AhlulBayt News Agency: The Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs in Palestine has accused Israel of systematically erasing Christian life in the Holy Land, rejecting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim at the United Nations that Israel is the sole protector of Christians in the Middle East.
In a statement published Sunday on its official Facebook page, accompanied by an image showing an Israeli tank outside the Church of the Nativity during the 2002 West Bank invasion, the committee asserted that Israel’s policies of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide are directly responsible for the destruction of Christian presence in Palestine.
The statement was issued in response to Netanyahu’s address at the UN General Assembly, where he spoke to a half-empty hall and repeated what the committee described as “outright lies about Palestinian Christians.” It labeled Netanyahu a “war criminal wanted for justice before the International Criminal Court.”
The committee emphasized that prior to the 1948 Nakba, Palestinian Christians made up 12.5 percent of the population in historic Palestine. Today, only 1.2 percent remain, with barely 1 percent residing in the territories occupied in 1967. This sharp decline, it said, is the direct result of Israel’s ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, land confiscation, and systematic oppression.
It recalled that 90,000 Palestinian Christians were expelled during the Nakba, and nearly 30 churches were forced to close. The statement also cited atrocities committed by Zionist militias: the Haganah killed 25 Christians at Jerusalem’s Semiramis Hotel in 1948, while Israeli occupation forces executed 12 more in the Galilee village of Eilabun that same year.
Regarding Gaza, the committee stated that the ongoing Israeli military campaign since October 2023 has included the bombing of the Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church and the Catholic Holy Family Church, both of which were sheltering civilians. Entire families were killed in these attacks. Church-run institutions such as the Baptist hospital and the Orthodox Arab cultural and social center were also targeted.
The committee added that Christian homes have been shelled, forcing families to seek refuge in churches, which themselves later came under Israeli fire. Since the beginning of the war on Gaza, 44 Palestinian Christians have been killed—some in direct strikes, others due to deteriorating humanitarian conditions, including lack of food and medicine.
“The truth is undeniable,” the committee concluded. “It is Israel’s colonial project, its ethnic cleansing, and its genocidal campaign that have destroyed Christianity in its birthplace.”
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