A response to war criminal and ICJ fugitive Netanyahu’s outrageous lies.

Before the 1948 Nakba: Palestinian Christians made up 12.5% of the population of historic Palestine.

Today: Just 1.2% remain in historic Palestine, and only 1% in the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories.

This decline is the direct result of Israel’s ethnic-cleansing, forcible displacement, land confiscation, and systematic oppression, for example:  

• During the Nakba, 90,000 Palestinian Christians were expelled and nearly 30 churches forced to close.
• The Haganah’s 1948 terrorist attack on Jerusalem’s Semiramis Hotel killed 25 Palestinian Christians.
• That same year, Israeli forces executed 12 Christians in the village of Eilabun near Nazareth.

• The Palestinian Christian villages of Iqrit and Kafr Bir’im in Upper Galilee were once home to thriving communities of nearly 570 residents in Iqrit and 1,050 in Kafr Bir’im. In 1948, Israeli forces occupied both villages, ordering families to leave “temporarily” under the pretext of military operations.
  Despite rulings from Israel’s own Supreme Court in 1951 affirming the villagers’ right to return, the government defied the decision. By 1953, Israeli forces had demolished every home in the two villages to prevent their return. Only the churches and cemeteries remain as silent witnesses to the crime of forced displacement.

• During Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, even churches and church institutions were not spared. Israeli airstrikes bombed the St. Porphyrios Greek Orthodox Church and the Holy Family Catholic Church, massacring civilians sheltering inside. The Baptist Hospital and the Arab Orthodox Cultural and Social Center were also targeted. Christian homes were destroyed, forcing families to seek refuge in churches – which themselves came under attack. Since October 2023, 44 Palestinian Christians have been killed, either directly by Israeli bombings or indirectly due to lack of medicine and food, and the collapse of Gaza’s humanitarian system.

• The Christian village of Taybeh in the West Bank has been repeatedly terrorized by violent settler rampages.

• Across Palestine, churches face a deliberate and coordinated assault aimed at eroding their presence and diminishing their role in society. Israeli authorities have frozen the bank accounts of the Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem, imposed punitive taxes on church properties in violation of the Status Quo, and even issued foreclosure orders to confiscate property belonging to the Armenian Church in Jerusalem. These measures are not isolated but part of a systematic policy to weaken and undermine the Christian presence in the Holy Land.

• Palestinian Christians endure harassment on a near-daily basis: clergy are spat on, assaulted, and intimidated; churches and cemeteries are vandalized; and Christian symbols are desecrated. Movement is tightly restricted by Israel’s apartheid wall and military permit regime. Even access to holy sites – particularly during Easter in Jerusalem – is denied. International pilgrims, too, face humiliation and abuse.

• Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, is today strangled by illegal settlements, military checkpoints, and the apartheid wall. Lands belonging to Christian families are confiscated for settlement expansion. Bethlehem, once 37 square kilometers in area, has been reduced to just 7.3 square kilometers. Surrounded by more than 150 checkpoints, gates, and barriers, it is now a city under siege. Israel’s E1 colonial plan further deepens the isolation of Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings and threatens to erase Bethlehem’s historic ties to the Holy City.

The truth is undeniable: it is Israel, who has decimated the Christian presence in the Holy Land. Netanyahu’s lies at the UN cannot erase history or the lived reality of Palestinians — Christian and Muslim alike — under Israeli colonial rule.

Defending the Christian presence in Palestine is not only a Palestinian cause – it is a global moral, humanitarian, and legal obligation.

We call upon:

• The international community to hold Israel accountable for its systematic violations of international law and human rights.

• Churches worldwide to speak with courage and clarity in defense of their sisters and brothers in the land of Christ.

• The United Nations to ensure protection of freedom of worship and the Christian presence in Palestine, as part of its mandate to safeguard fundamental human rights.

Click here for more information on the Higher Presidential Committee for Churches Affairs in Palestine