Palestine a word now associated with the terrorist organization Hamas, was once solely associated with the peoples of the land which is now called Israel. Ruled under native, Jewish, Babylonian, Persian, Egyptian, Roman, Catholic/Christian Crusader, Ottoman, French, British, Jordanian, and finally Israeli rule, the land of Palestine has been through many trials and tribulations through its years.

In the mid-1940s, following the Second World War, millions of Jews from around the world began flooding into the British Protectorate of Palestine. Fleeing from the Germans who had taken everything from them, they began to encroach on Palestinian Christian and Muslim lands as well as on Palestinian Jewish land, so they could create the nation of Israel. Once arriving these foreign Jews took up arms and began a war of revolt against British rule in Palestine; what followed was the first United Nations peacekeeping mission and UN Resolution 181.

UN Resolution 181 outlined a two-state plan for Palestine. The plan was for Gaza and the West Bank were to be an Anglo Palestinian Arab-Christian state, mirroring the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem of the 1100 and 1200s, while the rest of Palestine would go to the Jews who had recently arrived. This plan fell through and Israel was declared on May 14, 1948.

On the same day the Royal Jordanian Army invaded the West Bank and absorbed it into the Kingdom of Jordan. While Jordan took the West Bank the Egyptian Army invaded and took the Gaza Strip. For about twenty years both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were controlled by Arab states, until June 1967 when during the Six-Day War, Israel invaded both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. After retaking these two areas Israel turned them into police states, restricting movement of the inhabitants, and bringing Israeli “settlers” into the area, to repopulate both regions with Israeli Jews.

I wanted to better understand the situation in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and thus I interviewed a Palestinian Catholic mother who gave me an unbiased, insider view of the truth of what’s truly going down in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in real time.

For my first question of our roughly fifteen-minute conversation I asked, “What is everyday life like, living in Bethlehem today?” She responded to my question with, “It’s not easy, we are the minority in Bethlehem. We rely mainly on tourism for our income, but with the war no one is coming to Bethlehem.”

For my next question I inquired how their freedom of movement is, she told me simply and directly this, “We are not the majority in Israel anymore. We have no “freedom of movement.” For example, we cannot go to Jerusalem for church anymore. This also is a problem for other Christians around Israel. You even need to have permission to go to Jerusalem just to go to the hospital.”

For my third question I asked, “How are Catholics, Christians, and muslims treated by the Israeli officials?” she responded with, “For Israelis, it doesn’t matter if you are Muslim or Christian, you are treated the same. So, of course, they do not want us here if you are Palestinian. They want a Jewish state.”

For my next question I asked a heavy hitter which almost no one asks, or answers in mainstream media, “With the ongoing situation in the Gaza Strip what are Catholics/Christians going through as we speak?” She told me the hard truth which I refuse to hide for the reputation of either side in this conflict. “Christians in Gaza are split between Catholic and Greek Orthodox. From the airstrikes we lost family members. Christians in Gaza stay in their church’s because they are afraid to go home. Even today 200-300 people are dying per day there.” Palestinian Christians have been caught in the crossfire and have lost their lives yet are their voices heard? No they are silenced for the sake of politics.

For my final question I asked her, “What can fellow Catholics do to help Palestinian Catholics, what can we do to help peace return to the Holy Land?” She said, “We need prayers the truth to be spread by Americans especially because change always starts in America. And now things have happened and we need justice as well for Palestinians. It’s not easy to live here as a Christian because we sometimes lose hope… I’m not against Jews or Muslims as long as my neighbor respects me I’m fine. All we want is peace, and that’s what we don’t have here.”