Maha Abu Dayyeh, a Palestinian Christian, said she came back from visiting her daughter in Sweden last year to find a Muslim family had taken over her mother's old house and thrown out the furniture. She said men threatened her son if she did anything to fight it.
"It will cost us only one bullet," she said they told her son. She indicated the squatters' motives were more criminal than religious.
In this photo taken Sunday, May 18, 2014, a wooden cross and a painting is seen at the office of Father Ibrahim Shomali, the parish priest of Beit Jala and leads meditating efforts between local Christians and Palestinian Christian emigre families who abandoned their homes, in order to keep Christian properties among Christians, at the Annunciation Latin Church, in the West Bank town of Beit Jala. Pope Francis will be arriving this weekend to the land where Christianity was born, and where Christians are disappearing. The Christian community in the Holy Land is one of the oldest in the world. But it has dwindled to around 2 percent of the population today, as economic hardship, violence and the bitter realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have sent them searching for better opportunities overseas. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Shomali said he is helping Christians like Abu Dayyeh fight for their property in court. He has also recruited local Christians to purchase a half dozen abandoned homes to keep them in Christian hands.
"As a Christian community, it's important to witness Jesus Christ in his land," Shomali said. "If we keep the houses, you keep the Christians here."
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Daniela Berretta contributed to this report from Jerusalem.http://news.yahoo.com/Linkback:
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