A Zionist organisation 's charitable donation of 3,000 freshly felled trees
aims to prevent people pinching them from state forests. Nuala Haughey
reports from Jerusalem
Christmas may be less than a week away, but there are few signs of the festive season in the land of Christ ’s birth, where Christians are a tiny minority.
However, a Zionist organisation is doing its bit to spread Yuletide cheer to Christians in Israel by distributing Christmas trees free of charge.
The Jewish National Fund, which tends Israel ’s forests, has donated up to 3,000 freshly felled trees, mostly to Christians from overseas living in the Jewish state.
The charitable offering is not so much a tribute to the Christian festival as an attempt to thwart the theft of trees from forests maintained by the fund.
"We do it mainly because we want to prevent vandalism in the forest, we don’t want people to come and just cut trees o their own," said a spokeswoman, Ms Anat Shivat.
"We want to have control over it because the trees we give out will renew themselves. Some of them we get when we thin out the forest and others are specially grown for this purpose. "The trees are Cypress Arizona, a steeple-shaped variety with silver-grey foliage, which is a poor relation of the more traditional fir tree.
The goodwill gesture, which started more than a decade ago, is aimed primarily at diplomats, UN workers and Christian religious organisations that will distribute the trees to affiliated groups and schools.
Groups receiving trees have already submitted their orders through the Israeli Ministry for Religious Affairs and will collect them over the next fortnight from a forest near Beit Shemesh, out- side Jerusalem.
The city ’s municipality will also distribute around 250 trees donated by the fund on a first- come-first-served basis on December 23rd from outside the Jaffa Gate entrance to the walled Old City ’s Christian quarter, in Arab East Jerusalem.
However, many of Jerusalem ’s Arab Christians eschew the municipality ’s annual tree offer, preferring instead to pay cash for tacky plastic versions in the few shops in the Old City which sell Christmas stock.
A spokeswoman for the municipality confirmed that the demand for the trees usually comes from foreigners, rather than local Christian Arabs.
Jerusalem ’s Arabs pay taxes to the Israeli state, although they are not citizens, and many resent the fact that the public services and utilities supplied by the Israeli authorities to the city ’s Arab quarters are second-rate. "Some people might take the trees because they are not working and they do not have any income," said Rami Barakat, the secretary of the Arab Catholic Scouts organisation in the Old City ’s Christian quarter.
"Secondly, all the people in Jerusalem pay taxes and they are very high. Maybe they can justify it that, okay, I need something from the government because I deserve it. I am taking my rights."
The Arab Catholic Scouts has for the past four years sold Christmas stock in its premises on St Francis Road to raise funds for its activities. Business has been slow this year, said Rami, standing in the room filled with nativity cribs, dancing Santas and artificial trees ranging in price from 15 shekels (1 3)for the smallest one to 600 shekels (1 120)for a bushy 240-metre affair complete with its own pine cones.
"It ’s not that good," he said. "There ’s not enough money.
Maybe people are not working and they don ’t have any income and the whole of these things are very expensive."