The picture posted by Deacon Fadi Abu Sa’ada on his Facebook page Aug. 30 spoke volumes, and the image of medics helping a nun injured by Israeli tear gas raised anger among Palestinians.

Demonstrations after Sunday mass have become the norm in this Bethlehem-area town. The anti-Israel rallies are a protest against Israeli efforts to confiscate property to make room for the wall. The Israeli wall, cutting deep into Palestinian land, is said to have a security aim — to protect Israel — but in fact it is dividing land that belongs to Palestinian Christians. While Israel unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem, for Palestinians, the land on both sides of the wall belongs to them.

The protest rally in the Beit Jala neighborhood of Beir Ona began peacefully but soon turned into clashes between Palestinian civilians and church leaders on one side and Israeli soldiers on the other.

The protest was led by a revered church leader, Patriarch Michel Sabbah. Sabbah, the former head of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, made an impassioned public plea for an end to Palestinian land confiscation by Israel: “This is our land, and will always remain ours. They claim it’s their land, but they use their soldiers, their tanks, their military occupation to force their will — and it is not their land. It is our land, and one day their forces will withdraw and the land will return back to its indigenous Palestinian owners.” The patriarch concluded by saying that his message to the Christian world, the international community and the Arab world is that “This Holy Land is burning.”