Palestinian Christians

Palestinian Christians ( ar, مَسِيحِيُّون فِلَسْطِينِيُّون, Masīḥiyyūn Filasṭīniyyūn) are Christian citizens of the State of Palestine. In the wider definition of Palestinian Christians, including the Palestinian refugees, diaspora and people with full or partial Palestinian Christian ancestry this can be applied to an estimated 500,000 people worldwide as of 2000. Palestinian Christians belong to one of a number of Christian denominations, including Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, Catholicism (Eastern and Western rites), Anglicanism, Lutheranism, other branches of Protestantism and others. Bernard Sabella of Bethlehem University estimates that 6% of the Palestinian population worldwide is Christian and that 56% of them live outside of the region of Palestine. In both the local dialect of Palestinian Arabic and in Classical Arabic or Modern Standard Arabic, Christians are called '' Nasrani'' (the Arabic word Nazarene) or ''Masihi'' (a derivative of Arabic word ''Masih'', meaning "Messiah"). Hebrew-speakers call them ''Notzri'' (also spelt ''Notsri''), which means Nazarene (originated from Nazareth).Bromiley, Geoffrey W., "Nazarene," ''The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: K-P'', pp. 499–500.

, Palestinian Christians comprise approximately 1–2.5% of the population of the West Bank, and less than 1% in the Gaza Strip. According to official British Mandatory estimates, Palestine's Christian population in 1922 constituted 9.5% of the total Mandatory Palestine population (10.8% of the Palestinian Arab population), and 7.9% in 1946.
A large number of Arab Christians fled or were expelled from the Jewish-controlled areas of Mandatory Palestine during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and a small number left during the period (1948–1967) of Jordanian control of the West Bank for economic reasons. From 1967, during the Israeli military rule, the Palestinian Christian population has increased while as a percentage of the population continued to decrease.

There are also many Palestinian Christians who are descendants of Palestinian refugees from the post-1948 era who fled to Christian-majority countries and formed large diaspora Christian communities. Worldwide, there are nearly one million Palestinian Christians in these territories as well as in the Palestinian diaspora, comprising around 6–7% of the world's total Palestinian population. Palestinian Christians live primarily in Arab states surrounding historic Palestine and in the diaspora, particularly in Europe and the Americas.

Demographics and denominations

1922

In the 1922 census of Palestine there were approximately 73,000 Christian Palestinians: 46% Orthodox, 40% Catholic (20% Roman Catholic, and 20% Eastern Catholic.

The census recorded over 200 localities with a Christian population. The totals by denomination for all of Mandatory Palestine were: Greek Orthodox 33,369, Syriac Orthodox (Jacobite) 813, Latin Catholic 14,245, Greek Catholic (Melkite) 11,191, Syriac Catholic 323, Armenian Catholic 271, Maronite 2,382, Armenian Orthodox (Gregorian) 2,939, Coptic Church 297, Abyssinian Church 85, Church of England 4,553, Presbyterian Church 361, Protestants 826, Lutheran Church 437, Templars Community 724, others 208.

Modern day

In 2009, there were an estimated 50,000 Christians in the Palestinian territories, mostly in the West Bank, with about 3,000 in the Gaza Strip. In 2022, about 1,100 Christians lived in the Gaza Strip - down from over 1300 in 2014. About 80% of the Christian Palestinians live in an urban environment. In the West Bank, they are concentrated mostly in Jerusalem and its vicinity: Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour, Ramallah, Bir Zayt, Jifna, Ein Arik, Taybeh.

Of the total Christian population of 154,000 in Israel, about 80% are designated as Arabs, many of whom self-identify as Palestinian.

The majority (56%) of Palestinian Christians live in the Palestinian diaspora.

Around 50% of Palestinian Christians belong to the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, one of the 15 churches of Eastern Orthodoxy. This community has also been known as the Arab Orthodox Christians. There are also Maronites, Melkites, Jacobites, Chaldeans, Latin Catholics, Syriac Catholics, Orthodox Copts, Coptic Catholics, Armenian Orthodox, Armenian Catholics, Quakers (Society of Friends), Methodists, Presbyterians, Anglicans (Episcopal), Lutherans, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Nazarene, Assemblies of God, Baptists and other Protestants; in addition to small groups of Jehovah's Witnesses, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and others.

