Pastor Campaigns for Rights of Palestinian Christians
by Patricia Rice
The Rev. Mitri Raheb is visiting St. Louis to find volunteers for a medical
clinic his church plans to open. The Bethlehem pastor's brow furrowed as he
talked about his Lutheran parishioners' struggles to get to work or school. For
two years, their movements have been curtailed because of Israeli curfews in
their town.
Christian Arabs are the forgotten population of the Middle East, said the Rev.
Mitri Raheb. He is pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church, a few blocks from Manger
Square in Bethlehem on the West Bank. His church runs a parish school, an arts
and craft center and a gift shop, and it soon will open a medical clinic.
Many Americans mistakenly believe that Christians, many of them descendants of
the earliest Christians, have fled their homeland, he said in a Clayton hotel's
conference room, before a meeting. Raheb is in St. Louis to find volunteers to
help with the clinic. Just then, Raheb's cell phone rang.
With his phone at his right ear, a tentative smile came to his lips. His wife
was sharing hopeful news. Palestinian moderates, led by new Prime Minister
Mahmoud Abbas, had gotten Yasser Arafat to agree on a compromise Palestinian
Cabinet, just hours before a midnight deadline. Palestinian moderates had
thwarted Arafat's drive to fill the Cabinet with his supporters. Ten of the 24
Cabinet members were not Arafat backers.
Raheb, 40, a Palestinian native, has the challenge of preaching Jesus' message
to Palestinians to love their enemies. The news from home gave him a sliver of
hope that his countrymen might have a nation of their own again. Raheb steeled
his heart against excitement.
"If there is a lasting peace, a viable solution, we will get excited," he said.
"Not yet, our people have been disappointed many times." Raheb, his wife and
children are among the 50,000 Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem and among the
150,000 Christians in modern-day Israel.
The brain drain of Christian Palestine has been severe for two generations, he
said. About 95 percent of those who graduated with him from high school two
decades ago now live in the United States or Europe. Most went overseas to get a
college education and didn't return.
Employment opportunities and human rights for Palestinians in Israel compare to
those for blacks in South Africa under apartheid, he said. Until two years ago,
most Palestinian Christians in his town had tourism-related jobs. Tourists,
service jobs and sales of olive wood carvings and other religious art vanished
when the intefadeh, or Palestinian uprising, began.
Now, Palestinians are in need of health professionals.
A U.S. study showed that more than 85 percent of West Bank Palestinian children
suffer from psychological problems, including post-traumatic stress syndrome.
More than 65 percent of the children are malnourished. Today 5,500 displaced
Palestinians - Muslim and Christian - live in tin-roofed shanties without
running water in a refugee camp a few thousand yards from Raheb's church.
Following the Gospel message that Christians must be healers, Christmas Lutheran
Church has nearly completed the Dar al-Kalima Wellness Center, he said. The
health center will be the only facility to serve the camp. Basic health care
will be offered at the clinic. However, its special focus will be helping
children who are severely traumatized.
The clinic's opening is a year behind schedule. Construction was stalled for
months when the Israeli Defense Force put the Bethlehem residents on a 15-hour
curfew day after day. The Israeli military granted the residents of Bethlehem
permission to be out of their homes just 10 hours over 22 days during mid-March
and early April last year, Raheb said.
Early that April, 200 Palestinians sought sanctuary at the Church of the
Nativity, which is above the cave where many believe Jesus was born. For more
than five weeks, 123 remained in the church and Israeli tanks faced the church
doors. Eventually, Israeli soldiers entered Raheb's church for a few hours and
faced him down, damaging the building, he said.
Now, the church clinic will get $325,000 from St. Louis. The Lutheran Foundation
of St. Louis, a nonprofit group that distributes the assets from the sale of old
Lutheran Hospital, has pledged that sum.
Raheb was in St. Louis seeking medical professionals willing to volunteer at the
clinic from two weeks to a year. He met doctors, nurses and technicians at two
sessions here, sponsored by the Missouri-based Lutherans in Medical Missions. He
left St. Louis with a list of three doctors, three nurses and their spouses who
have volunteered to help with administration, teaching or construction.
First to put his name to paper was Dr. John Lautenschlager, 61, of St. Louis, a
veteran of 19 years as a Lutheran medical missionary and husband of Lutherans in
Medical Missions' board chairwoman Roberta Lautenschlager. The two others
doctors are brothers, Dr. Abe and Dr. Sam Hawatmeh of St. Louis County. Both are
Jordanian natives and Catholics. The brothers say many doctors will eagerly help
at the Lutheran clinic. Most patients, like the majority of the 204 children in
the Lutheran parish's school, will be Muslim. Volunteers pay their own
transportation and expenses. The chance to take their healing arts to the place
where Jesus healed is a strong magnet, many said.
"We are Catholics, the clinic is Lutheran, but that makes no difference; we have
only one God," said Abe Hawatmeh. Two years ago, Abe Hawatmeh took his four
daughters to Bethlehem for a "very emotional" visit. "They could touch where
Jesus was born, walk where he walked," he said.
All volunteers will visit the sacred places with religious guides, Raheb said.
His church began a two-year program to help Palestinian Christians pass Israeli
guide certificate tests. Few government-licensed guides - outside the shrines -
are Christians. The pastor hopes that medical volunteers can begin work safely
in the clinic early next spring, he said. Now it is not safe, he said.
"Next year in Bethlehem," he said.
The above article by Patricia Rice, Religion Writer, appeared in the May 3, 2003 St. Louis Post-Dispatch.