Palestinian Christians

Greek Orthodox Christians constitute the majority of Palestinian Christians, but the community includes numerous churches with distinct traditions and liturgies.[1][3] Other communities include Roman Catholics, Melkite Greek Catholics, Syrian Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox and Armenian Catholics, Coptic Orthodox, Maronites, Ethiopian Orthodox, Syrian Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, other Protestants, and small numbers of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[1] In the West Bank, Christians are concentrated primarily in the Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Nablus governorates, with smaller communities elsewhere.[1]

Palestinian Christian institutions combine religious responsibilities with educational, civic, and cultural functions, including caring for Christian holy places and representing local Christian interests.[1][3] Recognized churches operate schools and personal-status courts, while Palestinian law provides reserved Christian representation in legislative and municipal institutions.[1] The community’s demographic history involves both growth in recorded absolute numbers during some periods and a reduction in its share of the wider population.[4]

Palestinian identity and Christian affiliation overlap without making every local Christian part of an identical political or national constituency.[5] A study of local Christian communities and Israeli policy from 1948 to 2010 described roughly 90 percent of the followers in the communities it examined as Arabs who regarded themselves as part of the surrounding Arab world; local Catholic leaders also emphasized their place in the land as part of the Palestinian people.[5] The same study emphasized differences among Arab Christians in their attitudes toward Israel and the Jewish majority.[5]

Statistics for Palestinian Christians must also be distinguished from totals for all Christians in Israel or Jerusalem.[1][6] A 2013 estimate placed Christians in Israel at about 158,000, of whom 80 percent were Christian Arabs, with the remainder including immigrants from the former Soviet Union and foreign workers.[6] Local Catholic clergy described Arab, Hebrew-speaking, and former Soviet Christian constituencies, and noted that church jurisdictions cross political borders into Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, and Cyprus.[6] In a 2023 interview, Custos of the Holy Land Francesco Patton estimated about 200,000 local Christians in Israel and Palestine, separately mentioning thousands of migrant workers under his office’s care.[7]

Middle Eastern Christian communities have roots predating the spread of Islam, and their religious life encompasses numerous churches rather than a single institutional tradition.[3] Historical Palestinian population records likewise distinguish different churches and, in some cases, separate Palestinian Christians from Christians of other origins.[8]

The church-by-church table of the 1931 Palestine census recorded 91,398 Christians, including 78,291 classified as Palestinians and 13,107 as “Other than Palestinian.”[8] Among its largest categories were the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, with 39,727 people, and Roman Catholics, with 35,578.[8] The Catholic category included 18,895 Latin-rite Catholics and 16,683 people grouped under the census’s “Uniate Churches” classification.[8] The census comparison placed Christians at 8.82 percent of the population in 1931, compared with 9.64 percent in 1922, reflecting a falling proportion alongside an increase in the Christian count.[8]

Christian settlement was predominantly urban.[8] The 1931 census discussion put 76 percent of Christians in towns, while noting that European Christians serving in military, public-service, and consular positions increased that urban share.[8] It recorded 10,628 Christians in the Bethlehem sub-district, 7,164 in Ramallah, and 20,309 in Jerusalem; the Bethlehem sub-district had contained 10,183 Christians in 1922.[8] More than 70 percent of Christian males and almost 45 percent of Christian females aged seven and older were literate under the census’s definitions.[8]

At the end of 1944, the settled population included 135,547 Christians, a religious category encompassing Christian Arabs and non-Arab minorities rather than Palestinian Arab Christians alone.[9] One fifth of Christians lived in villages, compared with one quarter in 1922.[9] Jerusalem, Haifa, and Jaffa together accounted for 53 percent of the Christian population in 1944, up from 42 percent in 1922; Nazareth, Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Beit Jala were also identified as smaller towns with a predominantly Christian character.[9]

Bethlehem town contained 5,589 Christians among 6,815 residents in 1931 and an estimated 6,430 among 8,820 residents at the end of 1944.[9] These town figures describe a different geographic unit from the Bethlehem sub-district totals.[9] Historical comparisons for nearby communities also show distinct trajectories: Christian shares reported for Beit Jala were 99 percent in 1922 and 81 percent in 2007, while those for Beit Sahour were 81 percent and 65 percent respectively.[10]

