By G. Jeffrey MacDonald
Correspondent
Christians in the West Bank are facing a rising tide of violence and harassment since October 7, when a brutal Hamas attack on southern Israel left about 1,200 dead and touched off a war in Gaza. Despite mounting pressure to flee, many are girding to stay and hoping their fellow Christians — especially in the United States — will support them.
That message came through December 12 at a Brookline, Massachusetts, panel discussion cosponsored by the Massachusetts Council of Churches and the Huffington Ecumenical Institute at Hellenic College Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology.
At the institute, an ecumenical crowd of 100 listened to speakers with personal West Bank experience and sought ways to help. They received assurance that church-based efforts to support Christians in Palestine are just beginning.
“The experience of our Arab and Palestinian churches has been one of increasing suffering and despair at the deteriorating conditions in the Holy Land,” said the Rev. Laura Everett, executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, via email. “We hope this event allows the wider body to hear directly from their kin in Christ.”
Intercommunal Conflict
Gaza has only a tiny Christian remnant, who attend three active congregations in Gaza City — one Greek Orthodox, one Roman Catholic, and one evangelical. Few Christians live in this active war zone.
But the West Bank, a region under the control of the Palestinian Authority, has about 50,000 Christians, many of whom live in close proximity to about 700,000 Jewish settlers. These settlers, some of whom are ultra-Orthodox, inhabit 150 fortress-like enclaves scattered across the region, on land some say has been unfairly confiscated from its former Palestinian owners. The settler communities are an important power base for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has strongly encouraged their expansion, even though many outside Israel see this as a major hindrance to lasting peace.
Many news outlets have reported on outbursts of intercommunal violence within the region since October 7, noting that Israeli and Palestinian police forces have had difficulty keeping it under control.
A consortium of European nations publicly condemned the escalation in attacks in a joint statement on December 15, claiming the existence of “an environment of near complete impunity in which settler violence has reached unprecedented levels.” The European nations said there have been “more than 343 violent attacks, killing eight Palestinian civilians, injuring more than 83, and forcing 1,026 Palestinians from their homes.” U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris joined the European nations in calling on the Israeli government to do more to protect Palestinian civilians in a recent meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
Some Israeli news sources have argued that attacks by Palestinian civilians sympathetic to Hamas have been even more extensive. The Jewish News Syndicate reported on December 11 that there have been more than 1,388 attacks on Jews in the West Bank, which have left three dead, and 52 wounded.
Christian Testimony to Violence
Some people at the discussion were Palestinian Christians who live in the West Bank. Others have close relatives there. Nadim Khoury, an entrepreneur who owns Taybeh Brewing Co. in the West Bank with his brother, was in Boston visiting family who had emigrated. He told how settlers increasingly interfere in Palestinian Christians’ daily lives.
“I was going to harvest with my brother, and we took some of the workers to harvest the olive trees, and the settlers did not allow us,” Khoury said. “They attacked our neighbor. They hit a lady. They broke her arm twice.”
Diana Makhlouf, a member of St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, said her husband’s Palestinian relatives in East Jerusalem (part of the West Bank) don’t dare venture out anymore except to quickly buy essential supplies. They believe, as she does, that Jewish settlers were equipped with new weapons after October 7 and have received “the green light to go after Palestinians.”
“When my husband’s family was in Jerusalem, he said the settlers have been so emboldened recently,” Makhlouf said. “They are afraid to leave their homes. They feel very tense. They feel very uncomfortable and frightened.”
The Rev. Arakel Aljanian, pastor of St. James Armenian Apostolic Church in Watertown, Massachusetts, claimed that Armenian Christians, who inhabit a quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City, have been singled out for hostility. Citing a recent flare-up of a longstanding dispute over a large property in the Old City, he said: “They try to take by force. A few weeks ago, settlers came with machine guns, with trained dogs, to attack local Armenians, to have them leave the specific property owned by the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. They did not [leave]. They are determined to protect their lands, their homelands.”
