A group of Salesian nuns who run a school for 400 Palestinian children and manage a winery that supplies Holy Land churches is about to have much of their property in the Cremisan Valley expropriated and divided for an expansion of Israel’s controversial security wall. If built as planned, the wall will block children from attending school and adults from getting to work. It will leave a Salesian monastery in Israeli-held territory but cut it off from a convent on Palestinian land.

Similarly, the concrete barrier will separate 58 Christian families from olive groves that, in many cases, their ancestors have farmed for generations. The wall also threatens a 2,000-year old Roman irrigation system that feeds spring water down stone terraces into the orchards that sustain the local population. The ancient irrigation system is itself a tourist attraction, nominated as a UNESCO world heritage site.

This extension of the wall through the Cremisan Valley, an overwhelmingly Christian area near Bethlehem, will further divide Palestinians and Israelis and form a barrier to peace. Intentional or not, Israel’s refusal to reroute this section of the wall will cause significant social, economic and spiritual hardship on the region’s Christian population. Many of them, particularly the young adults, will be driven away.

For these reasons, Catholic bishops from around the world are urging Israel to spare the ancient valley. The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops supports the cause. In a letter to foreign minister John Baird, CCCB president Paul-Andre Durocher, after recently visiting the area, urged the minister to raise the matter with Israel before it is too late. “As it is, the security wall is already perceived by many as an illegal land-grab,” he wrote.

Many bishops contend the wall has less to do with security and, in contravention of international law, more to do with expanding Israeli settlements into occupied territories. Their argument is convincing.

Israel has been building its security wall since the 2002 Intifada. Today it stretches more than 400 kilometres. In many places, completion of a new section of wall in occupied lands has been quickly followed by Israeli settlements which, according to United Nations resolutions, are illegal. Each new kilometre of wall only intensifies resentment and mistrust, making peace more illusive and causing more Christians to flee the Holy Land.

The Cremisan Valley project threatens to destroy an entire community that has farmed the land and lived peaceably in the region for generations. It is an injustice that the bishops are right to denounce.