on Friday, which 80,000 worshippers turned into a Christian mega-festival. Even Maronites from the Lebanon – in principle unable to visit Israel since their Syrian occupiers do not recognize the Jewish state – were there, brandishing huge Cedar of Lebanon flags.

The Deheisha camp is almost entirely Muslim and extremely tense, reflecting increasing unhappiness throughout the Palestinian territories over the bitter reality of the Oslo accords: the dismal status of refugees, the hectic development of massive Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a ruthless system of identity cards which controls the movement of Palestinians, and rigorous and humiliating military checkpoints. The riots in Deheisha immediately after the Pope’s visit to the camp reflected this bitterness, directed at Yasser Arafat’s Sulta (government) and his rough, clumsy-handed security forces.

Wherever I went in Jerusalem and Bethlehem before the Pope’s arrival in Israel, Palestinian Muslims as well as Christians told me that “something wonderful will happen when the Pope comes.” They wistfully recalled the part his journeys to Poland played in bringing down the Communist empire, and referred to his many other visits, not least the one to Cuba. Desperately seeking symbols of hope, they noted the significance of his decision to stay with Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the apostolic delegate in the Holy Land, who lives in the Arab, eastern part of modern Jerusalem, rather than in Israeli West Jerusalem. Two septuagenarian, middle-class Muslim women, trapped in Ramallah because their identity cards no longer allowed them access to their hometown of Jerusalem, assured me over tea and cakes that the arrival of the Pope would be a “turning point”. However, there were a few dissenting voices. One was from a Catholic Palestinian living in a flat surrounded by flats of hostile Israeli pioneer settlers in the heart of the still mainly Arab Old City. “What’s the point?” he asked me in despair as a young settler woman eyed us angrily. “The West created this nightmare for us, and the Pope comes from the West.”

Deheisha dwellers told me that if they had understood the Pope’s words as he spoke in the courtyard of the camp’s school, they would have applauded wildly. But the Palestinian Authority – always ready to miss an opportunity – neglected to translate his words into Arabic. Moreover, security was so intense that the rear third of the courtyard was empty enough to allow camp children to play leapfrog and bored teenagers to banter and giggle, quite unaware that the Pope was speaking with passion and clarity about their suffering. As far as they were concerned, the old man in white with shaking hands was merely a holy man from the West, a world which had brought them these 50 years of misery. “Throughout my pontificate,” he told them, “I have felt close to the Palestinian people in their sufferings.” He spoke of “the sad memory of what you were forced to leave behind,” of the “degrading conditions in which refugees often have to live,” and of the “urgent need for a just solution to the underlying causes of the problem.” Unfortunately, the PLO grandee chosen by the Palestinians to introduce the Pope launched into a speech which was full of angry rhetoric about the Palestinian situation. It would have been more effective to have refugees from the camp describe quite simply what their lives were really like.

Both Palestinians and Israelis tried to manipulate the Deheisha visit, and a streamer placed above the Pope and Arafat proclaimed that “Palestinians have the right of return.” Some Palestinians maintained that the Pope was saying nothing new if he did not utter these magic words. Not to be bullied by either side, he did not do so, any more than at Yad Vashem he was willing to blame the Catholic Church as an institution for the Holocaust, a confession that Israelis sought but one he could not give, if only because it would have implied serious criticism of the silences during the Nazi era of Pope Pius XII whose beatification he has sanctioned. Nevertheless, by calling on governments to “implement agreements already arrived at”, he was in fact accepting both the right of Palestinians to a homeland and their “right of return” as enshrined in United Nations resolutions.

The Pope’s charisma and courage have had a profound effect on Israelis and Palestinians. He would have liked to come to the region earlier to fulfill a long-cherished wish, but for years there was no Arab-Israeli peace deal, nor had the Holy See recognized the State of Israel. On this crowning journey of his pontificate he wanted, once and for all, to erase the Christian libel against the Jews, who were destined, according to St. Augustine, to suffer for their deicide by wandering the world and witnessing the triumph of Christianity. The Pope, who has always condemned anti-Semitism, is determined that the Jews should be recognized and respected as a venerable religion and race, as Christianity’s “elder brothers”. Nevertheless, most critics believe that the Vatican’s recognition of Israel reflected political realities, not least the PLO’s own recognition of Israel, rather than an acceptance of any specific Zionist right to claim the land as a Jewish state.

The change in Christian attitudes had begun with the Second Vatican Council, which issued its declaration on the relations between the Church and the other religions, Nostra Aetate, in 1965. The text decried “hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time by anyone” and repudiated “all forms of anti-Semitism and discrimination.” The guidelines that followed in 1985, seven years after Karol Wojtyla became Pope, included the words: “Christian sinners are more to blame for the death of Christ than those few Jews who brought it about.” Last week the Israeli media were full of stories about the Pope’s kindness to Jews after the war as a young priest in Poland, then as Archbishop of Krakow. The debate over the role of Pius XII was treated in a balanced way, some Israeli writers recognizing the wartime dilemma of this Pope, others condemning his silence as a sign of terrible weakness.