Emigration from the area now comprising Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza dates to the first half of the twentieth century.[11] Lutheran pastor and educator Mitri Raheb identified the War of Independence in 1948 as the largest wave of Christian departures and estimated that the Christian share between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean fell from 8 percent to 2.3 percent during the conflict.[11] Historical figures for the West Bank record 51,053 Christians in 1949, 45,855 in the 1961 Jordanian census, and 42,719 in 1967, when Christians represented 6 percent of the population.[4]

The Maronite village of Biram in northern Israel illustrates another dimension of the community’s postwar history.[12] Its roughly 1,000 residents were displaced during the War of Independence; most remained within Israel, mainly in nearby Jish, while some went to Lebanon.[12] By 2009, former residents and descendants, numbering about 3,000 Catholics in the account, continued to use the surviving church and cemetery for worship and family rites, although the village otherwise consisted of ruins.[12] Villagers pursued return over decades, and described a limited restitution initiative under the Rabin government in the 1990s that did not produce an agreed broader settlement.[12]

Gaza’s Christian community included a small pre-1948 population, refugees arriving from Ramle, and a later group associated with the Palestinian Authority’s establishment in 1994.[2] A 2008 estimate placed approximately 3,500 Christians mainly in five Gaza City neighborhoods.[2] Subsequent estimates were smaller: approximately 1,300 in 2022 and 1,000 in 2023.[1][13]

Emigration intensified during the first intifada and increased again after the second began.[3] A historical estimate recorded 2,766 Christian departures from the West Bank between October 2000 and November 2001, including 1,640 from the Bethlehem area and 880 from Ramallah.[3] In a 2001 Beit Sahour survey, 51.2 percent of respondents said they were considering emigration because of difficult political conditions.[3] Another survey identified emigration as the community’s most important threat for 41 percent of respondents, followed by economic deterioration at 24 percent and Islamization at 17 percent.[3]

Palestinian Authority census figures recorded 40,055 Christians in 1997, 42,565 in 2007, and 46,850 in 2017, while the corresponding population shares fell from 1.5 percent to 1.2 percent and then 1 percent.[4] Thus, these counts show numerical growth over the two decades rather than an uninterrupted absolute decline.[4] A report of the 2017 census described just under 47,000 Christians among nearly 4.8 million Palestinians and said roughly half lived in the Bethlehem area.[14]

Jerusalem’s Christian population has its own demographic profile.[15] At the end of 2017, the city had 16,000 Christian residents, including 12,600 Arab Christians; 96 percent of Christian Arabs lived in East Jerusalem.[15] The largest listed concentrations were Beit Hanina, with 3,100, the Old City’s Christian Quarter, with 2,600, and Beit Safafa, with 1,300.[15] Arab Christians had a median age of 34.5 and non-Arab Christians 43.9, compared with 23.8 for Jerusalem overall; 15 percent of Christians were at least 65, compared with 9 percent of all city residents.[15]

Recognized churches may establish ecclesiastical courts dealing with marriage, divorce, inheritance, and some property matters for their members.[1] Palestinian Authority recognition of several churches rests on arrangements reached with Ottoman authorities in the nineteenth century.[1] These include the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, Melkite Greek Catholic, Maronite, Syrian Orthodox, and Armenian Catholic Churches.[1] Recognition was later extended to the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, and a council of local evangelical churches.[1]

Palestinian law reserves six seats in the defunct Palestinian Legislative Council for Christian candidates, who may also contest other seats.[1] A 2017 presidential decree requires Christians to head nine West Bank municipal councils, including Ramallah, Bethlehem, Birzeit, and Beit Jala, and establishes Christian representation quotas on those councils and one additional council.[1] Bethlehem also reserves its mayoralty for a Christian as part of provisions intended to preserve the town’s historic Christian character.[16]

Christian education has a substantial historical institutional base.[17] In 1944, private Christian schools enrolled 27,232 pupils, including 24,417 in elementary education and 2,686 in secondary education.[17] School supervisors included Latin, Orthodox, Syrian, and Armenian patriarchs, the Custode di Terra Santa, and the Greek Catholic archbishop, while Orthodox societies maintained schools in Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Haifa.[17]

