Israel obstructed their access to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.. Who are the Christians of Palestine?

Yesterday, Saturday, thousands of Palestinian Christians celebrated "Saturday of Light" in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, despite restrictions imposed by Israel.

Today, Sunday, April 24, 2022, the Israeli occupation measures hindered the arrival of Christian worshipers to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to celebrate the Holy Saturday of Christian denominations that follow the eastern calendar.

The roots of Arab Christians are deeply rooted in the land of Palestine. Jerusalem always radiates life and nourishes it. Throughout the ages, it has received brothers and sisters in faith from the resident and transit pilgrims, inviting them to learn about the sources that nourish their faith.

The Christians of Jerusalem, just like the Christians of Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour, Ramallah and others, are exposed to a real ordeal, which is the exacerbating immigration, which far exceeds the immigration rates prevailing in Palestinian society.

living stones

Ethnically speaking, Palestinian Christians in general are originally descended from a mixture of pre-Islamic Arab Christians (the Ghassanids), Arameans, Canaanites, Syriacs, Armenians and Byzantines.

Palestinian Christians are one of the oldest Christian groups in the world and some Palestinian Christian families are related by descent with the early Christians, which is why Palestinian Christians are often called living stones.

numbers and statistics

Estimates indicated that the number of Christian Palestinians reaches 2.3 million, the absolute majority of whom reside outside Palestine.

The percentage of Christians in the Palestinian territories does not exceed 1%, after they made up 11.2% before the Nakba in 1948, and the main reason for this decline is immigration.

- 45,000 Christians have lived in the occupied territories since 1967, distributed between the West Bank, which is inhabited by 40,000, the Gaza Strip, which is home to 850 Christians, and Jerusalem, which includes less than 4,000 of them, while the latest estimates show that their percentage does not exceed 0.60% of Christians. The total number of citizens in the Palestinian territories.

Some statistics indicate that the number of Christians among the Palestinian people in the 1948 territories is 114,500, out of a total population of 9 million.

Recent statistics indicate that the number of Christians has decreased to 110 thousand people at the present time.

- According to the distribution of Palestinian Christians in the 1948 territories, it turns out that 66,70 of them belong to the Roman Catholic Churches and to Catholics in general.

- 45,424 Palestinian Christians belong to the Greek Orthodox, and 5505 are Protestants.

The Greek Orthodox make up 51% of the Christians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, while the rest are distributed among the various churches as follows: Latin (Catholic) 33%, Roman Catholic 6%, Protestant 5%, Syriac and Armenian Orthodox 3% for each sect, Copts and Ethiopians Maronites and other Christians 2%.

The presence of Palestinian Christians is concentrated in the cities of Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Ramallah, Haifa, Jaffa, Birzeit, and several villages in the Upper Galilee in the north of the country.

The Christians of Palestine are considered the most highly educated and educated among the various religious sects, and the percentage of academic degree holders among them reaches 63%.

Christian holy places, churches and monasteries in historic Palestine number in the dozens, including 95 churches and monasteries in the Jerusalem area belonging to all denominations.

partition decision

- In 1922: the number of Christians in Jerusalem was about 14,700, and Muslims were 13,400 people, while in the 1945 census, they amounted to about 29,350 people, and Muslims 30,600 people.

1947: The number of Christians in Jerusalem decreased to 27,000, due to the war situation that arose in Palestine on the eve of the partition resolution in 1947.

1948: 50% of Jerusalem Christians lost their homes in West Jerusalem, then Israel confiscated 30% of the lands owned by Christians after the occupation in 1967, and all these factors combined to make Christians a constantly diminishing society.

The Israeli authorities confiscated 11,000 acres of wooded land with olives in Beit Jala, to build the Gilo settlement, and confiscated thousands of acres of Christian lands to build a highway linking Jewish settlements south of Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

Partners of the Nakba

The Christians of Palestine were not immune from the catastrophe that befell the Palestinian people in 1948, as they were subjected to displacement, displacement and persecution, just like the Muslims.

- According to the Secretary-General of the Islamic Christian Organization Hanna Issa, among the Palestinians who were displaced and experienced asylum, between 40 and 50 thousand Arab Christians, who made up more than a third of the Christian population in Palestine in 1948.

Issa said - in a statement - that the Christian population used to exceed 30,000 Christians in Jerusalem in 1944, then their number gradually decreased to less than 5,000 people today.

- He explained that due to the occupation, many Christians immigrated to Jordan in 1967 and settled in the capital, Amman, in order to provide them with better life opportunities.

Issa pointed out that the number of Palestinian Christians in Australia is greater than in East Jerusalem, and that the number of Christians from the city of Ramallah in the United States of America is greater than it is in Ramallah.

- According to the Palestinian official, since the beginning of the occupation in 1967 until the end of 1993, about 13,000 Palestinian Christians immigrated from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including about 8,000 from the West Bank and about 5,000 from the Gaza Strip.

According to the head of the commission, the Christian presence today constitutes about 20% of the Palestinian population around the world, whose number is estimated at 11.6 million, but they do not constitute more than 1% of the population of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

The most famous churches:

Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

The Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth.