Christians disappearing from Bethlehem and the Middle East

The town of Bethlehem [בית לחם], the birthplace of Jesus according to Christian tradition, is emptying of its Christian population. From the Daily Mail:

It is one of the most sacred sites in Christendom, but there are no tourists queuing to see it.

Just 500 yards down the road, Joseph Canawati is not looking forward to Christmas.

The expansive lobby of his 77-room Hotel Alexander is empty and he says: "There is no hope for the future of the Christian community.

"We don't think things are going to get better. For us, it is finished."

Life for Palestinian Christians such as 50-year-old Joseph has become increasingly difficult in Bethlehem — and many of them are leaving.

The town's Christian population has dwindled from more than 85 per cent in 1948 to 12 per cent of its 60,000 inhabitants in 2006.

There are reports of religious persecution, in the form of murders, beatings and land grabs. [...]

The sense of a creeping Islamic fundamentalism is all around in Bethlehem.

A mosque on one side of Manger Square stands directly opposite the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, while in the evening the muezzin's call to prayer clashes with the peal of church bells. [...]

This isolation was heightened when, last year, Bethlehem found itself behind Israel's security wall, a 400-mile-long concrete barrier which separates Jewish and Palestinian areas and is designed to stop suicide bombers - in 2004, half the Israeli fatalities caused by such attacks were committed by extremists from Bethlehem. [...]

The terrorists obviously chose the town of Bethlehem as a staging ground for strategic as well as symbolic reasons. If Israel had build its security wall to include Bethlehem, it would have left itself vulnerable to attack. By excluding Bethlehem, however, Israel is effectively strangling one of the holy places of Christianity and thus earning the ire of Christians. Either way, the terrorists win.

Here are two articles about Christian disapproval of the Israeli wall due to its isolation of Bethlehem:

• Yahoo! News: Anglican leader criticizes Israeli wall
• Catholic online: Catholic church to replace Nativity scene with replica of Israeli wall

The following article from Times Online begins by placing the blame for the flight of Christians from the Middle East squarely on the shoulders of the West:

Christians in the Middle East have paid a high price for the Iraq war, the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad and the Pope’s controversial remarks about Islam.

Egyptian Copts, Iraqi Chaldeans and the Palestinian Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant communities have faced violence and even death at the hands of their Muslim neighbours. [...]

The problem with this theory is that Middle Eastern Christians have been persecuted by and "faced violence and even death at the hands of" their Muslim neighbours long before the relatively recent events mentioned above. The article is accompanied by the following graphic and even notes that the flight of Christians from the Middle East started more than a century ago:

Christians in Jordan and other neighboring states began leaving for the West more than a century ago to escape the poverty of the Ottoman Empire. Estimates put the number of Arab Christians living in the diaspora at 4 million, with between 10 million and 15 million living in the Middle East.

It is a pity that the West, which is ostensibly Christian, does not pay more attention to the plight of Christians in the Middle East.

南無阿彌陀佛