For Christian Palestinians, Home Has Become a Hostile Territory 

For more than 2,000 years, the ancient Church of Saint George in Taybeh in the West Bank has been a source of solace to its parishioners.  

First built as a place of worship under the Byzantines in the fourth century by St. Constantine and St. Helen, it has been restored twice and serves as an anchor for the West Bank’s last fully Christian village, a living link to the land’s earliest Christian communities. 

Then in early July, Jewish settlers torched the fields surrounding the church and its cemetery, creating a fire that threatened to destroy both.

It was just the latest attack on buildings, fields, and people by Jewish settlers in the West Bank, but this time the target was the Palestinian Christian community, which makes up less than 1 percent of the 2.9 million Palestinians and 600,000 settlers in the enclave.  

It set off outrage at home and around the world. 

“We cannot remain silent in the face of these relentless attacks that threaten our very existence on this land,” said Father Daoud Khoury of the Greek Orthodox Church, Father Jacques-Noble Abed of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, and Father Bashar Fawadleh of the Latin Church in a statement. “(Our home) has effectively become an open target for illegal settlement outposts that expand quietly under military protection (and) serve as a base for further assaults on the land and its people.” 

The Vatican, Arab leaders, Christians around the world, and human rights groups voiced outrage at the attack. Under prior administrations, the US labeled the settlements as illegal and sanctioned some settlers. But it has erased many of those designations under the Trump administration, which has appointed a pro-settlement ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. After the attack, he visited the village and expressed concern, calling the attack on the church “an act of terror.” Other US commentators framed it as Christian persecution.

For decades, Palestinians have lived with settler encroachment and violence along with Israeli military operations, which have displaced thousands, destroyed land and livelihoods, and made daily life difficult if not impossible for residents. Since the attack by Hamas and its allies on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, however, the situation in the West Bank has become dire: The United Nations says almost 1,000 Palestinians have been killed and about 30,000 displaced since then.  

Most of the international community considers the Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal. Israel regards the enclave as disputed territory and says they are legal. Opponents and supporters agree that the settlement will prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and ultimately allow Israel full sovereignty over the West Bank, wrote the Wall Street Journal. 

However, the settlements and the accompanying barriers and checkpoints are carving up the territory – about 2,180 square miles, roughly the size of Delaware – into ever smaller enclaves, sometimes dividing neighborhoods, families, and institutions and cutting them off from each other.  

Since Oct. 7, the settlements are expanding at a breakneck pace with the help of the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu, backed by lawmakers, which wants to annex the territory and extend sovereignty over it to achieve a “decisive victory” over its enemies.  

Last week, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich approved the E-1 plan, stalled for decades, which will see the construction of 3,401 settler units in Ma’ale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, and 3,515 more in surrounding areas. The plan is designed to split the West Bank into two parts, severing links between its northern cities, such as Ramallah, and southern cities like Bethlehem, and isolating East Jerusalem. 

Smotrich said the project would “bury the idea of a Palestinian state,” calling it “the final nail in the coffin.” 

Further south, around Hebron, Palestinian landowners say new settler outposts are creeping deeper into farmland. In the north, near Nablus and Jenin, settler roads and military zones steadily enclose villages already strained by violence from settlers and the Israeli Defense Forces. Palestinians describe a land fractured into ever smaller pieces. 

Taybeh sits just to the west of a part of the West Bank that has seen severe settler harassment of local Palestinian populations in recent years. Entire communities of Bedouin sheepherders have fled after being attacked by settlers expanding their illegal outposts in the area.  

About 19 communities have been abandoned since Oct. 7 as a result of settler harassment, according to Israel’s B’tselem human rights organization. The 20th, Mu’arrajat, became a ghost hamlet in July.  

Until last month, about 1,100 people had made up that community of ramshackle homes, sheep pens, and a school in the rugged desert of the southern Jordan Valley. 

Then, in early July, witnesses described to the Israel Times how settlers broke into homes, stole or destroyed possessions and took livestock, threatened residents, and vandalized homes.  

“It’s not just that they took our home, they were laughing in our faces, they said, ‘There is nothing for you here, this place is ours’,” one resident, Alia Mleihat, told the newspaper. “Everything that happened was under the cover of the Israel Defense Forces and the police. Instead of protecting the residents, they protected the settlers.”  

Another displaced resident said the members of the community had no choice but to go elsewhere: “The settlers are armed… The military protects them. We can’t take it anymore, so we decided to leave.”  

That is likely the fate of the Christian villagers in Taybeh, a town of roughly 1,500 that precedes the time of Jesus.  

“They have been able to empty the area and to displace, I think, somewhere around 10, 11, 12 Palestinian communities and clusters, and they finished,” Israeli researcher Dror Etkes told NPR. “So they’re moving to the next Palestine destination, which is Taybeh.”  

“Unfortunately, the temptation to emigrate is there because of the situation,” Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Roman Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem since 2020, told Reuters. “This time it’s very difficult to see how and when this will finish, and especially for the youth to talk about hope, trust for the future.”