杏MAP导航

By Marie Duhamel

On Monday, the patriarchs and heads of the churches of Jerusalem visited the village of Taybeh, east of Ramallah, which has recently come under heavy attack from Israeli settlers. The Church officials were accompanied by numerous consuls and diplomats, among them representatives from France, Belgium and Italy.

After a welcome by the mayor of the village, Suleiman Khourieh, and by Fr. Bashar Fawadleh, parish priest of the Latin parish of Christ the Redeemer, the delegation watched a film recounting the recent violence suffered by the inhabitants of Taybeh.

Appropriation and arson

In recent weeks, herds of cows have been deliberately brought in by settlers to the dry hillside near Taybeh where the olive trees grow, preventing the owners from accessing and cultivating their land and threatening the village economy, which is partly based on olive oil production.

An arson attack on a villager's property on Friday 11 July.

This daily reality has been compounded by another type of aggression. On Friday 11 July, settlers set fire to land belonging to local residents, right outside their windows. A fire also broke out behind the historic Al-Khader church, the parish priest of Taybeh’s Latin parish of Christ the Redeemer told Vatican News.

This was a repeat of the intentional fire set by settlers on Monday 7 July near the cemetery of the village, the oldest (and now only) Christian village in the West Bank.

Here too, the fire nearly completely destroyed one of Palestine's oldest religious buildings, the ruins of the 5th century Byzantine church of St George al Khader, where St Charles de Foucauld spent Lent 1898. The fire on 7 July was condemned by the priests of the three local Christian churches in a statement expressing the concern felt by their faithful. They also appealed to Church leaders and diplomats representing the international community in the Holy Land.

At least some of them came together on Monday, symbolically gathering at the site of St George's Church in Taybeh, in the occupied West Bank, 50km from Jerusalem.

Putting pressure on Israel

"The Israeli army was contacted, because it is the army that can go there and confront the settlers. The Israeli army is responsible, because the Palestinian army and the Palestinian police cannot get as far as Taybeh. The Israeli government has also been contacted. We are waiting", Bishop William Shomali told Vatican Radio.

The Vicar General and Patriarchal Vicar for Jerusalem and Palestine deplored the impunity enjoyed by the settlers who, he said, have appropriated one-sixth of the 2,400 hectares of land belonging to the villagers.

“We need to mobilise public opinion”, he explained, in order to “influence the Israeli government and those responsible”. That, he said, was the reason diplomats in Jerusalem were invited to join the trip: “They will talk about it with their leaders … it's like a stone thrown in the water, the circles created widen.”