A Vanishing Population
Christians in Palestine are a small minority, comprising less than 1 percent of the population. That’s down from 11.7 percent in 1900. Many have emigrated in the past century to the United States, Canada, and other countries.
Feeling pressured to leave for foreign lands isn’t new for Christians in Palestine. A 2020 poll by the nonprofit Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed “the desire to emigrate is much higher among Palestinian Christians than Palestinian Muslims.” Among the reasons cited: lack of economic opportunity and “occupation measures, such as checkpoints, settlers’ attacks, and land confiscation.” The poll tracked the views of 995 Christians in Palestine.
A Christian exodus would mean an end to 2,000 years of their presence in the land of Jesus’ birth. It would also deal a massive blow to Palestinian social services.
Because Christians in Palestine tend to be middle-class and highly educated, they’re key players in essential institutions. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia (2019), Christians run 65 schools in Palestine with 25,000 students. They also run nearly 30 percent of medical services and hospitals; 54 percent of all civil society nongovernmental organizations; and 80 percent of human rights organizations in Palestine.
There may be some ground for hope. The most recent report issued by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2021 noted a growth of 1.4 percent in the Christian population of Israel and Palestine. An article published in July by the Catholic Near East Welfare Association claims that Israel is the only Middle Eastern nation in which the Christian population is actually growing.
Humanizing Palestine’s Christians
Organizers hope this new push for visibility will humanize the Christians of Palestine in the minds of Americans, especially their fellow believers. If Christian solidarity can emerge, the thinking says, then Palestine might get what local Christians say has been painfully missing: U.S. support for human rights, business relationships, and defense of Christian land claims.
Palestinians at the discussion said they feel supported internationally as never before. This comes amid reports that 1.9 million Gazans (85 percent of the population) have been displaced since the war began, and 70 percent of the 18,200 killed in Gaza have been women and children, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry. On the day of the panel discussion, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
“I think for the first time in history, more people now are pro-Palestine than pro-Israel because of the awareness that’s been raised,” said Jane Khoury, Nadim’s niece, who grew up in the West Bank and now lives in Massachusetts. “The young people are not going to stay quiet about it. There’s innocent life at stake, especially children. … Innocent people are dying.”
“We’re afraid that it will be us next in the West Bank,” Nadim Khoury said. He believes Israel is intentionally removing Gazans from the land and could seek to do the same to West Bank Palestinians.
Taking Action
Visitors asked panelists what can be done to ease the pressure on Christians in Palestine. Panelists encouraged prayer and doing business with Palestinian Christians. They also proposed community organizing in the months ahead and commended group travel to witness life firsthand in the West Bank.
On a deeper level, they suggested theological change might be in order.
One form of Zionism influential among American evangelicals has associated the state of Israel with a movement of God setting the stage for Christ’s return. Panelists recommended other ways of interpreting Israel’s place in God’s plan that could increase solidarity with Palestinian Christians.
“Nothing says that the Israel on the ground … with all of this equipment from America is the Israel of my gospels,” Maria Khoury said. “We are the Israel of my gospels. We are baptized unto Christ. We accepted the Messiah. We are born unto Christ. We are the new Israel.”
The Rev. Darrell Hamilton, administrative pastor at First Baptist in Jamaica Plain, said Black Christians in America can relate to the experience of Palestinian Christians. He asked how Black Christians might support their siblings in Palestine.
“You have a very good opportunity to counteract some of the narratives that have come out of the Black church,” said the Rev. Carrie Ballenger, a Lutheran pastor in Cambridge, Massachusetts and former missionary who served for eight years in East Jerusalem.
The Exodus narrative has helped Black Christians feel aligned with the state of Israel and distanced from experiences of Christians in Palestine. But that could change.
“You have a very important thing that you can do,” she told Hamilton, “which is to share those stories [of Palestinian Christians’ struggles and resistance] and help people see those connections.”
TLC Editor Mark Michael contributed to this report, and he thanks Eric Marx for his assistance.
