Christmas Under Siege: Israel’s Ongoing Aggression against occupied Palestine

Christmas Under Siege: Israel’s Ongoing Aggression against occupied Palestine

Introduction

Throughout Palestine’s history and civilization, Palestinian Arab Christians have played a vital role and remain an essential and inseparable part of the Palestinian national fabric. Like all Palestinians living under Israel’s military occupation, Christians have been deeply impacted by Israeli policies of genocide, apartheid, settlement expansion, land and religious endowments confiscation, movement restrictions, ethnic cleansing, and systematic practices aimed at fragmenting Palestinian society and eroding its historical and cultural continuity. These threats form part of a systematic strategy aimed at re-engineering the land’s demographic, geographic, and legal realities in violation of international law, thereby consolidating the illegal de facto annexation of the West Bank. Consequently, thousands of Christians have been forced to leave their homeland, causing a sharp decline in their numbers. This poses an existential threat to the Palestinian society and raises serious concerns that churches and holy sites could become empty museums and pilgrimage destinations, bereft of their indigenous communities.

For decades, Palestinian Christians have strived to maintain their religious traditions despite occupation and strict restrictions on access to holy sites. In the past two years, however, Israel’s genocidal aggression in the Gaza Strip, along with its aggression against the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, has resulted in the official suspension of public Christmas celebrations—especially in Bethlehem—as a symbol of national mourning and collective solidarity.  This situation stands in stark contrast to the misleading and politically motivated claims made in September 2025 by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the United Nations, asserting that Israel is the "only place in the Middle East where Christians feel safe." These claims are repeatedly contradicted by documented realities on the ground. Many Christian religious leaders have strongly challenged these assertions, emphasizing that Christians remain an integral part of the people of Palestine, sharing a common history with Muslims and facing similar challenges under Israeli occupation. The Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs in Palestine has also reaffirmed that Israeli colonial policies and acts of genocide have systematically and severely threatened the Christian presence in occupied Palestine.

The Challenge of Survival

Undoubtedly, the laws and policies enacted by Israel, the occupying Power, target the Palestinian people as a whole and have long been the primary factor driving the decline of the Palestinian Christian presence. Opinion polls among Palestinian Christians attribute this decline to the oppressive living conditions produced by prolonged occupation and its cumulative social, economic, and political consequences. These findings are further supported by reports issued by Palestinian church institutions and international ecumenical bodies.

Economic hardship, infrastructure destruction, and severe restrictions on movement remain among the most significant factors driving the forced displacement and emigration of Palestinian Christians.  These conditions are compounded by widespread uncertainty about the future and growing concerns that Israeli policies seek to empty the land of its indigenous people. According to the World Council of Churches, Palestinian Christians face increasing persecution and discrimination rooted in religious hostility. This reality has cultivated a widespread sense of fear and insecurity, as the rise of the extreme right in Israeli politics has directly fueled these trends. These dynamics have strengthened a culture of impunity, whereby perpetrators benefit from political protection and systematic inaction by the Israeli occupation authorities.

In this context, the patriarchs and heads of churches in Jerusalem have repeatedly warned of escalating violence, harassment, and hate crimes associated with radical Israeli extremist ideologies, aimed at diminishing the Christian presence in occupied Palestine.

The Impact of Israel’s Settler-Colonial Vision

Palestinian Christian heritage is increasingly being exploited within a political agenda aimed at disconnecting it from its Palestinian Arab roots. Through systematic efforts to "Judaize" and "Israelize" religious sites, the Israeli occupation authorities transform this heritage into a tool for consolidating spatial control and advancing a settler-colonial vision, in violation of international humanitarian law and international conventions protecting cultural and religious heritage. Accordingly, historical narratives are selectively rewritten and fabricated to erase Palestinian landmarks, both Islamic and Christian, and to legitimize land confiscation and de facto annexation.

This approach manifests in attacks and provocations targeting churches, monasteries, clergy, pilgrims, and religious processions, as well as in the confiscation of church lands through fraudulent transactions and legal-administrative manipulation. The occupying Power increasingly asserts control over archaeological and religious sites, transforming holy places into tourist areas under exclusive Israeli management, often in partnership with Israeli settler organizations. This process attempts to erase the Palestinian narrative and obscures Palestine’s central role in the origins of Christianity.

