c. 2003 Religion News Service
JERUSALEM _ The police van pulled up along the three foreign-born women, volunteers at the Christian charity Bridges for Peace, as they strolled along a quiet street on their way to work. Before they knew what was happening, the women _ from Papua New Guinea, Japan and South Africa _ had been swooped up and were being taken to a detention cell, bound for deportation.
Only later, the police discovered one of the women had a valid visa in a passport in her pocketbook. She was dumped, disoriented, in a busy marketplace. Eight hours later, Bridges for Peace officials won the release of the others, but only after posting a $12,000 bond guaranteeing the immediate departure of the South African from the country. Unbeknownst to her or to Bridges for Peace, her visa extension request filed some months before in the Ministry of Interior had been denied.
While Israel suffers the biggest tourist slump in its history, the Christians who still dare to come for prolonged stays and visits, including clergy, volunteers and seminarians, are having greater problems than ever in obtaining legal permission to remain in the country.
The visa policies have affected a cross-section of church institutions _ Catholic churches that serve a primarily Arab and Palestinian laity and recruit clerics from across the Arab world, as well as ardently “pro-Israeli” organizations like Bridges for Peace that seek to build bridges between Christians and Jews.
Within the Catholic Church, more than 100 priests, nuns, monks and seminarians are currently in legal limbo because the Israeli government has failed to renew or review visa requests, according to a recent report of a Catholic committee. In late March, the committee presented a detailed report on the problem to the Vatican’s envoy to Israel, Monsignor Pietro Sambi.
These foreign-born clerics are critical to the operation of dozens of churches, charities, schools, old age homes, and cloistered monasteries or nunneries that have been fixtures in the Holy Land for centuries.
Lacking valid visa extensions, they are unable to travel abroad, and are even afraid to move locally, for fear of arrest and deportation.
“This practice has become so extensive, and affects so many church institutions … that the Israeli government is now in material breach of the principle of freedom of religion guaranteed by its Declaration of Independence, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Fundamental Agreement,” the report said.
The Fundamental Agreement, signed in 1993, outlined the framework for the opening of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Vatican.
Israel’s high unemployment rate, a new police crackdown on illegal foreign workers, and the hostile attitude of Jewish ultra-Orthodox Interior Ministry officials toward non-Jews and even secular Jews all are factors that have played a role in the current visa logjam. In cases like the arrest of the three Bridges for Peace volunteers, the police and the authorities did not make a distinction between religious pilgrims and illegal foreign workers.
In addition, Christian communities _ even pro-Israeli Christian organizations _ have always lacked the kind of domestic political clout that would make their visa issue a priority among government officials. Ultra-Orthodox politicians regularly accuse Christian groups of “missionizing” Jews even though most church organizations studiously refrain from doing so.
A written request by Religion News Service for an Interior Ministry comment on the visa controversy, submitted in March, was never answered. A subsequent request this week to Israel’s Foreign Ministry for comment was also ignored.
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Hopes for a change in the visa policies initially rose following Israel’s January parliamentary elections, when the secular-minded Shinui Party gained significant political clout, wresting control of the Interior Ministry portfolio from longtime ultra-Orthodox domination.
Separation of religion and state has long been a pillar of the Shinui party. Israel’s new interior minister, Avraham Poraz, a leader of the Shinui Party, pledged to forge a more tolerant policy toward non-Jewish citizens and residents _ an attitude that would presumably extend to Christian clergy, students and volunteers.
Yet the churches and charities are still waiting for a sign of real change.
“Israel has something like 300,000 illegal workers, and they have about 250,000 people out of work, so I understand their problem,” says the Rev. Tony Higton, director of the Israel Trust of the Anglican Church, which manages institutions such as Jerusalem’s historic Christ Church and Guesthouse and its Anglican School.
“But it is also important for the authorities to realize that many Christian ministries like our own cannot afford to maintain our institutions only with paid staff,” says Higton. “We rely on volunteers. In addition, while we try to hire local people in paid positions, in many cases the people working in our institutions also have to have Christian convictions in order to do the job.”
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Many of the institutions impacted by the visa situation are prominent landmarks visited by countless Holy Land pilgrims and tourists. The Anglican Christ Church in Jerusalem’s Old City, established in the 1820s, is the oldest Protestant church in the Middle East, and its guesthouse has long been a way station for Christian pilgrims seeking to understand the Jewish roots of Christianity. Volunteers are key to its operation.
Catholic monasteries on the Galilee’s Mount of Beatitudes and Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives also have staff members who have been deprived of visas under the current policies, according to the Catholic report.
As the legal visa terms became shorter and renewals became more difficult, church institutions began to encounter more problems with maintaining staff continuity, says Clarence Wagner of Bridges for Peace. The organization allocates aid to Israeli needy collected from churches worldwide, and has won kudos for its work from many Israeli politicians.
“Whereas before we were allowed renewals of up to 27 months for our volunteers, in January 2003 we were told that volunteers would only be allowed to remain one year,” Wagner said. “We were also told that we would have to get the volunteer a special volunteer visa prior to his arrival in Israel, rather than permitting him to first enter as a tourist.
“That means someone who wants to volunteer and help Israel has to appear in person at the Embassy in Washington, D.C., before they can come to Israel. By the time the visa procedure is finished, they’ll be ready to go back home.”
In the case of clergy, the Ministry of Interior canceled an old policy under which a fixed quota of visas, which could be automatically renewed, were made available to every church and charitable institution. Instead, the visa of each pastor, monk or priest has to be subjected to a lengthy review process every year.
The ministry also canceled a rule whereby a visa belonging to a cleric who left the country could be reassigned to a newcomer, following a recommendation by the official in charge of church relations at Israel’s Ministry of Religious Affairs.
As a result, said the Catholic report, a number of elderly clerics who have been longtime residents of the country have suddenly found their visas are no longer valid.
“Some of the elderly religious personnel who are now being harassed have lived in the country all of their lives,” the report said. “Many have regularly contributed to (Israeli) Social Security. But when they now find themselves without a visa, they cease to have the right to receive their pension checks or to be entitled to the government’s health insurance program.”
Seminary students comprise another problematic category, particularly for the Catholic Church. A Catholic seminary in Beit Jalla, a West Bank suburb of Bethlehem, constitutes the major training ground for Catholic priests in the Holy Land, and two-thirds of the seminarians there hail from Jordan. Visas belonging to 22 Jordanian seminarians, the majority of Beit Jalla’s student population, are set to expire between May and September of this year, placing the very future of the seminary itself into question.
“We have been promised by the new government that they will return to the previous status quo, under which seminarians and clergy and volunteers could obtain visas upon the recommendation of the Ministry of Religious Affairs,” said Father Abu Sahelia, a spokesman for Jerusalem’s Latin (Catholic) Patriarchate. “But up until now, nothing has changed.”
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