Recognized churches continue to operate private schools in the West Bank, including religious instruction, and Christian institutions and nongovernmental organizations in Gaza educate Muslim pupils as well as Christians.[1] In 2008, Gaza had five reported Christian schools, four Catholic and one Orthodox, with Muslims making up most pupils and staff.[2] Palestinian Authority public schools provide separate Muslim and Christian religion courses in grades one through six; pupils may choose between them but cannot opt out of religious education.[1]

Taybeh, described as the last entirely Christian village in the West Bank, has approximately 1,200 residents belonging to Roman Catholic, Melkite Greek Catholic, and Greek Orthodox communities.[18] Its three churches support schools from kindergarten through high school, together with sports and music programs.[18] A school vice principal described occasions when pupils waited for hours because Israeli authorities had closed road gates in response to attacks in the area.[18]

Care of holy places involves both cooperation and denominational division of responsibilities.[14] At Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian churches administer particular areas and duties under the nineteenth-century Status Quo arrangement.[14] Restoration began in 2013, a year after the church’s designation as a UNESCO World Heritage site, under a Palestinian Authority committee of local Christian leaders employing an Italian company.[14] Committee head Ziad al-Bandak reported that $14 million of a required $17 million had been raised, approximately half from the Palestinian Authority and local Muslim and Christian businesses and half from foreign donors.[14]

The work addressed a leaking roof, broken windows, dirty mosaics, and damage to walls and columns.[14] Engineers replaced approximately 10 percent of the ceiling beams using timber from old, destroyed churches in Italy, and worked on a 2,000-square-meter wall mosaic, of which 120 square meters had been restored at the time of the report.[14] The altar crypt, where a fourteen-point silver star marks the place Christian tradition identifies as Jesus’s birthplace, was excluded because the churches had not agreed on its renovation.[14] Disputes over responsibilities at the church have at times produced arguments and physical confrontations among clergy.[14]

Religious observance also connects Gaza and West Bank congregations with Jerusalem’s holy places.[1] For Easter 2023, church officials said Gaza Christians submitted 981 applications to visit Jerusalem, but that they did not receive an official count of permits issued; they also reported short permit durations and some rescissions.[1] For Christmas that year, Israeli authorities issued no entry permits from the West Bank or Gaza, citing the conflict and security concerns, compared with 8,000 for West Bank Palestinians and 500 for Gazans in 2022.[1]

Bethlehem’s Christian institutions and tourism-dependent economy make the town a prominent center of Palestinian Christian life.[14][16] Community leaders estimated that Bethlehem and surrounding communities were 12 percent Christian in 2019, compared with more than 70 percent in 1950 and 23 percent in 1998.[19] Bethlehem had traditionally recorded the highest unemployment rate among West Bank cities, and unemployment was identified as a factor encouraging young Christians to leave.[19] Economic hardship in tourism and hospitality particularly affected Christian businesses and landowners, while Christians also had comparatively greater opportunities to emigrate.[16]

The economic consequences of the Gaza war were visible in Bethlehem in December 2024, when Manger Square was largely deserted, souvenir shops were closed, and the customary Christmas tree was not planned.[20] Orthodox priest Issa Thaljieh described increasing emigration, while restaurant owner Alaa Afteem linked departures to difficult finances and parents seeking better opportunities and education for their children.[20] Lutheran pastor Munther Isaac noted that Muslim families were also emigrating amid financial difficulties and uncertainty.[20]

Survey responses illustrate the range of concerns shaping decisions about departure.[19] In a 2020 poll, 59 percent of Palestinian Christian respondents cited economic hardship as the main reason they considered emigrating.[19] The same poll found that 84 percent feared expulsion of Palestinians from their lands by Israel, 83 percent were concerned about settler attacks and denial of civil rights by Israel, and 77 percent worried about radical Salafist groups in Palestine.[19] These percentages describe respondents’ fears and stated motivations rather than a measure of the prevalence of the feared events.[19]

