RAMALLAH, Palestine: Palestinian officials have denounced Israel for what they call the systematic destruction of Christianity in Palestine, responding to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s UN speech in which he claimed his country safeguards Christians more than any other in the region.
According to Anadolu Agency, the Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs in Palestine issued the statement in response to Israeli Prime Minister speech. The committee highlighted specific incidents, including the 1948 Semiramis Hotel bombing in Jerusalem by the Haganah paramilitary group, which killed 25 Christians, and the execution of 12 Christians in the village of Eilabun near Nazareth.
“In a nearly empty UN General Assembly hall, war criminal and ICC fugitive Benjamin Netanyahu once again spread lies about Palestinian Christians,” the committee said in a statement posted on Facebook alongside a photo of an Israeli tank outside Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity during the 2002 West Bank incursion.
“The truth is clear: Israel’s colonial policies of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide have destroyed the Christian presence in Palestine,” it added.
Historic decline of Christian population
The committee recalled that Palestinian Christians once made up 12.5% of the population of historic Palestine before the 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe,” when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced during the creation of Israel. Today, Christians account for only 1.2% of the population in historic Palestine and just 1% in the territories occupied since 1967.
This decline, it argued, is a “direct result of Israeli ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, land confiscation and systematic repression,” citing the expulsion of 90,000 Christians during the Nakba and the closure of around 30 churches.
During the current Gaza war, it said, Israel bombed the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius and the Catholic Holy Family Church, massacring civilians who had taken refuge there, as well as targeting church-linked facilities such as Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital and the Orthodox Arab Cultural and Social Center.
Civilian toll and West Bank pressure
According to the statement, 44 Palestinian Christians have been killed since the beginning of Israel’s assault on Gaza, either directly by bombardments or indirectly due to shortages of food and medicine. Families forced to shelter in churches also found those sanctuaries under fire.
In the West Bank, the committee cited repeated settler attacks on the Christian village of Taybeh near Ramallah and warned that churches across Palestine now face “an unprecedented assault threatening their historic presence and continued mission in the Holy Land.”
Restrictions on church institutions
The body also condemned Israel’s freezing of Orthodox Patriarchate accounts in Jerusalem, the imposition of heavy taxes on church properties in violation of the status quo, and the seizure of Armenian church assets.
In Bethlehem, it said, “illegal settlements, military checkpoints and the separation wall are strangling the city, while lands belonging to Palestinian Christians are being confiscated for settlement construction.” It noted the city is now encircled by more than 150 barriers, gates and earth mounds — the highest number in the West Bank.
Call for global responsibility
“The truth cannot be denied: Israel has eliminated the Christian presence in the Holy Land, and Netanyahu’s lies at the UN cannot erase history or the reality of Palestinian life — Christians and Muslims alike — under Israeli colonial rule,” the statement read.
It concluded by stressing that “defending the Christian presence in Palestine is not only a local matter but a global human, moral and legal cause.”
