c. 2004 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ The Rev. Mitri Raheb recalled a lecture he recently gave in Chicago. After the talk, a man asked Raheb why he had converted to Christianity. The Palestinian Lutheran pastor considered the question.

“It was like this man thought I had been converted by missionaries from the Midwest,” Raheb, 42, said in a recent interview in Washington. “I mean, Christianity has a stamp on its back that says, `Made in Palestine.”’

In fact, Raheb comes from a long line of Palestinian Christians, though their numbers in the region have fallen from 13 percent in 1967 to about 2 percent today, mostly because of harsh economic and political conditions in the Palestinian territories. For Raheb, Christian Arabs are a forgotten population in a struggle that has been largely painted as being between Palestinian Muslims and Israeli Jews.

Raheb is trying to expand people’s understanding of the conflict in his new book, “Bethlehem Besieged: Stories of Hope in Times of Trouble” (Fortress Press, $13, 158 pages, June 2004). People don’t forget just about the region’s Christians, Raheb said. People forget that the conflict is about real people at all.

“People see but they don’t see, hear but they don’t hear,” said Raheb, pastor of Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. “They think they understand the conflict, but they don’t because they don’t get life stories from people on the ground.”

Raheb’s book revolves around the Israeli siege at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in the spring of 2002. During the five-week standoff, more than a hundred Palestinians were barricaded in the church, which sits atop the cave where Jesus is believed to have been born.

Raheb’s church sits just a few blocks away from the Church of the Nativity. When the Israeli invasion began April 2, neither Raheb nor his family knew what was happening until a 4:30 a.m. phone call from an aunt who told them to turn on the television. Watching CNN, they learned that their hometown was being invaded.

Raheb, his wife, Najwa, and two daughters, Dana and Tala (then 12 and 8) waited in a sitting room with no outside-facing windows until the soldiers reached their house.

Raheb convinced the soldiers to leave, but not before they had broken down many doors, including the church entrance. “Israel wanted to smash this place of hope,” Raheb said.

Instead of giving in, Raheb fought harder. He rang the church bells during the four-month curfew that began with the invasion. After the curfew was lifted, he began rebuilding the church compound, which, in addition to the church, also houses Raheb’s home, the Dar Annadwa community center and a guest house. He also began writing the book.

“It was an act of non-violent resistance,” he said about writing. “So many people here don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. They don’t even see the tunnel.”

By most sensible standards, Raheb should have left the Holy Land long ago, like 95 percent of his high school classmates who have emigrated to Europe or the United States, the “new Promised Land.” Though he was born and raised in Bethlehem, he left for Germany to study at Marburg University, where he earned a Ph.D. in theology. He was even offered a job at the university. But he never considered staying away from his homeland.

He returned in May 1987 to serve as a vicar in Bethlehem, eight months before the first resistance started. Raheb found that his university education hadn’t prepared him to stop sermons because the fighting outside was too loud, or to talk to a neighbor who thinks becoming a suicide bomber is reasonable.

“If you study theology, you are basically trained to cater to a middle-class Christian congregation,” Raheb said. “Sure, we had classes about human rights and theology, but not about occupation. Not about how to live in a situation where human rights are daily violated.”

Raheb began to formulate a theology appropriate to the Palestinian situation, which he wrote about in his 1995 book, “I Am a Palestinian Christian.”

“We are confronted with an occupation that has a biblical name, so it is not just a political problem,” Raheb said. “This is Israel, the Holy Land. This is unique. If it were Iraq occupying us, the solution would have been easy.”

Raheb is a soft-spoken man whose voice does not get louder even when his words become angrier. And, while his book embraces an optimistic message of hope, Raheb has harsh words for those who he says are on the wrong side of the conflict.

“The ball is in Israel’s and America’s court because they have the power,” Raheb said. “Palestinians have no power.”

Raheb isn’t calling for anything radical. He simply wants leaders to adopt the two-state solution that so many of them have proposed. “Every day this answer is not implemented, a system of apartheid is further and further cemented,” Raheb said.

Raheb’s urgency is felt by others who have joined his struggle, including the staff that runs the growing Lutheran compound in Bethlehem _ currently the largest employer in the city. He travels when he can, trying to enlist the help of international donors and volunteers.

While Raheb believes the real political power is not in his hands, others have described him as a “divine irritant” and a “champion of his people.”

“He is a prophetic voice in a world that often does not want to hear the struggles of other people,” said Rich Bimler, president of the Wheat Ridge Ministries in Illinois, who has worked with Raheb. “He lives and speaks love and peace, rather than rightness and judgment.”

And even though Raheb gets frustrated, he said he’s not planning on going anywhere.

“I get angry. Sometimes I get outraged. But this makes our suffering worse,” he said. “The real art is to channel these emotions into something positive that will benefit others. This is the gift God gave me, to do exactly this.”

KRE/PH END FINUCANE