By Shadi Khalloul
- The Middle East has been inhabited by Jews and then Christians for nearly three thousand years; until the seventh century, Muslims did not even exist.
- Many Christians in Arab countries and in Palestinian Authority (PA), without a state or anyone else to support them, are still behaving as dhimmis, paying lip service to Muslim Arab "lords" in exchange for protection in their original homelands.
- The Palestinians plan activities, pay salaries and fund anti-Israeli Christian dhimmiorganizations, in order to make Western Christians believe in the "Palestinian cause" -- by which they mean the establishment of another Arab-Islamic dictatorship state with no human rights in it.
- Coexistence is not the issue for Christians here, but rather fear for their own existence -- based on the ruthless lack of freedom under the PA, as in all Arab states.
Rami Ayyad, a Christian bookseller in Gaza, was murdered by Islamic extremists because he refused to close his bookshop.
Christians in Holy Land, Judea and Samaria -- what today is called the West Bank or the Palestinian Authority (PA) -- are, with the Jews and assorted Arabs, the indigenous people of the land. The region has been inhabited by Jews and then Christians for nearly three thousand years; until the seventh century, Muslims did not even exist.
After the conquest of Jerusalem by Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula in 637 AD, the Jews and early followers of Christianity were forced either to convert to Islam or accept the rule of sharia (Islamic religious law) under the Islamic Caliphate, with its dhimmi laws designed to remind you that you are inferior. In Islam, dhimmis are non-Muslims -- and therefore second-class, barely tolerated residents -- who live under separate, harsher, laws and have to pay protection money (a "tax" called the jizya) to safeguard their lives and property.
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