Jesus’ Birth Place is Danger Zone for Christians

He wasn't able to say much, and she could tell something was wrong. It turned
out to be the couple's last conversation.

The next day, October 7, 2007, Ayyad's body was found marred by signs of
torture and riddled with the gunshot wounds that killed him.

Hanna Massad, pastor of the Gaza Baptist Church-the only evangelical church
in the Gaza Strip-said Ayyad was the first known martyr in Gaza and most likely
was killed for refusing to convert to Islam.

Massad shepherded a small flock of 200 or fewer believers amid a sea of some
1.6 million Muslims on the narrow coastal strip bordering Israel and Egypt.
Since the militant group Hamas took control of the Strip in June 2007, it has
been dangerous to adhere to anything but Hamas' brand of Islam and politics.

“When you say in Gaza, 'The Lord is my shelter, the Lord is my refuge,' you
mean it literally,” Massad says. “As a Christian you live between the fires: the
fire of the militants and the fire of the Israelis and the siege [the closure of
Gaza's borders], and also the fire of the nominal Christians who blame us.”

Massad says that after Ayyad's murder, evangelical Christians were under
surveillance, and many stayed home for fear of being followed. The Israeli army
secured exit visas for about a dozen families in Gaza, including the Massads and
Ayyad's wife, children, mother and siblings. But it took two harrowing weeks to
receive permission and get the families out of the simmering Strip.

In Bethlehem, a Palestinian city in the West Bank, this small band of Gazans
joined another shrinking minority of Christians, both traditional-including
Greek and Armenian Orthodox, Catholic and others-and evangelical. Christians
made up more than 80 percent of the population in 1948, but have since fled the
area en masse and immigrated to Western nations. Now less than 20 percent of the
population of Bethlehem and its suburbs, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour, are
Christian, according to most estimates. Only 2 percent of all Palestinian
residents are Christian.

Though the media broadcast the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on a regular
basis, they seldom report that Christian Palestinians are caught in the
crossfire. Many are leaving the region due to a combination of economic and
religious reasons.

“Currently the Christians are a shrinking and imperiled minority,” says
Justus Reid Weiner, a human rights attorney who has championed the Christian
Palestinian cause. “Their percentage as well as their absolute numbers are
falling year by year. Their neighborhoods, schools, universities are, by any
measurement, no longer Christian.

“If there isn't some sort of dramatic change in the next 10 to 15 years, I
would predict there would no longer be a functioning Christian community in the
Palestinian territories,” Weiner says.

No Law and Order

Interviews with several Palestinian Christians and statistics from the
Israel-based Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center show that the number
of attacks on Christian and Western institutions by radical Muslims has
escalated in the last decade. Hamas set a menacing tone when it took over the
Gaza Strip in June 2007. Militants attacked and vandalized a monastery and
church as one of their first acts. Since then, Christian and Western schools in
Gaza have been broken into and vandalized, and both the Bible Society where
Ayyad worked and the YMCA were firebombed.

“There is not really much law for believers-Christians-in Gaza,” Massad says.
“People say maybe there's more security, but for us as Christians we don't feel
it is safe for us. Two years after the uprising, in September 2000, things
became more difficult, more militant, more religious, more fanatic. Even at that
time we didn't feel it was safe. But it became more dangerous after Hamas came
to power.”

An investigation into Ayyad's death has produced no arrests, and the killers
remain at large.

After the Hamas takeover, many Christian men in Gaza began to grow beards,
and many women donned head scarves so as not to draw unwanted attention. The
Gaza Baptist Church was broken into and thousands of dollars' worth of equipment
was stolen or destroyed. Warring factions also used the church as a hideout from
which to shoot at their rivals.

Christians in the West Bank have more freedom but are still vastly
outnumbered and face persecution. Isa Bajalia, an evangelical pastor in
Ramallah, fled to Jerusalem this year after being threatened with the same fate
as Ayyad if he did not give away his land. Palestinian authorities refused to
help him.

Christians say that Muslim gunmen used their homes in the Bethlehem suburb of
Beit Jala to shoot at an Israeli neighborhood across the border. Doing so caused
the return fire from Israeli soldiers to batter Christian rather than Muslim
homes. In February 2002 a Muslim mob, including Palestinian Authority Special
Forces, burned Christian businesses and attempted to destroy the Greek Orthodox
and Roman Catholic churches in Ramallah.