Patriarch Theophilos III is the leader of the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem since 2005. He replaced Irenaios (in office from 2001), who was deposed by the church synod after a term surrounded by controversy and scandal given that he sold Palestinian property to Israeli Orthodox Jews. The Israel government initially refused to recognize Theophilos's appointment but finally granted full recognition in December 2007, despite a legal challenge by his predecessor Irenaios. Archbishop Theodosios (Hanna) of Sebastia the highest ranking Palestinian clergyman in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem is the leader of the Latin Catholics in Jerusalem, Palestine, Jordan, Israel and Cyprus. The office has been held by Pierbattista Pizzaballa since his appointment by Pope Francis on 6 November 2020. George Bacouni, of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, is Archbishop of Akka, with jurisdiction over Haifa, Acre and the Galilee, and replaced Elias Chacour, a Palestinian refugee, in 2014. Moussa El-Hage, of the Maronite Church, is since 2012 simultaneously Archbishop of the Archeparchy of Haifa and the Holy Land and Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Palestine.

The Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem is Suheil Dawani, who replaced Bishop Riah Abou Al Assal. Bishop Dr. Munib Younan is the president of the Lutheran World Federation and the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL).

History

Background and early history

The first Christian communities in Roman Judea originated from the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, who was put to death and crucified by order of Prefect Pontius Pilate in 30-33; they were Aramaic speaking Messianic Jews and, later, Latin and Greek-speaking Romans and Greeks, who were in part descendants from previous settlers of the regions, such as Syro-Phoenicians, Arameans, Greeks, Persians, and Arabs such as Nabataeans.

Contrary to other groups of oriental Christians such as the largely Assyrian Nestorians, the vast majority of Palestinian Christians went under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and Roman emperors after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD (which would be part of the Eastern Orthodox Church after the Great Schism), and were known by other Syrian Christians as Melkites (followers of the king). The Melkites were heavily Hellenised in the following centuries, abandoning their distinct Western Aramaic languages in favour of Greek. By the 7th century, Jerusalem and Byzantine Palestine became the epicentre of Greek culture in the Orient.

Soon after the Muslim conquests, the Melkites began abandoning Greek for Arabic, a process which made them the most Arabicised Christians in the Levant.

Most Palestinian Christians nowadays see themselves as culturally and linguistically Arab Christians with ancestors dating back to the first followers of Christ. They claim descent from Romans, Ghassanid Arabs, Byzantines, and Crusaders. The region consisting mainly of modern Israel and the State of Palestine is considered to be the Holy Land by Christians. Major Christian holy cities such as Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem are located in Israel and the State of Palestine.

That Christian Arabs in Palestine see themselves as Arab nationalistically reflects also the fact that, as of the beginning of the twentieth century, they shared many of the same customs as their Muslim neighbors. In some respects, this was a consequence of Christians adopting what were essentially Islamic practices, many of which were derived of ''sharî'ah''. In others, it was more the case that the customs shared by both Muslims and Christians derived from neither faith, but rather were a result of a process of syncretization, whereby what had once been pagan practices were later redefined as Christian and subsequently adopted by Muslims. This was especially evident in the fact that Palestine's Muslims and Christians shared many of the same feast days, in honor of the same saints, even if they referred to them by different names. "Shrines dedicated to St. George, for instance, were transformed into shrines honoring Khidr-Ilyas, a conflation of the Prophet Elijah and the mythical sprite Khidr". Added to this, many Muslims viewed local Christian churches as saints' shrines. Thus, for instance, a "Muslim women having difficulties conceiving, for instance, might travel to Bethlehem to pray for a child before the Virgin Mary". It was even not uncommon for a Muslim to have his child baptized in a Christian church, in the name of Khaḍr.

