Christians Under Attack

The inauguration of "God's tower blocks" follows a modern-day exodus of Christians from the town of Christ's birth in the Palestinian West Bank, where the once prosperous majority community is now an ever-dwindling minority. There are 48 flats in the twin holy towers, which have just been completed away from the centre of Bethlehem, where some Christians say they face discrimination from ever more extremist Muslim elements.

"My son John couldn't even play with Muslim boys," said Mirvat Murqus, a 34-year-old mother of three. "They hit him and called him names. My children were afraid. I couldn't leave them for a minute. Two years ago in church the father said if anyone was having problems, they should apply to him [for housing]. I think maybe there were thousands of applications."

The plight of Christians in Bethlehem, and farther afield in the Middle East, was highlighted last week by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who blamed the British and American intervention in Iraq for putting the safety of Christians at unprecedented risk across the region.

"The first Christian believers were Middle Easterners. It's a very sobering thought that we might live to see the last native Christian believers in the region," the archbishop said, on a trip during which he prayed at the Bethlehem grotto where Jesus is said to have been born. He said extremist attacks on Christians were becoming "notably more frequent".

Last month Father Amjad Sabbara, of St Catherine's Franciscan church, which is behind the £1.8 million housing scheme, told Mrs Murqus and her husband Julius that they had been selected to move into a flat.

"Of course we were delighted when our names were chosen," said Mrs Murqus, as her children played in front of the Christmas tree. Had they not been, she said, her family might well have joined the stream of Christians leaving, or hounded out of, the world's most celebrated "little town".

"I have four aunts and they have all left for America. My sister has left for Canada," she said. "Before we got this apartment she kept telling us to join her there, but now she is happy we got this place." In the office of St Catherine's, parish secretary Victor Baboun knows all about the temptations to move away.

"Hundreds of families have left in the past few years," he said. "Even my own sister and brother have moved away, so the flats are a way of rooting the Christian population in town." Mr Baboun said that of Bethlehem district's 60,000-strong population, about 12,000 were Christian, or 20 per cent. That is a dramatic decline from 50 years ago, when Christians represented more than 90 per cent of the town's residents.

But it is not only the rising tension between Palestinian Christian and Muslim that is driving people out.

"The reasons are not just political," said Mr Baboun. "They are also economic." The tourist and pilgrim trade has plunged since 2000, when the second violent Palestinian uprising, or intifada, began.

"My husband is a merchant," said Mrs Murqus. "The church subsidises our rent and if we can't pay they are happy to wait." The £110 a month for the Murqus family's sparkling new flat is well below market price, as are the fees they pay for the children to attend St Joseph's, the local school. "The Church has helped many Christian families stay here," she said.

From the fourth-floor kitchen window of the family flat, the great concrete slabs of Israel's "security barrier" are visible a few dozen yards away. Built to keep suicide bombers out of Israel, it now encircles Bethlehem and has played a crucial role in cutting off the holy town from the rest of the world – a fact that Rowan Williams also bemoaned, saying it symbolised what was "deeply wrong in the human heart".

In the parish office of St Catherine's, Mr Baboun shares the archbishop's bleak outlook for the future of Christianity in the region. "I don't see many pilgrims coming in for Christmas," he said. "And as for getting out? I used to work for 19 years in Jerusalem but then Israel refused to give me any further travel permits so I lost my job.

"We are struggling even to maintain our numbers as the other [Muslim] population grows. So we just become ever more a minority

POSTED BY/http://www.telegraph.co.uk