Also in 2002, dozens of terrorists commandeered Bethlehem's Church of the
Nativity-Jesus' historical birthplace-for 39 days during fighting with Israel.
Israeli troops refused to storm the church, which was rigged with explosives, as
more than 200 nuns and priests were trapped in the building. The Muslim gunmen
desecrated the church and stole religious items on their way out.

Rapes and forced conversions of Christian women have been reported from all
the territories. But because the Palestinian government usually favors Muslims,
many victims don't bother filing complaints.

“Basically Christians are without recourse,” Weiner says. “Nobody sticks up
for them or protects their interests.”

The story is worse for Muslims who convert to Christianity-an act punishable
by death according to Islamic law. Few believers will speak of Muslim converts
or publicly associate with them to avoid endangering their and the converts'
lives.

But one convert in particular has no qualms about discussing his own past.
Tass Abu Saada-once a Muslim who made hajj, or “pilgrimage,” to Mecca
many times; who supported the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat; and who
shot at Israelis during one of the Palestinian uprisings-was discovered by Hamas
to be a Christian. He was labeled a “Zionist traitor.” On its Web site, Hamas
threatened to “shred” his body.

Abu Saada says many Muslims have come to the Lord but that he currently has
no contact with them. “They are in deep, deep hiding, but I know in the midst of
that darkness in the Gaza Strip God was moving. Jesus was appearing in dreams.

“When I was there, there was a revival going on. People were having visions
and dreams of Jesus, and they didn't even know why or didn't even know who Jesus
was,” he says. “They came and asked questions. When we are asked, we respond.”

Despite the threats, Hamas did not realize that Abu Saada and his wife,
Karen, were living in Gaza for more than a year, and had built a kindergarten
and taught English. More than 3,200 youngsters graduated from their school of
“democracy.”

Abu Saada, who describes his testimony in his autobiography, Once an
Arafat Man, was born in Gaza but lived in Saudi Arabia and the United
States, where he became a believer. After Ayyad's murder in October 2007, Abu
Saada was advised to leave the Strip along with other Gaza Christians.

However, according to one Palestinian Christian minister, there is no reason
to leave. “Actually we have full freedom to minister in our churches; we have no
persecution whatsoever from the Palestinian authorities,” claims the Rev. Munir
Salim Kakish, president of the Council of Local Evangelical Churches in the Holy
Land. “I put articles in Al-Quds newspaper advertising my church, and …
it is evangelistic. If anyone tries to attack us, the Palestinian Authority
helps us.”

Kakish runs a home for needy children in Ramallah, West Bank. It is supported
by the Palestinian Authority, which sends children to him, even Muslims. He also
pastors a church there and in the Israeli town of Ramle. Kakish says that the
problems the Palestinian Christians face are political, economic and cultural,
not religious.

“There are ways some of them are [evangelizing] that I don't agree with,” he
says. “Sometimes they ask for it. They do things unwisely. The Bible says to be
wise.

“Gaza is boiling-you don't need to add to the fire more wood,” he continues.
“When the government says, 'Don't spread the gospel openly,' you must be wise.

“When you want to work with Muslims, you have to realize you might pay with
your life. If someone gets saved, someone is going to come after you.”

Kakish also places more blame on Israeli persecution than Muslim persecution
for the flight of Christians from the Holy Land. And he isn't alone.

Many traditional and some evangelical Christians consider being Palestinian a
unifying force for Christians and Muslims in the territories, with their common
enemy being the “occupier,” Israel.

Revival Despite Persecution

Politics and persecution aside, the power of the gospel is still evident. For
example, the news of the salvation of a prominent Hamas leader's son, as
reported in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, has rocked the Palestinian
territories. Ministers in the West Bank say that tensions have soared since it
was reported last summer. The young man, Joseph, is in hiding in California.

Sheikh Hassan Yousef's son gave his life to Jesus after a yearlong spiritual
search that began when he was invited to a meeting. He went out of curiosity but
then started to read the Bible in secret to learn more.