Modern history

The category of 'Palestinian Arab Christian' came to assume a political dimension in the 19th century as international interest grew and foreign institutions were developed there. The urban elite began to undertake the construction of a modern multi-religious Arab civil society. When the British received from the League of Nations a mandate to administer Palestine after World War I, many British dignitaries in London were surprised to discover so many Christian leaders in the Palestinian Arab political movements. The British authorities in the Mandate of Palestine had difficulty understanding the commitment of the Palestinian Christians to Palestinian nationalism.

Palestinian Christian owned Falastin was founded in 1911 in the then Arab-majority city of Jaffa. The newspaper is often described as one of the most influential newspapers in historic Palestine, and probably the nation's fiercest and most consistent critic of the Zionist movement. It helped shape Palestinian identity and nationalism and was shut down several times by the Ottoman and British authorities, most of the time due to complaints made by Zionists.

The Nakba left the multi-denominational Christian Arab communities in disarray. They had little background in theology, their work being predominantly pastoral, and their immediate task was to assist the thousands of homeless refugees. But it also sowed the seeds for the development of a Liberation Theology among Palestinian Arab Christians. There was a differential policy of expulsion. More lenience was applied to the Christians of the Galilee where expulsion mostly affected Muslims: at Tarshiha, Me'eliya, Dayr al-Qassi, and Salaban, Christians were allowed to remain while Muslims were driven out. At Iqrit and Bir'im the IDF ordered Christians to evacuate for a brief spell, an order that was then confirmed as a permanent expulsion. Sometimes in a mixed Druze-Christian village like al-Rama, only the Christians were initially expelled towards Lebanon, but, thanks to the intervention of the local Druze, they were permitted to return. Important Christian figures were sometimes allowed to return, on condition they help Israel among their communities. Archbishop Hakim, with many hundreds of Christians, was allowed reentry on expressing a willingness to campaign against Communists in Israel and among his flock.

After the war of 1948, the Christian population in the West Bank, under Jordanian control, dropped slightly, largely due to economic problems. This contrasts with the process occurring in Israel where Christians left ''en masse'' after 1948. Constituting 21% of Israel's Arab population in 1950, they now make up just 9% of that group. These trends accelerated after the 1967 war in the aftermath of Israel's takeover of the West Bank and Gaza.

In Palestinian Authority (from 1994)

Christians within the Palestinian Authority constituted around one in seventy-five residents. In 2009, Reuters reported that 47,000–50,000 Christians remained in the West Bank, with around 17,000 following the various Catholic traditions and most of the rest following the Orthodox church and other eastern denominations. Both Bethlehem and Nazareth, which were once overwhelmingly Christian, now have Muslim majorities. Today about three-quarters of all Bethlehem Christians live abroad, and more Jerusalem Christians live in Sydney, Australia than in Jerusalem. Christians now comprise 2.5 percent of the population of Jerusalem. Those remaining include a few born in the Old City when Christians there constituted a majority.

In a 2007 letter from Congressman Henry Hyde to President George W. Bush, Hyde stated that "the Christian community is being crushed in the mill of the bitter Israeli-Palestinian conflict" and that expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were "irreversibly damaging the dwindling Christian community".

In November 2009, Berlanty Azzam, a Palestinian Christian student from Gaza, was expelled from Bethlehem and was not allowed to continue her studying. She had two months left for the completion of her degree. Berlanty Azzam said the Israeli military handcuffed her, blindfolded her, and left her waiting for hours at a checkpoint on her way back from a job interview in Ramallah. She described the incident as "frightening" and claimed Israeli official treated her like a criminal and denied her an education because she is a Palestinian Christian from Gaza.

In July 2014, during operation Protective Edge an Israeli-Arab Christian demonstration was held in Haifa in a protest against Muslim extremism in the Middle East (concerning the rise of the Islamic State) and in support of Israel and the IDF.

