A Voice Crying in Holy Land

Scarcely had he been consecrated as the first Arab head of the Roman Catholic Church in the Holy Land when Michel Sabbah began sparring with Israel.

The year was 1988. The Palestinian intifada, or uprising, was in full swing and moving into the Arab neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem. Sabbah, appointed by Pope John Paul II to the post of Latin patriarch, went on Vatican Radio to make a very public appeal.

“I don’t think the [Israeli] authorities listen to the church or ever will,” Sabbah said. “But here I am, and I appeal to the Israeli authorities to abandon their repressive measures.

“The violent measures taken by the Israeli authorities . . . will never bring about calm, let alone peace, because violence breeds violence and leads to even stronger resistance.”

And so Sabbah set the tone for what would be stormy relations with Israel and sealed his position as perhaps the most controversial Christian in the land.

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The pope made his way across the Holy Land last week in an effort to promote peace and heal the 2,000-year rift between Jews and the Catholic Church. In Israel and the Palestinian territories, however, the historical friction between Jews and Catholics, marked by centuries of anti-Semitism, is further complicated because most Christians are Palestinians.

It is a tension inextricably linked to international politics and the fitful Middle East peace process.

Sabbah has told associates that the animosity Israel displays toward him is not because he’s a Christian but because he is an Arab. True or not, he is clearly a lightning rod for criticism and anger.

Israeli officials see Sabbah as nothing short of an ardent, politicized Palestinian nationalist.

His supporters, by contrast, compare Sabbah to the liberation theologians of Latin America, who speak out on behalf of an oppressed people against a dominant ruler. He uses his pulpit and his annual Christmas and Easter messages to denounce what he sees as discrimination and to call for an independent Palestinian state freed of “Israeli occupation.”

Born in Nazareth 67 years ago this month, Sabbah studied and worked as a priest in Jordan, Lebanon and France in addition to Bethlehem and Jerusalem. He has a doctorate from the Sorbonne and speaks classical Arabic, as well as English and French.

A short man with a round face and balding head, Sabbah was chosen by John Paul to be the first Arab to preside over the Catholic Church in this region. All patriarchs had been Italians since the Catholic Church was restored to the Holy Land in 1847 after its post-Crusades banishment. The pope wanted to send a message of support to indigenous Christians by appointing one of their own to the highest-ranking local church position.

As patriarch, Sabbah is responsible for the welfare of Roman Catholics in Israel, the Palestinian self-ruled territories, Jordan and Cyprus.

Under Sabbah’s pen, the church’s statements during the intifada repeatedly challenged Israeli sovereignty and complained of abuse. Until those intifada years, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, most Christian communities had been able to straddle the fence in their dealings with Israeli authority. But the intifada forced them to take a stand, and invariably they came down on the Palestinian side.

During the uprising, which eventually became a catalyst for breakthrough peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Sabbah ran an underground educational system for Palestinians that taught catechism and other subjects in people’s homes when military closures prevented free movement.

In his first Christmas homily as patriarch, Sabbah entered a tense, bleak Bethlehem. He canceled the traditional religious procession in the face of demonstrations and rioting that had claimed many Arab and Israeli lives that year.

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“The people, the Christian Palestinians in Bethlehem and the Holy Land, do not have the joy of Christmas in their hearts,” he intoned in the ancient Church of the Nativity during a Christmas Eve Mass that is broadcast the world over. “Some had a son or a father killed, others are still in prisons, and all face heavy military repression.”

Eleven years later, in last December’s Bethlehem Christmas message, Sabbah again touched on the most sensitive points dividing Israelis and Palestinians. He demanded “dignity and rights” for Palestinian refugees and freedom for Palestinian “political prisoners.” He said any solution for Jerusalem, a sacred city claimed by both Israel and the Palestinians, had to be based on “sharing and equality in sovereignty.”

The clearly political message rankled Israeli officials once again. Uri Mor, head of the Christian department in the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs, said at the time that Sabbah teetered on incitement of a “religious war.”

In a recent interview, Mor said that on a personal level he and Sabbah are friendly and often chat amiably in Arabic. But the formal and official relationship is a different matter.

“He sometimes forgets he is a religious leader,” Mor said. “He becomes very political. He makes statements that we don’t expect from a religious leader.”

But Mor said he is resigned to putting up with Sabbah’s irritating pronouncements.

“We cannot do anything about it,” Mor said. “He was nominated by the Vatican. What can we do?”

Sabbah declined requests for an interview for this story, citing his busy schedule of events associated with the pope’s visit. But his defenders say Sabbah is fulfilling the duty of a cleric who has seized the strain of Catholicism in which the fight for social justice is paramount.

He routinely denounces Israeli authorities for confiscating identity cards from Palestinians, for closures that restrict Palestinian movement into Israel, for what he calls the Israeli “siege” that is choking Palestinian life. Only rarely, however, has he criticized Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.

“He is standing up for the basic human rights of his people, people who cannot go from Bethlehem to Jerusalem freely, people who can’t get passports,” said Father Robert Fortin, who has lived and worked in this region for more than a decade. “Because the patriarch does not depend on the government, he can speak up where others cannot.”

Israeli officials blame Sabbah for fanning the flames of a dispute involving the Arab-Israeli city of Nazareth, Jesus’ boyhood home. The Israeli government gave permission to Muslims in the city to build a mosque near the Basilica of the Annunciation, the site where the angel Gabriel is said to have informed Mary that she would give birth to God’s son.

Nazareth Christians were furious, and Sabbah led the charge. Apparently at his urging, both the Vatican and American Christian groups issued scathing condemnations of the decision, putting the blame squarely on Israel. Israeli officials maintained that they were merely trying to reach a compromise.

In a letter drafted by Sabbah and sent to Israel’s president and prime minister, Christian leaders in Israel blasted Israel’s action as a “grave historical mistake.”

Sabbah has met, only twice and not until 1998, with Israel’s two chief rabbis, Eliahu Bakshi Doron and Meir Yisrael Lau, reportedly at the patriarch’s initiative. But there is no ongoing dialogue.