Occupied Jerusalem and Bethlehem have long been spiritual centers of Christianity; today, however, they are the most prominent examples of the cumulative impact of Israeli colonial policies. Together, they reveal a systematic strategy of occupation that extends beyond land confiscation to include demographic and geographic erasure, economic strangulation, and the suffocation of the Palestinian Christian presence.

In occupied Jerusalem, this strategy manifests through:

• Efforts to alter the historic Status Quo, targeting the Palestinian Christian presence through settlement-backed property seizures and dubious deals in the Jaffa Gate area.
• Attempts to impose retroactive taxes on churches to seize their endowment properties, after Israel had already confiscated approximately 80% of Christian (private) properties in the city since the beginning of the occupation in June 1967.

In the Bethlehem Governorate, Israeli settlement expansion, land annexation, and the construction of the annexation wall have transformed the governorate into an isolated enclave. This is manifested through:

• A ring of 18 settlements encircles the governorate, where over 130,000 settlers reside.
• A network of colonial infrastructure, most notably the Tunnels Road (Route 60), connects the "Gush Etzion" settlements and the large eastern settlements to Jerusalem. It isolates towns such as Nahalin, Husan, and Tuqu' and threatens the World Heritage Site in Battir.
• The gradual confiscation of church endowments and the annexation of approximately 22,000 dunums of land in the northern Bethlehem Governorate near the Cremisan Valley.
• The annexation wall has isolated approximately 73.2 km² of fertile land and eight villages to its west, including church lands and monasteries in the Cremisan and Makhrour valleys.
• The construction of a visitor center —inaccessible to Palestinians— in the agricultural areas of Beit Jala, which were designated by Israel as a national park in 2013.
• A near-total collapse of the tourist hotels in Bethlehem, with activity now at less than 1 percent. The city’s approximately 100 hotels, with 500 rooms that could accommodate up to 10,000 guests, stand largely empty.

These practices are not limited to Jerusalem or Bethlehem but are part of a broader, systematic pattern of Israeli violations across the West Bank, including key Christian heritage sites and pilgrimage routes, including:

• The targeting of Sebastia, which includes Christian landmarks linked to St. John the Baptist, holds outstanding religious, cultural, and historical significance for Palestinians. In November 2025, the Israeli occupation authorities ordered the confiscation of 1,800 dunums under the pretext of "preserving and developing the site for public access," following a July 2024 order seizing 1,300 m² of the site’s summit. These violations are part of a broader plan to control the 4,600-dunum area and transform it into the so-called "Samaria National Park" at a cost of 32 million shekels, aimed at consolidating Israeli settler control and severing Palestinian access.
• Israeli control over the Baptism Site, known as “Qasr al-Yahud,” in the Jordan Valley, which has remained under Israeli occupation control since 1967 and is promoted by the so-called Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) as part of its national parks system, undermining the site’s Palestinian Christian heritage.

Restrictions on Freedom of Movement and Worship

Israeli occupation policies sever Palestinian Christians’ historical and cultural ties to their religious heritage, transforming freedom of movement —protected under international human rights and humanitarian law—into a political tool. This control extends beyond geography to dominate spiritual, social, and communal life, tearing apart the Christian social fabric in Palestine and distancing communities from their historical and spiritual centers.

Access to key holy sites depends on military permits, checkpoints, and arbitrary closures, transforming the right to worship—whether in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, or the Jordan Valley—into a process that requires prior planning and multiple approvals from Israeli occupation authorities. This effectively diminishes the essence of worship, rendering visits to holy sites and the practice of religious rites conditional privileges controlled by the occupying Power through various mechanisms:

• Annexation Wall: largely built on lands belonging to the State of Palestine in violation of international law (2004 ICJ advisory opinion). Extending approximately 714 km, including over 143 km around Jerusalem and 60 km near Bethlehem, it disrupts historic religious routes and prevents thousands of Palestinian Christians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from accessing the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of the Nativity.
• Military Checkpoints: a dense network, including 11 checkpoints that encircle Jerusalem and others within the Old City—especially during religious holidays, when access to the city and its holy sites is controlled, often preventing worshippers from reaching the Church of the Holy Sepulchre under broad and arbitrary screenings, often justified by "security" or "organizational" pretexts.
• Closures and settler-only bypass roads:  further restrict freedom of movement in the Bethlehem Governorate. These roads are affected by an estimated 76 movement restrictions, including military checkpoints, road gates, earth mounds, and cement blocks, effectively making access to holy sites, jobs, schools, and medical services in Bethlehem dependent on unpredictable Israeli military decisions.
• Permit Regime: It reduces Palestinian Christians’ inherent right to access holy sites, especially in Jerusalem during holidays, to a conditional "favor." Permits are employed as a political tool of pressure and collective punishment, often granted to some family members but denied to others, disrupting family unity and cutting Jerusalem off from its Christian heritage in other parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The Cultural and Physical Destruction of Holy Sites