Local accounts similarly identify several pressures rather than a single experience shared everywhere.[18][21] Taybeh residents described fear of settler violence, movement restrictions, and, in some interviews, Islamist radicalization; clergy knew of at least a dozen families that had left, with others considering departure amid violence and limited economic opportunities.[18] Bethlehem shop owner Nabil Giacaman emphasized difficulties shared by Christians and Muslims, including permits and checkpoint treatment, while researcher Samir Qumsieh highlighted unemployment, insufficient housing and jobs, and discrimination in some land disputes.[21]

Movement between Christian centers and Jerusalem is an important practical issue for congregations.[1] Clergy and church leaders said the separation barrier and checkpoints impeded travel to churches and monasteries and made it harder for Bethlehem-area Christians to reach the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.[1] Israel described the barrier as a self-defense measure effective in preventing terrorist attacks.[1] A study of church-state relations likewise described holiday transit permits and the barrier’s practical separation of Jerusalem from Christian centers in Bethlehem and Ramallah.[5]

Community members and nongovernmental organizations have also identified political instability, building restrictions around Jerusalem, difficulties obtaining clergy visas and residency permits, reduced confidence in the peace process, and economic hardship linked to travel restrictions as factors in emigration.[22] The Israeli government’s position was that these difficulties arose from the complex political and security situation rather than measures directed at the Christian community.[22]

Gaza’s small Christian community has experienced violence against people and institutions.[2] Rami Ayad, an employee of the Holy Bible Society, was abducted from his home and shot dead in October 2007.[2] A church and monastery were attacked during Hamas’s June 2007 takeover, and the YMCA library was bombed in February 2008.[2] In Jerusalem, monitoring organizations recorded 71 attacks against Christian holy sites and clergy in 2023, including six from October through December, while noting that conflict and reduced visitor numbers limited data collection.[22]

Francesco Patton also described desecration of a Maronite monastery in Ma’alot and a Protestant cemetery in Jerusalem, anti-Christian slogans at an Armenian monastery, incidents near Jerusalem’s New Gate, and damage to a statue of Jesus at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.[7] He reported stone throwing at a church in Migdal HaEmek and said a complaint had been filed and that he believed two young people had been arrested.[7] These incidents affected wider Christian communities and do not establish that all those involved or affected were Palestinian.[7]

On October 19, 2023, an Israeli missile strike on the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Porphyrius compound in Gaza City was reported to have killed 18 people and injured several others, with approximately 500 Muslims and Christians sheltering there.[1] The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I condemned the strike.[1]

Christian public life also extends beyond the West Bank and Gaza through related Arab Christian communities in Israel.[5] Christian Arabs have participated in both Zionist and Communist parties and have been prominent in law, accounting, medicine, pharmacy, and engineering.[5] These examples demonstrate diversity within Arab Christian society rather than a uniform political position or professional profile for all Palestinian Christians.[5]

Historical and contemporary population figures use different geographic boundaries and categories: Mandate totals included non-Arab Christians, Jerusalem statistics distinguish Arab and non-Arab residents, and recent estimates may combine Jerusalem with the West Bank or treat it separately.[1][9] Bethlehem comparisons likewise alternate between the town, its district, and nearby communities, so percentages from different reports should not be treated as a single continuous statistical series.[9][21] Estimates of Gaza’s Christian population also differ by reporting year.[1][13]

The reliability and political context of Palestinian demographic statistics have attracted disagreement.[23] Demographer Sergio Della Pergola regarded the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics as professionally run, while other commentators disputed its figures; the Israeli Civil Administration rejected one critic’s estimates without presenting detailed research of its own.[23]

Explanations of emigration remain a significant interpretive dispute.[11] Raheb described a survey of about 500 Christians in which 28 percent wanted to emigrate; among that group, most cited economic improvement and escape from Israeli military rule, while well under 10 percent cited religious persecution.[11] Israeli officials, by contrast, identified pressure or persecution by Palestinian Muslims as a contributor to departure.[11] A Protestant clergyman expressed a related concern that Christians felt unprotected because Palestinian Authority police failed to intervene in confrontations with Muslims.[4] These positions represent different assessments of community vulnerability, while the available surveys and demographic counts do not establish one explanation for all departures.[3][11]