“A verse like 'love thine enemy' had a great influence on me,” he says. “At
this stage I was still a Muslim and I thought that I would remain one.”

Eventually Joseph gave his life to Jesus, though he didn't immediately tell
his family. When this story was published in the local media it rocked the West
Bank-a result he predicted.

“You'll see, this interview will open many people's eyes, it will shake Islam
from the roots, and I'm not exaggerating,” he said at the time. “What other case
do you know where a son of a Hamas leader, who was raised on the tenets of
extremist Islam, comes out against it?”

Indeed, Arab ministers who travel to the West Bank report that since the
interview tensions have soared-but so have curiosity and hope.

“One of the biggest things is that Muslims used to say that Muslims will
never become Christians, and now they realize they can,” says one man who asked
that his name not be used. “A barrier is broken-that is a very big
breakthrough.”

Though believers are guarded in nearly all Palestinian towns, the gospel has
been openly shared in Jericho without much opposition. Isaac Nusseibeh, from a
prominent Muslim family in Jerusalem, describes his salvation in the ancient
biblical city. He met some American tourists who asked if they could pray for
him.

“I started shaking. Someone came to me in a vision and said, 'Isaac, you must
come to Jesus,'” he relates. “Jesus was dressed in white, and He shook me.”

Unlike converts in other cities, Nusseibeh is openly Christian now and works
with an organization in Jericho handing out Bibles and translating into Arabic.
In the offbeat Jericho outpouring, women still wear their Muslim head scarves
but worship Jesus in Christian gatherings, more openly than in many other
places.

Another new development is Spirit-filled Arab believers. Most traditional
Christian Arabs are not Charismatic, and even evangelicals tend to be
more conservative than Western Christians. But in the last two years, a
Spirit-filled Arab ministry named Upper Room was established. Andre Mubarak
points out that this makes them a minority of a minority.

“Always, minorities make the most change in history,” he smiles. “All
Christians leave the country, but for me, as a believer Spirit-filled, I want to
be a light. Imagine Jerusalem with no Christians.”

Perhaps one of the greatest ironies, Massad says, is that Pauline Ayyad, wife
of martyred Rami Ayyad, has returned to Gaza and is now leading Bible studies
and women's meetings in her home.

The Church's Response

Christian Palestinians, almost without exception, say they are neglected by
the church at large, especially by Christian Zionists who come to Israel to
support the Jewish state. Weiner explains his shock at the lack of worldwide
Christian interest in the Palestinian plight when he took up the cause more than
a decade ago.

“With Christianity being the largest religion in the world, especially
dominant in wealthy countries, what interest could the Palestinian Authority
have in making the lives of these people difficult?” he asked himself at the
time. “So often I felt like I was speaking to the deaf. So often I felt it was
essentially hopeless, that these people would just suffer.”

The subject of Israel is a sore point for many Christian Palestinians who
must endure checkpoints, border closures, stringent security checks and
sometimes outright harassment. Many carry generational bitterness toward Israel
for their loss of ancestral homes and land.

A few Palestinians have taken a stand on Israel's right to exist and to own
the land-a conviction that has drawn death threats and bullets in some cases.
But all still empathize with the plight of the Palestinians in the current,
desperate situation.

“Yes, we have to stand for the right of Israel to exist, but that is not on
the expense of the Palestinian people,” Abu Saada says.

Abu Saada encourages Christians to “make sure that they bless the Palestinian
Christians as well” when they visit Israel.

“Seek them out, bless them, pray with them, eat at their restaurants, stay at
their hotels,” he says.

He explains the struggle he had, and that most Arab Christians have, to read
the Old Testament. “They want to believe church replaced Israel,” he says.
“'Replacement theology' is from the devil himself.”

Massad says it wasn't easy for him to love the Jewish people after they
caused his mother to suffer. A refugee from Jaffa, his mother moved to Gaza
during Israel's 1948 War of Independence and fully expected to return to her
home someday.

“But because I experienced the love of God, we're able to forgive and to
live,” he says. “I once heard Messianic Jews praying, 'God, give me enough love
to be willing to die for my Palestinian brothers.' We are honored to be part of
this body and are honored to hear they stand by us.”