The destruction of Christian holy sites in occupied Palestine represents a blatant expression of Israeli colonial violence and unlawful military aggression. Targeting churches and religious landmarks has become a systematic means of undermining and severing the Christian presence in its historical homeland, reducing it to a largely symbolic existence, disconnected from its social and cultural foundations and ties. In the West Bank, this policy is implemented through gradual annexation, geographic isolation, and systematic demolition, while in the Gaza Strip, the devastation is compounded by acts amounting to "cultural genocide."

During Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the Strip experienced an unprecedented number of war crimes, including the direct destruction of Christian and Muslim holy sites, including three churches, which serve as vital religious, social, and humanitarian sanctuaries for Palestinian Christians in Gaza:

• The Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius—the third-oldest church in the world and the oldest church in Gaza— suffered the collapse of large portions of its structure as a result of direct Israeli bombardment.
• The Catholic Church of the Holy Family also sustained extensive damage.
• Other church institutions, including the Baptist Hospital and the Arab Orthodox Cultural and Social Center, were similarly targeted, resulting in the massacre of civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, who had sought refuge there.

In the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, destruction takes a multifaceted form, combining direct settler terror and military violence with policies of control and illegal de facto annexation, as evidenced by the following:

• Since 1967, numerous religious sites and churches have repeatedly suffered Israeli attacks and vandalism by extremist Israeli settlers, including desecrations of statues and cemeteries and the spray-painting of inflammatory slogans calling for the death of Christians. These violations occur amidst a backdrop of systematic impunity and government-supported efforts to erase the presence of Palestinian Christians and Muslims. In February 2023, an extremist settler vandalized the Church of the Assumption in Jerusalem’s Old City and attempted to set it on fire, only to be thwarted by the intervention of a Muslim guard. Subsequently, in March 2023, the Church of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives was desecrated, and the Tomb of the Virgin Mary was targeted, following an earlier arson attack there in December 2020.
• In Sebastia, the Israeli occupation’s control, along with deliberate neglect and restrictions on Palestinian access and restoration efforts, has resulted in the deterioration of religious structures, including the archaeological remains of the Byzantine- and Crusader-era Church of St. John the Baptist.
• Al-Taybeh village, located in the Ramallah Governorate and a significant site for Christian pilgrimage, has endured direct attacks on churches and properties, exacerbated by annexation and settlement policies. These actions have reduced the town’s original 24,000 dunums to just 6,000. In July 2025, extremist settlers repeatedly targeted the historic Church of St. George and the nearby cemetery through arson, vandalism, and cattle storming, increasing insecurity. Alongside economic restrictions and settlement expansion, these violations have led to the displacement of at least 10 families over the past two years, threatening the community’s survival.

Conclusion

Ongoing and escalating policies of isolation, land confiscation, and annexation in the West Bank, coupled with the widespread destruction in the Gaza Strip, pose an unprecedented threat to the Palestinian presence and its religious and cultural diversity. This Christmas season, the urgent message to the international community is clear: the continued illegal occupation not only undermines the two-State solution but also endangers the continuity of Palestine’s historic Christian presence.

These violations constitute grave breaches of civil, cultural, and religious rights, potentially amounting to crimes of persecution under the Rome Statute (1998, Article 7(h)), and directly contravene the occupying Power’s obligations under the Hague and Geneva Conventions—including the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, Common Article 3, and the Fourth Geneva Convention—as well as Israel’s responsibilities under UNESCO conventions safeguarding cultural and natural heritage.

Israel’s annexation policies in occupied Palestine further violate UN Security Council resolutions 252 (1968), 267 (1969), 478 (1980), and 2334 (2016), as well as relevant General Assembly and Human Rights Council resolutions. These circumstances demand urgent international action to implement the 2024 International Court of Justice advisory opinion, affirming the Palestinian people’s right to protection in their land, including their fundamental right to self-determination.