But equally crucial to John Paul II is the status of the Christians of the region and of the security of the holy places. The Holy See’s 1993 agreement with Israel was largely aimed at obtaining these assurances, as was the agreement it signed with the PLO in February, which the Palestinians regard as a recognition of a Palestinian state. The Christian presence in Jerusalem has dropped from 20 per cent of the population in 1946 to a mere 1.7 per cent today, and if you visit the city, which now has only 10,000 Christians, you become aware of just how extensive are the empty church buildings there, some of them famous pilgrim sites, others large but little known, hidden behind their walls, like the Ecole Biblique, where one of Jerusalem’s most articulate priests, Fr. Jerome Murphy O’Connor, is based.

During his trip the Pope spoke on behalf of all Christians, which at times upset the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Diodorus I. There has been a considerable number of recent conversions from the Orthodox to the Catholic Church, partly because the Orthodox patriarchs have always been Greek – and so are seen as foreigners – whereas the Latin-rite Patriarch today is a Palestinian, Michel Sabbah. When he met the Pope on Saturday, however, Diodorus was visibly moved. “May the Lord hear your prayers and our prayers and restore his peace to this land of peace,” he said. In a similar spontaneous gesture, the Pope then called on the clergy present to recite together the Our Father, each in his own language.

Christianity in the region is like a honey-comb. The Catholics of the Holy Land are divided into six Churches (Latins, Melkites, Maronites, Syrians, Armenians and Chaldeans), the Orthodox into five (Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Coptic, Syrian and Ethiopian), and Protestants into two (Anglicans and Lutherans). All these Churches claim a jurisdiction extending to Israel, Palestine and Jordan. There are some 350,000 Christians throughout this region; they number some 150,000 in Jordan, 60,000 in the West Bank and 170,000 in Israel. Catholics make up about 148,000 of the total, with the Latins represented by the Patriarchate numbering about 70,000 in the three countries. Michel Sabbah is widely regarded as a Palestinian nationalist. For this reason some priests I spoke to believe that he was the wrong choice for patriarch, while Palestinians lionise him.

Outside the regular Churches are organisations such as the highly active Sabeel centre for liberation theology run by the charismatic Palestinian Anglican priest, Naim Ateek. He was on the platform at press conferences given by Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian Spokeswoman, Faisal Husseini, the head of the PLO in Jerusalem, and Afif Satieb, ambassador to the Holy See and PLO delegate to London. As a liberation theologian, Ateek was entirely excluded from the Pope’s itinerary, a source of considerable bitterness to him.

The Pope appeared to be in his element when he presided at the extraordinarily beautiful Mass in Bethlehem just before his visit to the Deheisha refugee camp. Clearly it was an occasion he cherished as he called for Bethlehem to become “the spiritual capital for Christians from throughout the world.” A 12-year-old girl hauntingly sang the Ave Maria without musical accompaniment while the Pope leant on his staff as if in sleep. The Franciscan priest responsible for creating the press centre overlooking the Manger Square, Fr. Riesh, believes the Pope to be a great mystic, and told me that he was meditating deeply at these times. Thanks to the Bethlehem 2000 Campaign, this lovely hill town has been given a face-lift, and Manger Square, with pretty shops and cafés around it, has the pleasant atmosphere of a square in Tuscany. The stone steps winding through the alleyways are gleaming white, a far cry from the days when the square garrisoned Israeli soldiers.

There were of course failures. One was the interfaith dialogue held on Thursday at the Notre Dame Centre on the old “Green Line” between East and West Jerusalem. The Grand Mufti, Shaikh Ikrema Sabri, refused to attend on the grounds that dialogue with rabbis was unbalanced and useless since they represented an occupying power, while Chief Rabbi Lau used the occasion to affirm that Israel saw Jerusalem as Israel’s “undivided capital”. Sabri later compounded the ill-feeling by claiming that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust had been exaggerated. The Palestinians had intended to make a grand statement by unfurling a huge Palestinian flag on the Haram ash Sharif platform (known by Israelis as the Temple Mount) but this came to nothing.

Despite these layers of conflict, the Pope showed on his brave and noble journey that he would not be manipulated by either side. At Yad Vashem he lamented the Holocaust and at the Wailing Wall he left a printed and signed copy of a prayer for the Jewish people which expressed sadness for the behavior of those who in the course of history had caused them to suffer. When he arrived in Bethlehem he called for a Palestinian “homeland” and in Deheisha he told the refugees that their “torment must end”. He pleased both sides with his strong words, but it was unlikely that he could satisfy the yearning of the Palestinians, who expected nothing short of a miracle.

“He planted seeds,” says the World Council of Churches representative in Jerusalem, Harry Hagopian. “He sets in motion a movement, a momentum. Primarily, he has affirmed the Christian presence here. Secondly, he has talked about issues of justice, dignity and security. He has talked equally well on the Palestinian side as he has done on the Israeli, Jewish side. For a Pope who carries enormous moral authority, to be able to articulate the concerns of both communities is an achievement in its own right.”

Palestinians and Israelis must now wait to see whether the seed the Pope has sown flowers or withers away.


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* Trevor Mostyn is the correspondent in the Middle East for The Tablet. This article is reprinted, with permission, from The Tablet, 1 April, 2000.