Christian leaders in Holy Land blame Israeli occupation for decline in Bethlehem Christians

Christian leaders in the Holy Land and Palestinian government officials condemned a recent speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations General Assembly, and they blamed the Israeli occupation for the decline in the number of Christians in the area. The speech was delivered Sept. 26, after dozens of U.N. diplomats walked out. Their walkout came amid rising tensions over Israel’s continued war in the Gaza Strip, which a U.N. commission and international experts have classified as a genocide.

In his address, Netanyahu criticized the Palestinian Authority, equating it with Hamas, the Islamist resistance movement that controls Gaza. He said Christians “don’t fare much better” under Palestinian Authority leadership in the West Bank. He also said that when Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, was under Israeli control, 80% of its residents were Christians, but that since the Palestinian Authority took control that number had dwindled to under 20%.

A joint statement signed Sept. 27 by more than a dozen Christian leaders in the Holy Land, who make up “A Jerusalem Voice for Justice,” an ecumenical think tank, rejected that account. The statement said Christians and many others were leaving Bethlehem because of “the Israeli occupation and its policies of closures, permits, exclusionary residency rights, etc., and not the policies of the Palestinian Authority.” Signatories included Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabbah, who led the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem from 1987 to 2008, Greek Orthodox Archbishop Theodosios of Sebastia of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and retired Lutheran Bishop Munib Younan of the Holy Land. The letter said Netanyahu did “not speak on behalf of Christian Palestinians and cannot be allowed to twist the truth.”

The statement also said Bethlehem was a Christian-majority city until 1948, when more than 80% of its population was Christian. It referred to the 1948 “Nakba,” an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe,” which it described as the forced displacement of an estimated 750,000 Palestinians during the Arab-Israeli War. The group further said Israel’s continued war on Gaza had caused “the almost complete stop of tourism and pilgrimage” in Bethlehem, and that hundreds more people had left the holy city due to “Israeli occupation and military violence.”

The signatories said Christians and Muslims in Bethlehem and throughout Palestine continue to live together and share the same struggles under occupation. “The truth remains: Palestinians, Christians, and Muslims alike seek equality, justice, and peace in their homeland,” the statement read.

On Sept. 28, the Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs in Palestine issued a similar statement, calling Netanyahu’s speech filled with “outrageous lies about Palestinian Christians.” Established by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2012, the committee is tasked with safeguarding the Christian presence and holy sites in the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem. It said, “The reality is clear: it is Israel’s colonial policies of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide that have devastated the Christian presence in Palestine.”

Listing several alleged atrocities committed by Zionist extremists and the Israeli military against Christians in Palestine, the committee said Israel “has decimated the Christian presence in the Holy Land.” It added that “Netanyahu’s lies at the UN cannot erase history or the lived reality of Palestinians — Christian and Muslim alike — under Israeli colonial rule,” and called defending the Christian presence in Palestine “a global moral, humanitarian, and legal obligation.”

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