A Catholic monastery and convent in a secluded valley
outside Bethlehem has lost a seven-year legal battle against the
building of Israel’s separation wall on its land.
The Society of St Yves, a Catholic human rights
group which argued the case on the monastery’s behalf, said an Israeli
appeals court had endorsed a plan to expand the barrier it had built in
the area.
The wall would surround the convent on three sides and cut it off from most of its land, St. Yves said in a statement.
Salesian monks and nuns tend lush vineyards and
olive trees on terraced hillsides under the gaze of Israeli settlements
there. A convent school teaches 400 local children.
Israel
started building the barrier, a mix of metal fencing, barbed wire and
concrete walls, in 2002 in response to a wave of Palestinian suicide
bombings. It says the barrier keeps its citizens safe from militants.
St Yves argued “that the plan would violate
international law and conventions protecting religious minorities and
the right to education and freedom of religion”, said Anica Heinlein, its advocacy officer.
Around 50,000 Palestinian Christians, including
17,000 Catholics, live among 4 million Muslims in the Israeli-occupied
West Bank and in Gaza.
They say Israel’s checkpoints and separation barrier cut them off from their neighbours and holy places in Jerusalem.
Some 90 per cent of Palestinian Christians live
in a 20-km (13-mile) stretch from Ramallah and East Jerusalem to
Bethlehem - an area locked in a labyrinth of Jewish settlements,
Israeli-only roads and a drab concrete walls.
Built mostly within occupied land and not on
the “Green Line”, which was Israel’s de facto border before the 1967
Middle East War, the barrier inside the occupied West Bank is deemed
illegal by the United Nation’s International Court of Justice.
The Palestinian Authority
says the Christian population in the occupied West Bank has shrunk over
the last three decades due to emigration, but it lacks accurate
figures.
Israel says the exodus stems from a fear of radical Islam.
Palestinian officials resent this, saying
Israel’s occupation causes many to choose emigration, but it is easier
for Christians due to historic ties with co-religionists abroad.
“The occupation hurts Christians and Muslims
both, but affects the Christian community more because it’s a smaller
percentage of the population,” said Xavier Abu Eid, a diplomat in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
“This is a matter of their survival, as this is one of the last pieces of land the community owns,” he said.
Israeli president Shimon Peres will meet the newly elected pope next week during a visit to Italy.
The two men are due to discuss ties between
Israel and the Vatican and improving relations between Christians and
Jews.
It was not immediately clear if the new pontiff would raise the
issue of the monastery.