Kidnapping of Israeli Teens Is Another Difficult Situation for Holy Land Christians

Palestinian Christians remain caught in the middle between the actions of Palestinian extremists and the Israeli government’s attempts to combat them.

A printer makes posters of the three missing teenagers at his workshop on June 23 in Jerusalem. Israeli soldiers have so far detained more than 300 suspects in the search for three teenagers who went missing in Jewish settlements in the West Bank on June 12.
A printer makes posters of the three missing teenagers at his workshop on June 23 in Jerusalem. Israeli soldiers have so far detained more than 300 suspects in the search for three teenagers who went missing in Jewish settlements in the West Bank on June 12. (photo: Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images)

JERUSALEM — Palestinian Christians say a massive search-and-rescue operation being carried out by Israeli security forces in search of three missing Israeli teenagers believed to have been kidnapped in the West Bank is causing them, like all Palestinians, a great deal of anxiety.

“We Christians are Palestinians, and so we feel what all Palestinians are feeling,” Bishop William Shomali, the auxiliary bishop of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, told the Register. “While our Christian communities and institutions have not been directly affected” by the military raids, “there is a general feeling of unrest. All of us feel the situation is deteriorating.”

Bishop Shomali emphasized that, while the kidnapping “is condemned by us, Israel’s reaction is very strong and causes many fears now and for the future.”

The kidnapping — and Israeli response — underscores the extent to which Palestinian Christians are caught between the actions of Palestinian extremists and the Israeli government’s attempts to weed out terrorists.

The Jewish teens — two 16-year-olds and a 19-year-old — disappeared on June 12 on their way home from school in a West Bank Jewish settlement. One of the boys managed to briefly call the police, but the dispatcher, thinking it was a crank call, failed to inform the military for several hours.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he has “unequivocal proof“ that the Islamist Hamas faction, which recently formed a Palestinian unity with its rival Fatah party, kidnapped the students, who were believed to be hitchhiking — a popular mode of transportation in the West Bank, where public transport is scarce.

Since the disappearance, Israeli troops have scoured parts of the West Bank and arrested more than 200 Palestinian men, the majority of them activists of Hamas, a group the U.S. and Israel have designated a terrorist organization for its killing of many Israeli civilians.

More than 50 of the Hamas men arrested had been released, along with more than 970 other Palestinians from Israeli prisons in exchange for the 2011 release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas five years earlier.

Following the teens’ disappearance, Israel erected additional roadblocks and launched door-to-door searches for the three missing teens in the Palestinian city of Hebron and nearby towns and villages. Hamas-associated institutions were searched in Nablus, Bethlehem and Hebron and Ramallah, according to Israeli officials.

Four Palestinians, including a 14-year-old boy, have been killed since the military operation began, some in clashes with Israeli soldiers.

“We have no intention of deliberately harming anyone, but our forces are acting as necessary for self-defense,” Netanyahu said at his weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday. “From time to time, there are victims or casualties on the Palestinian side as a result of the self-defense actions of our soldiers.”

The prime minister said his government is sharing proof that Hamas is behind the kidnappings with other nations and that “soon this information will be made public.”

 

Targeting Hamas?

Palestinians say the sweeping Israeli raids are meant not only to find the missing teens, but also to weaken Hamas by arresting its operatives and destroying its West Bank infrastructure. Netanyahu has vowed not to negotiate with any Palestinian government that includes Hamas — which is dedicated to Israel’s destruction — as a partner.

Father Johnny Abou Khalil, the parish priest of the Palestinian city of Nablus, said Christians and Muslims “are one,” and “what affects some Palestinians affects all of us, even if we’re not feeling it directly.”

Father Khalil, who is the spiritual leader of the city’s 220 Roman Catholics — the city of 350,000 has 650 Christians in total — said everyone he knows “is against the kidnapping of the three boys, but also against the way Israel is handling the situation.”

While the soldiers haven’t disrupted parish life, Father Khalil said, “there are more checkpoints; there is more security everywhere.” And extremists among the Jewish settlers, who are the perpetrators of most of the acts of violence committed against Palestinians and Israeli security forces in the West Bank, appear to feel emboldened by the vast military presence, he asserted.

Some settlers “are holding demonstrations and throwing stones. Our people fear for their safety when they commute from Nablus to Ramallah for work.”

(There have also been several instances in the past of Israelis being hurt or killed by stones thrown at their cars by Palestinians.)

Father Khalil said the Israeli army needs to “act more intelligently. It needs to focus its operation, not carry out a communal punishment.”

Like many Palestinians, he believes the operation goes beyond finding the teenagers.

“Israel wants to stop the unity government between Fatah and Hamas. We, meanwhile, hope and pray this will not turn into a third intifada,” or Palestinian uprising.

 

Seeking Reconciliation

Amnon Ramon, an expert on Holy Land Christians at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said Palestinian Christians are in a “very complicated situation.”

On the one hand, they live among Muslims “and are therefore connected to Muslim society. They speak the same language — Arabic — and in many ways share the same culture.”

On the other hand, the “growing influence of the Muslim radial organizations like Islamic Jihad and Hamas is creating problems for the Christians,” Ramon said. “Christians are against the Israeli occupation but call for a non-violent way toward peace, and the fundamentalists don’t want peace.”

Ramon noted that when Pope Francis visited the Dehaishe refugee camp in Bethlehem during his Holy Land pilgrimage, “he told the children there that [the Holy See] is against violence, even in the face of Israeli violence.

“Religion cannot be used to justify terror or hatred,” agreed Father Khalil from Nablus. “We as Christians ask both sides to reconcile. It’s time for our children and Israeli children to have peace. Enough is enough.”

Michele Chabin is the Register’s Middle East correspondent.

She writes from Jerusalem.