November 05, 2012
This alert focuses on Palestinian Christians who are concentrated in an area referred to as the Christian triangle: Bethlehem, Beit Jala, and Beit Sahour. This area is being strangled – in terms of access to land, water, health services, education, general mobility, and all related rights –by the unabated wave of settlement construction. Moreover, the forcible isolation of the triangle with its center, Jerusalem, is damaging both to people in Jerusalem and in the Bethlehem area. The facts on the ground are bleak. Land confiscation, as well as the influx of Israeli settlers, suggest that there will be no future for Palestinians (whether Christian or Muslim) in the triangle area. In this sense, the prospect of a clear “solution” grows darker every day.