I DIDN’T realise that my “normal” was actually the most abnormal kind of normal until I was asked recently, “How are you so normal?” That question challenged everything I had lived through, and even what I had not. As a Christian Palestinian from Bethlehem, I have been trying to work out what “normal” means in a life shaped by occupation, faith, and resilience. I was born in 1996 in Bethlehem, the city of Jesus’ birth. I grew up with three older siblings, attending the Catholic school just a few steps downhill from the Nativity Church. My early years were steeped in faith and tradition – but also in fear. I grew up attending mass every Sunday with my family and friends and going to the various youth activities that enriched my faith, especially in my early teens. I had Greek Orthodox friends who would attend Catholic mass with me quite regularly. I was also part of the church choir during high school and went on the yearly Franciscan march where we camped across the holy land for two weeks with loads of laughter, fellowship and faith-sharing. Something about Bethlehem will keep it always a magical safe haven for my heart which I will always long for. In 2000, the Second Intifada began. I was four years old when Israeli soldiers invaded our city, terrorising everyone who lived there. The worst was yet to come, when in 2002 Bethlehem went under full military siege for 40 days. Soldiers invaded our home almost every other night. I remember waking up multiple times at 2 a.m. to Israeli soldiers in my bedroom, yelling at us to leave our house while they turned it upside down and trashed it. Under the siege, we were only allowed one hour a day to leave the house, when my father would go to collect some food from the aid trucks while I played on my bike. The bike I had was not in a great state, as the chain kept coming off and one of my Muslim neighbours took it upon himself to fix it for me every single time. Two particular nights during my childhood stand out in my memory. The first was during the siege, when one of the soldiers invading our house almost shot my seven-year-old sister as she ran to save her Barbie doll from her room, fearing they would hurt it. That image – of a machine gun raised at my sister – will never leave me. The second was later the same year, when Israeli soldiers invaded half of our building, throwing bombs at the house next door all night. In the small hours, my mother got to make us tea to get us through the night, and the building was so shaking from the bombs that she fell on the ground and got hurt. I will never forget her fall and I was never as happy as when the soldiers left us alone at 6 a.m. At the age of 15, I was accepted for a scholarship to attend high school in the US for a year while living with a host family. That year shaped my language skills and broadened my worldview; but the real culture shock hit when I returned home. Suddenly, the separation walls folding around Bethlehem, the checkpoints, the Israeli soldiers’ midnight raids, the daily news of people getting killed, shattered the sense of normality that I grew up with. This was the turning point when I began to question how this had become the normal life of millions of Palestinians, having found a new reference for what normality can look like. A legacy of faith and displacement My story, my memories, and my future as a Palestinian Christian are part of a larger story. Christianity began in Palestine in the first century. During the Byzantine era, it flourished as a centre of pilgrimage and theological scholarship. Under the Ottoman Empire, Christians were a protected minority, maintaining their religious institutions, worship practices and traditions. After that, Palestine was under the British Mandate (1917–1948) which changed everything as never before. Until the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which decreed that Palestine was to be the homeland of the Jewish people, Muslims, Christians, and Jews were living peacefully alongside each other there. From then on, large numbers of European and worldwide Jews began emigrating to Palestine. With support from the British military, Zionist groups invaded and took over cities and towns to make way for the new immigrants, resulting in multiple civilian massacres of Palestinians. The 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) displaced over 750,000 Palestinians, including Christians, from their homeland. Many fled to neighbouring countries while some reached as far as South America. In sorrow, they watch people from across the globe visiting their homeland, some of them settling in their own homes, while they are condemned to eternal exile. A minority’s faith, identity, and struggle Today, Palestinian Christians make up less than 1% of the population, most of them living in the cities of Bethlehem and Ramallah in the West Bank. The majority are mainly Catholic and Greek Orthodox, with smaller numbers of Assyrians, Armenians and Anglicans. At the Catholic school I attended, the numbers of Christians being low, we were almost half Muslims and half Christians, and this helped raise a generation of different faiths in mutual understanding and friendship. While being a Christian minority in a Muslim-majority society presents some challenges, our main struggle has always been the occupation. As Palestinians, we face the daily struggles of commuting through checkpoints within our cities, our water and electricity being cut off regularly, restrictions on travel, and many other injustices. However, many Palestinian Christians, such as George Habash, Edward Said, and Said Khoury, have been active against the injustices, and Palestinians still play an important part in local politics, there being a reserved quota to ensure their fair representation; and the seat of the Mayor of Bethlehem city is always allotted to a Christian. To add to the complexity...
