Palestinian Christians grateful for Israel’s missile defense system

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In the aftermath of Saturday night’s Iranian missile attack, Palestinian Christians living in the Bethlehem area expressed gratitude for Israel’s air defense system.

“I said, ‘Thank God for the presence of the Iron Dome system.’ It absolutely saved lives here. We don’t have any safe rooms to guard us, so if a rocket would fall here, there would be a great number of casualties,” an eyewitness from the Christian community of Beit Jala, near Bethlehem.

The resident, a middle-aged man who is married with children, spoke on condition of anonymity because he fears his family and business will be targeted by Palestinian Muslims.

 “In the beginning, we thought it would be like usual, Iran just talks,” he recalled. “Then in the middle of the night, I went to the balcony and saw the rockets of Iron Dome were coming out. I live in the area near some Jewish residences on one side and on the other are all Arab residences, and the rockets were coming right towards them. That’s when I witnessed the interception.”

The missile defense he saw was not the well-known Iron Dome system, but the Arrow-3, which is designed to intercept ballistic missiles at high altitudes, even outside the earth’s atmosphere.

“As a Christian, we are a minority group here, and one loss equals thousands because of the statistics and the ratio against the Muslims in the area, so the damage I imagine could have been even greater,” he insisted.

Elias Zarina, a Jerusalem-based Christian activist, said he looked at the high-tech protection through the lens of coexistence.  “David’s Sling guards the City of David,” Zarina remarked, referring to the name of Bethlehem from the Christian Bible.

Palestinian Christians in Judea and Samaria have been facing discrimination and harassment for years, forcing members of the community to leave the Middle East.

The population has been dwindling ever since the Oslo accords brought the Palestinian Authority into power. Using Bethlehem as an example, in 1993, when the accords were signed, Christians made up 88 percent of the city’s population. Three decades later, Christians now make up just 12 percent of Bethlehem’s population of roughly 29,000. Most Christians have emigrated in the face of Muslim extortion