Christian Arabs are one of the most educated groups in Israel. Statistically, Christian Arabs in Israel have the highest rates of educational attainment among all religious communities, according to a data by Israel Central Bureau of Statistics in 2010, 63% of Israeli Christian Arabs have had college or postgraduate education, the highest of any religious and ethno-religious group. Despite the fact that Arab Christians only represent 2.1% of the total Israeli population, in 2014 they accounted for 17.0% of the country's university students, and for 14.4% of its college students. There are more Christians who have attained a bachelor's degree or higher academic degrees than the median Israeli population. Also Christian Arabs have one of the highest rates of success in the matriculation examinations, (73.9%) in 2017 both in comparison to the Muslims and the Druze and in comparison to all students in the Jewish education system as a group. Arab Christians were also the vanguard in terms of eligibility for higher education, and they have attained a bachelor's degree and academic degree more than the median Israeli population. Christians schools in Israel went on strike in 2015 at the beginning of the 2015 academic year in protest at budget cuts aimed at them. The strike affected 33,000 pupils, 40 percent of them Muslim. In 2013, Israel covered 65% of the budget of Palestinian Christian schools in Israel, a figure cut that year to 34%. Christians say they now received a third of what Jewish schools receive, with a shortfall of $53 million.

The rate of students studying in the field of medicine was also higher among the Christian Arab students, compared with all the students from other sectors. The percentage of Arab Christian women who are higher education students is higher than other sectors.

In September 2014, Israel's interior minister signed an order that the self-identified ''Aramean Christian'' minority in Israel could register as Arameans rather than Arabs. The order will affect about 200 families.

Political and ecumenical issues

The mayors of Ramallah, Birzeit, Bethlehem, Zababdeh, Jifna, Ein 'Arik, Aboud, Taybeh has also blamed the economic decline in the Palestinian Authority as well as pressure from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the exodus. A report on Bethlehem residents stated both Christians and Muslims wished to leave but the Christians possessed better contacts with people abroad and higher levels of education. The Vatican and the Catholic Church blamed the Israeli occupation and the conflict in the Holy Land for the Christian exodus from the Holy Land and the Middle East in general.

''The Jerusalem Post'' (an Israeli newspaper) has stated that the "shrinking of the Palestinian Christian community in the Holy Land came as a direct result of its middle-class standards" and that Muslim pressure has not played a major role according to Christian residents themselves. It reported that the Christians have a public image of elitism and of class privilege as well as of non-violence and of open personalities, which leaves them more vulnerable to criminals than Muslims. Hanna Siniora, a prominent Christian Palestinian human rights activist, has attributed harassment against Christians to "little groups" of "hoodlums" rather than to the Hamas and Fatah governments. In his last novel, the Palestinian Christian writer Emile Habibi has a character affirm that:

"There is no difference between Christian and Muslim: we are all Palestinian in our predicament."

According to a report in ''The Independent'', thousands of Christian Palestinians "emigrated to Latin America in the 1920s, when Mandatory Palestine was hit by drought and a severe economic depression."

Today, Chile houses the largest Palestinian Christian community in the world outside of the Levant. As many as 350,000 Palestinian Christians reside in Chile, most of whom came from Beit Jala, Bethlehem, and Beit Sahur. Also, El Salvador, Honduras, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela, and other Latin American countries have significant Palestinian Christian communities, some of whom immigrated almost a century ago during the time of Ottoman Palestine. During the 2008 Gaza War, Palestinian Christians in Chile demonstrated against the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. They were hoping to move the government into altering its relations with Israel.

In a 2006 poll of Christians in Bethlehem by the Palestinian Centre for Research and Cultural Dialogue, 90% reported having Muslim friends, 73% agreed that the Palestinian Authority treats Christian heritage in the city with respect, and 78% attributed the ongoing exodus of Christians from Bethlehem to the Israeli occupation and travel restrictions on the area. Daniel Rossing, the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs' chief liaison to Christians in the 1970s and 1980s, has stated that the situations for them in Gaza became much worse after the election of Hamas. He also stated that the Palestinian Authority, which counts on Christian westerners for financial support, treats the minority fairly. He blamed the Israeli West Bank barrier as the primary problem for the Christians.

The United States State Department's 2006 report on religious freedom criticized both Israel for its restrictions on travel to Christian holy sites and the Palestinian Authority for its failure to stamp out anti-Christian crime. It also reported that the former gives preferential treatment in basic civic services to Jews and the latter does so to Muslims. The report stated that, generally, ordinary Muslim and Christian citizens enjoy good relations in contrast to the "strained" Jewish and Arab relations. A 2005 BBC
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