From FrontPage magazine.com :: A Christmas without Christians by Abraham H. Miller:
Since the Palestinian Authority’s takeover of Bethlehem in 1995, under the Oslo Accords with Israel, Bethlehem has been transformed from a Christian city into a Muslim city. Bethlehem’s remaining Christians now live in a condition of dhimmitude (a reference to the second-class citizenship Islam imposes on Christians) in the city of Jesus’ birth.
The Palestinians brought with them a political system based on primitive tribal relations, where the power of one’s clan became a substitute for the law. As a consequence, Christians have suffered civil outrage and criminal violence without recourse to justice.
Christians have been refusing to live under these conditions and have been leaving Bethlehem in large numbers.
So who is to blame for the plight of Bethlehem’s Christians and for the birthplace of Jesus being emptied of Christians? Why, the Jews, of course! Who else?
That is the Orwellian message of the American Arab Anti-discrimination Committee (AADC) that held a candle lighting vigil on November 29, 2005 for Bethlehem’s Christians at San Francisco’s Union Square as the Christmas shopping season began.
To understand how the Christians became a minority and the victims of thuggery in the city of Jesus’ birth, it is important to see just what Arafat did to Bethlehem once he got his hands on it.
In 1995, Yasser Arafat gained control of Bethlehem and immediately expanded its municipal boundaries to include 30,000 Muslims living in neighboring refugee camps. Next, Muslim Bedouins living east of Bethlehem were incorporated into revised municipal boundaries. All this was still not enough for the PA to change the status of Bethlehem as a Christian city. But then Arafat created inducements for Muslims to leave Hebron and the area around it and move to Bethlehem.
With Arafat’s government by clan, by gun, and by terror, a land Mafia developed that began expropriating land from Christians. In 2002, two Christian teenage sisters were found with their throats slit and their genitals mutilated. Muslims claimed the Amer sisters were prostitutes, as if that were justification for torture and murder. But Christians familiar with similar incidents claim the girls were murdered to cover up a gang rape.
Read the rest of the article on the AADC’s spin that Christians flee Bethlehem because of Israel’s policies.
Isn’t it strange that Christians flee while Muslims stay and grow dramatically in number, and Christian property ownership recedes as Muslim property ownership expands?