Paul KeenanIsrael’s security barrier is to spare the Cremisan Valley, writes Paul Keenan
A Christian community in the Middle East was saved last week, though it’s doubtful you read much, if anything, about the event.
Amid the ceaseless dispatches emanating from that tortured region, the story of the deliverance of one small community, and just in time for Easter, should have been an immediate feel-good story for news outlets. There were even ready-made quotes detailing a ‘resurrection’ for those at the centre of the story.
Sadly, in our ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ media culture, that crucial element was perhaps found wanting. And one can only speculate as to the reaction among certain western media outlets when it became clear that this positive story originated in Israel.
Specifically, the heart of the tale lies in a verdant zone between the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, or if you like, on the interface between Israel and the West Bank. This latter description is perhaps better illustrative of the nine-year struggle faced by the lay and Salesian religious communities of the Cremisan Valley, encompassing the predominately Christian town of Beit Jala and involving the snaking advance of Israel’s security barrier.
Security
It is a tale which had its happy ending in Israel’s Supreme Court on April 2 when a panel of judges ruled that the barrier, now beginning its encroachment across the valley towards offering increased security to the Har Gilo settlement, could readily find an alternative route in its aim without having to slash across the land and interests of the Christians.
The impact of the judgement cannot be overstated for the community. On its proposed route, the barrier’s completion would have created a situation where the male and female monasteries would have been separated between the Israeli side and the West Bank (the military offer of a gate on this point was deemed unacceptable by all), while the male monastery, famed for its production of Cremisan wine, would have been cut off from its storehouse across its vineyards. In addition, a school for some 400 students operated by the nuns would have been cut off from the homes of those students, whose parents would at the same time be cut off from the lands on which they harvest olives.
From 2006, when the proposed route became known, the barrier had become the embodiment of an existential nightmare for Beit Jala’s Christian community, which immediately began attempts to be heard above those voices insisting on Israel’s right to security. Indeed, in 2013, a magistrate’s court in Tel Aviv overruled the community’s concerns on this very basis and gave the go-ahead for the barrier’s advance.
While appeals at home appeared to have been expended, the Salesians worked to gain broader attention to the plight of Beit Jala. This included appeals to Popes and an invitation to foreign diplomats both to view the geographical reality for themselves and to lobby the Israeli government for an answer to the Cremisan plight.
The fruits of this approach
are to be found in the open-air Mass of January 24, 2014, celebrated in the grounds of the Salesian monastery at Cremisan. Led as always by Fr Ibrahim Shomali in an ongoing peaceful protest, this Mass was attended by ambassadors and representatives from Ireland, France, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Chile, Slovenia, Portugal, Sweden, Malta, Britain and the European Union.
That same month, an international delegation of Catholic bishops, joined by Ireland’s Bishops Denis Nulty and William Crean, toured the Cremisan Valley. Stressing Israel’s right to security, the bishops nevertheless called for the barrier’s route to be abandoned.
What impact such actions had on the thinking of judges hearing a fresh appeal from the Cremisan residents at that time can only be guessed at. However, within days of the high profile gathering at the Salesian monastery, a temporary halt was ordered to the barrier.
In making its order, the court was especially moved by testimony from a former colonel of the Israeli Defence Forces, Shaul Arieli, now a member of the Council of Peace and Security NGO, which specialises in bringing together experts in diplomacy and security towards creating peace. In his arguments for an alternative route for the barrier, Arieli was backed, in a letter presented to the court, by four major generals, two brigadier generals, a colonel and a police superintendent.
What was temporary just over a year ago has now been made permanent by the Supreme Court. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, said the decision, “coming before Easter is a joyous resurrection for us”.
And that final legal ruling is made the more significant by setting it into the context of current realities for Israel.
Security remains at the forefront of the thinking of many Israelis today; witness the March 17 election victory of Benjamin Netanyahu, a leader whose emphasis on security saw him all but written off by pollsters who viewed the nation’s economy as the key to victory.
Struggling no less than anyone else in post-bust economies, ordinary Israelis nevertheless opted to support messages of defence and continued barriers on voting day. In this, they were no doubt mindful of the latest car-ramming and knife attack staged by a Palestinian in Jerusalem on March 6, and the withdrawal the day before of security cooperation by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. And all the while, Hamas tunnel construction continues from Gaza.
More widely, just as the Supreme Court was offering its Cremisan ruling, the ‘neighbourhood’ around Israel became more unstable. In north-west Syria, the Islamist group Jabhat al Nusra, the al Qaeda affiliate, scored a notable gain in seizing the town of Idlib. It was subsequently reported that two Christians were seized there by another grouping, Ahrar al-Sham, and executed. Their crime? They owned an off-licence (what would such militants make of the Salesians’ activities?)
Meanwhile, Islamic State, despite pressures felt in Iraq, launched a surge towards the Syrian capital of Damascus and succeeded in seizing the Yarmouk refugee camp, home to thousands of displaced Palestinians. How many of the young men there, Israel must be wondering, will be conscripted for service in any future assault on its own borders?
And then, on another front, Jabhat al Nusra wrested control of a major border crossing between Syria and Jordan, another of Israel’s neighbours, threatening to spread the Syrian catastrophe in that direction.
Now more than ever, as security tops the agenda and Israel works to insulate itself from surrounding conflicts, vineyards and olive groves should hardly register on the collective mind set. And yet they did, and one small Christian community was relieved of the heartache that is the measure for so many others across the Middle East.
They turned trials into triumph.
Not a bad story for Easter.